AN INTERSPECIES COMMUNITY. NATURE AS BIAŁYSTOK’S NEIGHBOUR

AN INTERSPECIES COMMUNITY. NATURE AS BIAŁYSTOK’S NEIGHBOUR

May 14^th 2023 – December 31^st 2024

An Interspecies Community. Nature as Białystok’s Neighbour

Project “Happiness Study Lab – Life after Comfortocene”*

Nature as Białystok’s neighbour is defined as a need for or essentiality of recognising nature as a full-fledged neighbour in urban communities, and building social interactions not only among human individuals, but also among people interacting with non-human neighbours (plants, fungi and animals, including insects). Once their role is neglected, urban communities deteriorate, public spaces collapse, urban space is commercialised and privatised (Erbel, 2009; Nawratek, 2008), and climate-related issues are underestimated.

Building a thus-defined urban community will translate into efforts to develop symbiosis and interaction between people and nature (while acknowledging benefits arising from such relationships) on the one hand, and – on the other – require incessant attempts at taking action across divides and in collaboration with entities representing assorted areas (political or disciplinary differences regardless), to the end of resolving specific problems in a city struggling with climate issues.

The aforesaid arises from a need to approach contemporary ecological issues seriously, take effective action to establish bond-conducive social relations, improve urban existence quality, and meet public demand for green areas – all the while protecting and using the potential of green areas already present in a city continuously undergoing rather dynamic infrastructural modernisation.

We are defining our neighbourhood primarily through the vanishing before our very eyes of a Białystok phenomenon – forests located within city boundaries, currently reaching approximately 1,846 hectares in area, or around 18 percent of urban space (ranking Białystok ninth on the list of green Polish cities) – and forgotten green urban wasteland zones.

The project will include open meetings, workshops and lectures, in the course of which we will jointly ponder interdependent neighbourhoods and co-existence of urban residents and urban nature.

A detailed schedule to follow soon!

Organised by:
Goethe-Institut in Warsaw and Cracow, Bęc Zmiana Foundation, and Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (ZK/U Berlin), with support from the Capital City of Warsaw, Foundation for Polish-German Co-operation, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Warsaw

Partners / knowledge co-production:
Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, BWA (Art Exhibition Office) Wrocław – Galleries of Contemporary Art, Institute of Urban Culture in Gdańsk, Media Dizajn Szczecin Association (Szczecin Incubator of Culture), “Arsenal” Gallery in Białystok

“Happiness Study Lab” curator team:
Bogna Świątkowska, Miodrag Kuč, Matthias Einhoff

Co-ordination and production of the An Interspecies Community. Nature as Białystok’s Neighbour project (Arsenal Gallery in Białystok):
Ewa Chacianowska, Aleksandra Jakuć, Eliza Urwanowicz-Rojecka, Jan Szewczyk, Katarzyna Zabłocka.

Local partners:
Artur Grottger State Fine Arts Secondary School in Supraśl, and the Faculty of Architecture of the Białystok University of Technology.

* Happiness Study Lab – Life after Comfortocene
2023-2024

We are initiating an art-and-research project in six Polish cities, with intent to connect young people with science, art, design, technology and entrepreneurship environments. Project outcomes will include the establishing of an expert network with a focus on knowledge co-production and the implementation of local solutions in creative laboratories designed to embark on joint action to shed comfortocene, and live more happily and sustainably.

World comfort resources generated by humans for years with no heed for environmental cost will soon be depleted. Today, in times of climate crisis, we have to be prepared for constraints. Changing our way of thinking and associated lifestyle modifications is unavoidable, and will be painful. Both the climate crisis and restrictive pro-ecological activities frequently become frustrating demotivators. How does one turn them into a positive experience, and a source of happiness man is constantly striving for? The world needs new strategies, and needs them now. We ought to seek roads leading us out of comfortocene as swiftly as possible.

Jointly with our partners, we will be establishing interdisciplinary study laboratories – in Białystok, Gdańsk, Katowice, Szczecin, Warsaw and Wrocław, where young people will be able to collaborate with German and Polish experts on science, art, design, architecture, and any other areas proven useful.

Themes of our interest include the future of restricted comfort, the imagination and its workings, urban ecology, economy of the future, seeking sources of optimism, speculativeness as a motor for development, and crisis and shortage circumstance management. The purpose of laboratories will be to identify local needs, deficits and threats, and draft strategies and scenarios for positive action. The fact that we as the local community can influence our reality proves that change can be found at our fingertips – a potential source of a sense of happiness in itself.