Seminar 4: 14 - 16 April 2026

Sunrise: approximately 6:45 am;

Sunset: approximately 8:37 pm;

Daylight: around 13 hours and 52 minutes

Tuesday, 14 April 2026: cloudy with a little rain. Temperatures from 5°C to 13°C.

Wednesday, 15 April 2026: sunshine and some clouds. Temperatures from 6°C to 15°C.

Thursday, 16 April 2026: mostly sunny. Temperatures from 7°C to 17°C.

Source: Apple weather data accessed on 7 April 

During this session, gathering at Vrachelse Heide, the COOP turns back toward the study throughout the course to distil key threads and work on the score of the summit.

Guest Areej Ashhab joins the confluence to discuss the work of establishing a material library of Palestine, opening a conversation on the meaning of glossaries and archives when situated knowledge, land memory, and communal practices are under threat of erasure. Her research on fire, surveillance, and the colonial reordering of land in Palestine offers a critical lens through which to reflect on what it means to preserve, transmit, and transform knowledges in contexts where land, material practice, and communal life are actively being erased and destroyed.

The confluence extends into a hike through the Biesbosch National Park, one of the last extensive freshwater tidal wetlands in Northwestern Europe, a landscape itself shaped by flood, abandonment, and slow ecological return, where the question of what persists, what disappears, and what can be read in terrain continues to unfold.

Reflecting on the trajectory of the year, how do the locations walked through relate to one another, and how have the ideas encountered across these sites travelled, shifted, and accumulated? From what positions does the COOP relate to these places? Each location bears witness to a violent rearrangement of populations, ecologies, and geopolitics, sometimes healed over yet holding traces, offering the distance of time: scars grown over, covered by forest and snow, empty caves and ploughed fields reclaimed from the wetlands. 

Which modernities shaped these environments, through colonial occupation, land reclamation, afforestation? And what epistemologies underwrote their transformation and dispossession, including the very terms through which nature has been imagined and governed, among them environment, ecology, and ecological systems? How do the forests around Saint-Erme-Outre-et-Ramecourt, permeated by the traces of wartime occupation and military infrastructure, the shifting dunes and planted forests of the Curonian Spit where the colonisation of the north and the politics of cold and winter were brought into focus, the agricultural and forest narratives and resettlement histories of Matera, the engineered wetlands of the Biesbosch, and the forests planted over the ruins of Palestinian villages speak to one another across distance and difference? What does the COOP carry forward from these encounters, and which glossary terms have sedimented into shared reference points across these different geographies and conditions? How do these terms hold, resonate, or fracture when read against one another? And how, from this accumulated body of experience, observation, and shared language, does the COOP begin to assemble the score for the summit?

Tuesday, 14 April

MORNING (indoors)

Meeting with Areej Ashhab, through interacting with printed matter, engages closely with her intense work on establishing a material library of Palestine, reading traces in a forest planted to erase, discussing its political ecologies, and raising questions about the role of artistic practice in this context.

AFTERNOON (outdoors-indoors)

Check in and walk in the nearby Vrachelse Heide

Group work

EVENING (indoors)

Group work  

Wednesday, 15 April

Pre-packed lunch. In case of precipitation, please bring rain-proof clothing.

MORNING – AFTERNOON (outdoors)

Hike in The Biesbosch National Park

EVENING (indoors)

Reflection and discussion

Thursday, 16 April

MORNING (indoors)

Group work 

AFTERNOON

Group work 

EVENING

Reflection and discussion

Seminar 3: 9 - 11 March 2026

Sunrise: Approximately 6:15 am; 

sunset: Approximately 17:54 pm;

Daylight: around 11 hours and 30 minutes 

Monday, 9 February 2026: possibility of light rain or mist. Temperatures from 7°C to 15°C.  

Tuesday, 10 February 2026: periods of clearer skies, might rain lightly second part of the day. Temperatures from 7°C to 14°C.  

Wednesday, 11 February 2026: possibility of light rain. Temperatures from 7°C to 13°C.  

Source: meteofor.lt

During the confluence, this COOP approaches Matera as a stratified terrain shaped by intersecting and layered continuities of modernizations that extensively deployed agricultural, infrastructural, and administrative interventions. These interventions, particularly since the abolition of the commons, prioritized the expansion of arable land and the restructuring of local livelihoods. Continuing nineteenth-century land reclamation efforts, forests in the Apennines were cleared, accelerating water runoff, while wetlands in the lowlands were drained for cultivation. This process was twofold, as it also aimed to resettle and disperse dense, politically active communities living in Matera—some in dwellings carved in the rock since Paleolithic times below the medieval city—by relocating them to newly built modern villages above.

Within this context, the day to day programme of the COOP unfolds through three interrelated perspectives: 

a biological and infrastructural perspective introduced by biologist Pietro Franco, addressing soil exhaustion and landscape deformation caused by intensive monoculture and land reclamation, alongside more recent reforestation practices aimed at ecological remediation.

a somatic perspective grounded in shared presence within the site, where listening, voicing, sound walks and embodied attention locate the COOP’s presence within the acoustic conditions of the caves, their surrounding terrain and geology, in a workshop silences and vibrations (a day of ear cleaning and songs) led by artist Lina Lapelytė; 

an archaeological perspective (online) by curator and researcher Erika Lastovskytė, will introduce work by Marija Gimbutas on the Neolithic cultures of “Old Europe”, considering sacred sanctuaries and ritual practices particularly focusing on excavation of a ritual site Grotta Scaloria, and situating the contemporary cultural landscape within a longer continuum of spiritual and communal relationships to subterranean space and water.

Monday, 9 March

MORNING

Check-in 

Reading and Glossary reflections  

AFTERNOON

Early lunch to go will be departing 12:30

13:00–16:00 Field trip with biologist Pietro Franco  

EVENING

Film screening

Tuesday, 10 March

Prep for the day:

Take lights (torches, one or two people with head lights, but not everyone), dress layers, sunglasses, good shoes for walking, water, lunch and snacks. Other than that, no special equipment or dress is required.

MORNING

10:30–11:30 Archaeomythologies: Sacred Space and Everyday Life in Old Europe

Introduction by Erika Lastovskyte (online)

12:00  silences and vibrations ( a day of ear cleaning and songs ) workshop with Lina Lapelyte. Walk to Grotta Pipistrelli / Grotta Agna le Piane / Chiesa Rupestre San Nicola all'Ofra

EVENING

Talk by Lina Lapelyte 

Wednesday, 11 March

MORNING

Studio time: Summit, Glossary 

AFTERNOON

Studio time and Mid-term evaluations

EVENING

Studio time

Seminar 2: 21 - 23 January 2026

Nida Art Colony (NAC), Nida, Lithuania

Sunrise: Approximately 8:42 AM
Sunset: Approximately 4:52 PM

Daylight: around 8h 10m 

- Wednesday, 21 January: A cloudy cold winter day, strong wind and snow. Temperatures from -9 °C to - 6 °C.

- Thursday, 22 January: Cloudy, strong wind and snow. Similar temperatures from -9 °C to - 7 °C.

- Friday, 23 January: Mainly cloudy, average wind. Similar temperatures from -9 °C to - 7 °C.

(Source: meteofor.lt 2026 01 12)

Dress in warm layers and bring waterproof outerwear, wool socks, good-grip footwear and plan for cold wind with wet snow. 

Forest Talks 

The confluence days will include extensive hikes visiting different articulations scattered at all the length of the Lithuanian side of the Curonian Spit — a narrow sandy, forested peninsula separating the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. The sites that embody the terms and processes shaping this environment will extend from the Smiltynė forests, permeated by the industrial soundscape of Klaipėda port, through the old-growth forests around Juodkrantė towards Nida and the border horizon viewed from the Parnidis dune. Along these hikes, activities proposed by study group participants will unfold the landscape as a site for reflection – a document of deformations, a cultural landscape. Many historical and contemporary practices, institutions, ideas and inertias inscribed here will be discussed to shape and tune the shared approach to reading a complex environment such as Curonian Spit, this will lead to conversations on how to assemble sensing infrastructures, distribute attention and coordinate preparation for a visit to Matera in Italy where the COOP study group will be traveling later in March.  

Wednesday 21 January

Morning

Check-in, exercises and conversations 

Afternoon 

Section hike from the Baltic Sea to the Curonian Lagoon along the edge of Grobštas Strict Nature Reserve, returning to NAC at around 16:30 

17:00 at the COOP space 

Online conversation with Indrė Umbrasaitė who will talk about her project  ‘On Winterness’ developed in Nida and south of France: “an ongoing investigation on the fading season of winter – a dark and quiet time of suspended metabolism – presenting the case for a non-extractivist relation with nature”.

Evening

Glossary workshop 

Thursday 22 January

Pre-packed lunch

Morning extending to afternoon 

Check-in

Walks in and around Nida, visiting memory institutions - Thomas Mann house, Neringa Museum, Library, Fisherman’s House museum.

At 14:30 joining COOP study group ~ Cemeterial Ecologies, Grieving and Zombie Time to visit the Ethnographic Cemetery in Nida led by cemetery scholar Egle Bazaraitė.

Forest and coastal hike back to NAC.

Evening

Screening of Forest Workshops, Film by Mustarinda Association and Neringa Forest Architecture about educational workshops with children at Paljakanvaara Forest, Finland and Neringa Forest, Lithuania led and narrated by Riitta (Nyyskä) Nykänen.

Friday 23 January

Pre-packed lunch

Morning extending to afternoon 

Check-in

Driving to Smiltynė, hike in the forest along the coast of the lagoon to observe and hear the Klaipėda port.

Driving to Juodkrantė old-growth forest, extensive hike, off path to sense different conditions of the diverse and layered environments. 

Driving back to NAC around 17:00

Seminar 1: 25 - 27 November 2025

Sunrise: Approximately 7:50 AM; 

sunset: Approximately 5:00 PM;

Daylight: around 9 hours and 10 minutes 

- Tuesday, 25 November: A chilly day with a high around 6 °C, low near 4 °C. Expect some early sun, but clouds will increase through the morning and persist into the afternoon.

- Wednesday, 26 November: Slightly milder, high around 7 °C, low again near 4 °C. Rain is expected — damp and cold, so outdoor plans should be weather-contingent.

- Thursday, 27 November: A bit warmer, with a high around 8 °C and low about 4 °C. The day will start with some sunshine, clouds moving in, and a chance of a shower in the morning and light rain in the afternoon.

Dress in warm layers, bring waterproof outerwear for walks in the landscape. 

The first meeting marks the beginning of the collaborative work and reflects on the methods for carrying out a shared artistic project in relation to the specific environments in which the study group is immersed over the course of the year.

With a focus on PAF and its surroundings, the session approaches its neighbouring forests and fields as a setting in which a shared imagination can be assembled. Through exchange and reflection, the study group tries to attune to each other’s tools, practices, motives, views, passions, aspirations, and dreams in order to align the year’s trajectory. Together with the artist Egle Budvytytė, who joins this session as a guest, the materials brought into the confluence offer points of entry into a conversation and a shared process loosely connected to considerations of how intimate relations to environments come together, and how these deeply personal modes of living and acting are positioned within the larger superstructures of environmental concepts, environmental politics, and the hyperobjects of infrastructure and geopolitics.

Tuesday, 25 November

Morning 

What is the plateau of practice, what is the focus of a project? 

Assemblies in relation to environments as constructs. 

Introduction of the course and the work of Neringa Forest Architecture.

Reading and 1st forest walk forwards

Afternoon 

Introduction of the participants with one image – what skills from individual praxis skill-box might be shared in the collaborative work this year?

2nd forest walk - morning walk backwards

Evening

Film screening

Wednesday, 26 November

Morning 

Morning spent outside in the forest

Afternoon 

Glossary session / setting up a structure of a shared work / reading session

Evening

Film screening

Thursday, 27 November

Day with the artist Eglė Budvytytė

Morning 

Eglė Budvytytė will lead somatic and movement practices for the study group, including TRE (Tension/stress/trauma Release Exercise), for ‘attuning to the senses and slowing perception’. The practice can be modified to suit most physical abilities.

Afternoon 

The day with Eglė Budvytytė continues with further body movement exercises and a talk about her artistic projects developed in relation to the environments in Nida and Apulia.  

Evening

Closing discussion