Recorded on April 29, 2023 artist Dora Durkesac spoke about her work and lead the interactive workshop “Ecosystems: Rehearsing Collectivity”. The collaborative workshop helps imagine collective living through co-creating systems, and strives for an exploratory community where natural and digital structures regenerate human ones.

During the workshop, Durkesac lead the participants as we traced our fascination with nature and social states in complex existing ecosystems and experiment with fictional concepts or relations such as porous community, micro-empathy, or digital cycles. The workshop started with reflecting on browsing history and continuing with chat poetry and contaminating ideas. In the process, we use simple digital apps in 3D modeling, image, or sound generation and choreograph them via desktop to create a temporary collaborative ecosystem.

Learn more about the project at: https://rehearsing-collectivity.com/

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Dora Đurkesac is an author in contemporary dance, intermedia art, and design research. Her work shapes through collective practices such as a queer bestiary, hybrid ecosystems, digital garden, imaginary artists' exhibition, or feminist manicure salon. In 2020 Đurkesac was the art director of the digital publication exploring changes in the art institution, Everything is New, initiated by Nikolay Alutin, De Appel, Amsterdam. Her work and performances have been shown in numerous institutions, such as Centrum, Haubrok Foundation, Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz; Spike, Berlin; Neu Now, Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; La MAMA Theatre, New York; and Tjarnarbíó, Reykjavik. She was a part of the Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt in 2021. Currently, she explores topics of embodied cognition and develops practices such as "Rehearsing Collectivity" and "Anatomy of Encounters." She lives and works in Berlin.

ABOUT THE SERIES

This workshop is presented as part of On the Edge of Time, a series of web-based events addressing the future of humanity, nature, and technology. Inspired by historical utopian thinking, the bimonthly series seeks out proposed frameworks to confront current and future ecological challenges. The series unfolds through July 2023 with programming that explores research on systems created in symbiosis with the natural world and speculative ecological futures.

Curated by Rokhsane Hovaida