Seminar 4: 14 - 16 April 2026

We’ll be thinking with swamps, considering the sacrifice of institutions and institutional necrophilia, attempting to understand death and regeneration at cellular levels, exploring digital ecologies, permalife / permadeath, pondering thinking after the death of the sun, drawing together, cooking together and scaling the summit.

Tuesday 14th April

Morning 

• Check in and Overview of the week 

• Movement Exercise: Giuliana Dridi

• Group Reading and Discussion: Thinking With The Swamp by Ingrid Vranken, Sepideh Ardalani and Mihaela Brebenel

Afternoon

• Long Table, concept by Split Britches, hosted by Seta Astreou-Karides

• Group cooking and discussion: ‘Wishing For Better Days, The Sweet We Make When Words Aren’t Enough’ led by Tara White.

Evening 

• Presentation: ‘Regeneration-Differentiation-Immortalization – Cells avoiding Death’ by Mandus Ridefelt

Wednesday 15th April

Morning 

• Group check in

• Movement Exercise: Giuliana Dridi

• Screening: Funding Body by Charles de Agustin

• Reading from Aziza Harmel, reflection on the sacrifice and rebirth of institutions. 

Afternoon

• Attention Exercise / Conversation Score led by Agnese Krivade

• Drawing and Printing session led by Shoshana Walfish

Evening

• Presentation by Alice Bucknell: VOIDOUT examines permalife protocols in 3 recent titles — Death Stranding 2: on the beach, 1000x Resist, and Small Void. In most games, to die is to fail, and to fail is to lose: loss of inventory, loss of progress, loss of world. but in these games, death becomes porous and multiscalar — a metaphor for survival strategies post ecological ruination, for intergenerational political trauma, for cosmic evolution. 

Thursday  16th April

Morning

• Check in and Overview of the week 

• Movement Exercise: Giuliana Dridi

• Short Screenings / Continued group discussion from yesterday morning. 

Afternoon

• Short Screenings / Group Discussion and Idea development for Summit.

Evening

• Screening: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night / dir. Ana Lily Amirpour

Seminar 3: 9 - 11 March 2026

In the context of Matera we will consider the role of mythology and belief systems in our varied understanding and visualising of death and deathworlds. This will range from an introduction to death cults in Southern Italy from Elisa Giuliano, the Medetirranean connection with pre-Christian mythologies as narrated  by Federico Campgna in ‘Otherworlds’ and what it means to perform for ghosts and gods as articulated by Joshua Soafer in his essay on 'Birthday Celebrations for Ghost Deity Niang Ma in Chiayi, Taiwan'. We return to a second seminar on Glissant exploring sections on The Black Beach and The Burning Beach. We will also tour the Neolithic Village of Murgia Timone, the Bronze Age Necropolis  and The Sassi di Matera led by local archeologist Nicola Taddonio.

Monday 9th March 

Morning 

• Check in and Overview of the week 

• Movement Exercise (20 mins)

• Group Reading and Discussion: ‘Otherworlds’ by Federico Campagna and Joshua Soafer, “The Spectacle of an Invisible Audience: How the Birthday Celebrations for the Ghost Deity Niang Ma in Chiayi, Taiwan, Destabilise Notions of What Constitutes a Theatre Audience.”

• Exercise responding to The Spectacle of an Invisible Audience

Afternoon 

• Visit to Neolithic Village of Murgia Timone and the Bronze Age Necropolis site led by archeologist, Nicola Taddonio

• Continuation of Exercise responding to The Spectacle of an Invisible Audience

Evening 

• ‘Kiss the Dead: Death Cults in Southern Italy and The Black Madonna in Matera.’ talk by Elisa Giuliano with selected screenings. 

Tuesday 10th March 

Morning 

• Check in

• Movement Exercise (20 mins) 

• Group Reading and Discussion: Excerpts of Poetics of Relation, Edouard Glissant 

• Sharing of Mapping Exercise

Afternoon

• Tour of Sassi di Matera led by Nicola Taddonio

• Continuation of Exercise responding to Invisible Audence 

Evening

• Nightwalk, collective reading of death themed jokes in a local bar and discussion 

Wednesday 11th March 

Morning

• Group check in

• Movement Exercise

• Participant Presentations of Exercise

• Sharing of Mapping Exercise Part 2 

Afternoon and Evening 

• Shoshana Walfish: Drawing Exercise

• Future planning 

Seminar 2: 21 - 23 January 2026

This week we welcome Dr Eglė Bazaraitė based in Vilnius, who will guide us around two cemeteries in Nida and introduce metempyschosis, the notion that our souls transmigrate into other species after death be it plants or sea-beings. Emphasising our proximity to the Baltic Sea, we will consider the seas at large as a ‘deathscape’, through notions of ‘resident time’ as articulated by Christina Sharpe, the film Sedentary Lives by  Pınar Öğrenci and soundwork of collective practice ‘Breakwater’. This will be accompanied by reading excerpts of Glissant and Achille Mbebe’s Necropolitics. The latter being a departure point to consider martyrdom, articulated via a guest lecture from Kurdish scholar and activist Dilar Dirik.

Wednesday

Morning 

• Check in and Overview of the week 

• Somatic exercise

• Screening: Sedentary Lives / Cemetery of the Nameless, Directed by Pınar Öğrenci (2025) 

• Post-Screening Discussion with Pınar Öğrenci

Afternoon 

• Listening session on the coast.

• Group Reading: In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Christina Sharpe / Poetics of Relation, Glissant: The Black Beach 

Evening 

• Screening: City of The Dead, Sergio Tréfaut (2009) introduced by Eglė Bazaraitė

Thursday

Morning 

• Group check in

• Somatic exercise

• Group Reading: Necropolitics, Achille Mbembe (translated by Libby Meintjes)

Afternoon

• Lecture and Cemetery walk with Dr Eglė Bazaraitė
  

Evening

• Screening: Resurrect Me as a Parasite,  Gabi Dao & Lou Lou Sainsbury, 2025 

Friday

Morning

• Group check in

• Somatic exercise

• Group reading:  Evar Hussein, Costică Brădăţan

• Lecture: Dilar Dirik 

Afternoon

• Group listening: Funeral Ecologies podcast

• Short 7 min presentations from the COOP group on their own practice in relation to our studies

• Diagramming / Reflections on the week and future planning

Seminar 1: 25 - 27 November 2025