An event organised as part of the discursive programme of the Croatian Pavilion – Same as it Ever Was at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Location: Arts Academy, University of Split, Croatia
Duration: 11-14 October 2023
Application deadline: 8 September 2023
Confirmation: no later than 11 September 2023
Questions: interakcije@umas.hr
This 4-day intensive event will host lectures, discussions, an exhibition and a workshop for master, and postgraduate students, researchers, and emerging practitioners engaged with creative practices across diverse fields such as architecture, design, arts, digital technologies, psychology, social and natural sciences, and all other applicants from any field/background who feel that could contribute to this topic. Interakcije 2023 will be held at the Department of Visual Communication Design at the Arts Academy, University of Split (Croatia) in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts. The workshop will be conducted in the English language. The outcomes of the workshop will be showcased and published as part of the Croatian Pavilion’s presentation at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Participation in the workshop is free of charge. Travel, accommodation and food are on the behalf of participants. The maximum number of participants is limited to 20, and the deadline for applications is 8 September.
The event is focused on the possible implications of the global climate (and other related crises), as well as technological, economic and political futures in the local context of the Adriatic and Mediterranean. Moving from the outgoing perspective of the fetishisation of the Mediterranean way of life, addressing future challenges from a multidisciplinarity perspective, dealing with possible local, micro-models of resilience, from a specific Mediterranean perspective, speculating about “the man of/from the sea,” and the creation of new communities. Critically reflecting the romanticised high-modernist human-centred visions of the future and life under the sea that have become part of our popular culture. The participants will focus on the potential utopian communities of the near future, bringing possible new social, energy or more-than-human concepts, via speculative design and related approaches. New places of community resilience, but not as places of utopian new beginnings, but as places of transition in the present towards new and different societies, communities of hope and communities of the future.
The event is hosted by Ivica Mitrović (curator of the discursive programme of the Croatian pavilion in Venice, Arts Academy, University of Split) and Oleg Šuran (Arts Academy, University of Split), with Mia Roth and Tonči Čerina (curators of the Croatian presentation at the Biennale).
Workshop leaders are Valentin Graillat and Oliver Troff who are design researchers from ENS Paris-Saclay (Paris-Saclay University, France). Discursive programme guests (lectures and discussion) are social scientist and writer Gennaro Asscione (University of Naples “L’Orientale,” Italy) and scientist in microbiology and ecology Mladen Šolić (Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Split, Croatia). More guests will be announced in September.
The Croatian Pavilion is an ode to the ambiences of coexistence of the wild and the domesticated, natural and fabricated, inanimate and living. It originates from the Lonja wetlands, where the dynamic environment evolved from centuries of symbioses between the landscape in constant flux and the communities that adapted their lives to it. This sample becomes a backdrop for the discursive programme of the Croatian Pavilion, an ongoing laboratory documented in real time, focused on exploring futures in practice and education. The network of the Croatian Pavilion welcomes talks and workshops that will take place on and off-site during the Biennale, with a focus on acute issues through interaction between professionals, teachers, and students from various fields. This way, they will test the topics and future actions in the education of architects, designers and related disciplines – recognising the multidisciplinary and transversal origin of skills engaged in caring for the future environment.
Interakcije (Eng. Interactions) is an informal educational platform at the Department of Visual Communication Design at the Arts Academy in Split, connected with its master programme module Interactive Media, aiming to go beyond the limits of design definitions and re-thinking what design is today. Activities started in 2001 (during summer school at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) with the first event in 2004, the International Interaction Design Summer School “Convivio – Communities in Transition”. Among others, we hosted the following names as workshop leaders and lecturers: James Auger, Tuur Van Balen, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Nicolas Nova, Liam Young, Noam Toran, Tobias Revell, Anab Jain, Demitrios Kargotis and Dash Macdonald (Dashndem), Michael Smyth, Steffen P. Walz, Chris Hand, Victor Vina, Erik Sandelin and Magnus Torstensson (Unsworn industries), Gordan Savičić, Martin Avila, Liam Healy, Dionysia Mylonaki and many more.
