Seminar 3: 9 - 11 March 2026

In the editorial room: Shaping content and setting the tone

Building on our shared lexicon and the tools gathered across two confluences, this three-day gathering signifies a shift from learning together to making together. Having diagnosed the architectures of the “colonial library” and shared examples of refusal, critical fabulation, and library-making practices, we now ask: How can we transform the stories of counter-erasure and resilience we’ve collected into a collective haptic library? 

This session focuses on threading and spinning. Working in small ensembles each day, we will turn our individual research, questions, and materials into the core of the library. Every afternoon, we reunite to weave these threads—listening for patterns, dissonances, and new directions. The aim is not to compile individual works but to create a collectively authored object: a living library of insurgent practices that we carry forward together. Over three days, guest practitioners will act as catalysts, sparking conversations that belong to us. We will explore what it means to publish as a collective act—to make our shared lexicon tangible, audible, and felt.

DAY 1

Monday, 9 March

Re-Gathering the Collective: Materials, Questions, Resonances

Morning Session

Opening the Circle: Sensing the Day

Introducing Chiara Cartuccia and Jihan El-Tahri

Accompanied by Alessandra Ferrini and Chiara Figone

A session with curator Chiara Cartuccia

We focus on the fabrication of geographical imaginaries, analysing the ways in which place is co-opted, represented, and brought into being. Drawing on a curatorial practice grounded in critical geography, we reflect on how territorial narratives are constructed, naturalised, and contested, and consider how shared, anti-hegemonic vocabularies of place can be articulated collectively.

Afternoon Session

A Collective Inventory

Each participant brings one story or a question from their practice that has resonated across the previous confluences. In small groups, we share these offerings and begin to identify resonances, tensions, and possible connections. This session is about surfacing the materials for our collective work.

The Listening Space

A collective pause for listening—to sound, to speech, to what resonates in the room.

Weaving Threads, Identifying Nodes

Using the materials from the morning, we trace connections among our individual practices related to the key concepts we have encountered: colonial library, hapticality, refusal, wake work, critical fabulation, and iconographic silence. What patterns do we observe? Where are the gaps? What needs to be created?

Accompanied by Chiara Cartuccia, Alessandra Ferrini, Chiara Figone and Jihan El-Tahri

Evening Session

Storytelling circle

Each evening, we convene a storytelling circle—a space to invite ways of introducing one’s practice and to improvise.

Jihan El-Tahri, sharing film material

DAY 2

Tuesday, 10 March

Collective Making: Form, Content, Process

Morning Session

Opening the Circle: Sensing the Day

Excursion in Matera to connect with the city's history and traces. Groups move to various locations.

Afternoon Session 

Weaving stories of counter-erasure: Working Groups Form

Based on the morning's mapping, participants form working groups around emerging themes, forms, or editorial questions. Each group begins to develop a component of the collective project, guided by methodological frameworks from our previous work.

The Listening Space

A collective pause for listening—to sound, to speech, to what resonates in the room.

Cross-Pollination

Groups share early directions, questions, and needs. We create space for feedback, suggestions, and connections between groups.

Evening Session 

Cooking session and storytelling circle

Each evening, we convene a storytelling circle—a space to invite ways of introducing one’s practice and to improvise.

Jihan El-Tahri, sharing film material

DAY 3

Wednesday, 11 March

Synthesis: Completing, Reflecting, Planning

Morning Session

Opening the Circle: Sensing the Day

Excursion in Matera to connect with the city's history and traces. Groups move to various locations.  

Afternoon Session 

Closing Circle: Commitments and Continuations

We come together to compile, sequence, and draft ideas for the library. We articulate how this collective work will travel beyond the confluence. What happens next? How does it become a tool for further study, circulation, and resistance?

Accompanied by Chiara Figone and Jihan El-Tahri

The Listening Space

A collective pause for listening—to sound, to speech, to what resonates in the room.

Evening Session

Closing Circle: Commitments and Continuations

Seminar 2: 21 - 23 January 2026

From Lexicon to Practice: Confronting Erasure & Enacting Counter-Narratives  
Building upon our diagnosis of the “colonial library,” this three-day confluence shifts our central question from how the archival machinery of empire operates, to how we—from our situated positions—can ethically engage with its mechanisms and its silences. We move beyond shared analysis toward drafting shared methodologies, focusing on tactical and reflexive work within the very systems we seek to critique.

Our starting point is a further dive into the operational modes of the “textual enterprise” and the “colonial library”—those architectures of epistemic violence that classify, erase, and exert control. Through collective mapping, we will dissect these systems while grounding ourselves in the undisciplined practice of the “haptic library,” engaging with defiant, communal, and embodied forms of publishing.

We then put this foundation into practice through a deep engagement with the ethics of positionality, a process accompanied by Alessandra Ferrini. Ferrini’s work confronts archival silences and tactics of historical obfuscation, using translation as a transformative, critical tool to draw unruly connections. Here we engage with the tension between ethical witnessing and replication, framing refusal as a crucial stance.

In our final movement, we operationalise our lexicon through generative methodologies. “Wake work” and “critical fabulation” become our primary modes, bringing us to prototype speculative practices of counter-erasure. Here, our diagnosis becomes a collective reflection—crafting new tools to carry into the work that follows.

DAY 1

Wednesday, 21 January

Diagnosing the Colonial Library

Morning Session

11:00 – 11:30

Opening the Circle: Sensing the Day

11:30 – 13:00

Recalling the Lexicon, Framing Refusal
Reconnection: A collective recall of the key diagnostic frameworks (“colonial library,” “textual enterprise”) established in our first confluence. Introducing the week's pivot from diagnosis to engaged refusal and situated practice. What does it mean to work from within the problematic structures we have identified?

Afternoon Session

14:00 – 19:00

From the Colonial Library to the Haptic Library
This session delves into the diagnostic core of our inquiry: the “textual enterprise” of empire (Said) and the “colonial library” (Mudimbe) it produced. We will examine how these architectures of knowledge operate as systems of classification, erasure, and control.

14:00 – 15:00

The Library That Invented a Void
To collectively define and dissect the mechanisms of the “textual enterprise” and the “colonial library” as foundational to imperial power.

15:00 – 15:30

The Listening Space
A collective pause for listening—to sound, to speech, to what resonates in the room.

15:30 – 16:00
Break

16:00 – 19:00

Grounding the Haptic Library
This session shifts from critique to methodology by exploring the "haptic library" as a fugitive space of study, grounded in Harney and Moten’s articulation of hapticality ("the capacity to feel through others"). We will consider how this concept materialises in defiant, communal publishing and artistic practices. We will take Chimurenga (Pan African Space Station) as a primary example: rather than a static archive, it is an act of "libraring"—a verb performed through publishing, curating, broadcasting, and hosting. Its work demonstrates how a library can be a process of embodied connection, challenging the colonial library’s logic of fixation and separation by prioritizing circulation, dialogue, and shared presence.

Evening Session

20:30 – 22:00

Storytelling circle
Each evening, we convene a storytelling circle—a space to invite ways of introducing one’s practice and to improvise.

DAY 2

Thursday, 22 January

Counteracting Historical Silences

Morning Session

11:00 – 11:30

Opening the Circle: Sensing the Day

11:30 – 13:00

Positioning Ourselves
with Alessandra Ferrini
We will reflect on our positionality and situate ourselves in relation to each other and the geographies traversed by the COOP. Through a collective reading of extracts from “R-Words: Refusing Research” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, we will consider how to engage – from our positionality – with sensitive histories of pain and erasure.

Afternoon Session

14:00 – 19:00

Confronting Archival Silences
with Alessandra Ferrini
Engaging with Alessandra Ferrini's work on the concept of “iconographic silences” in relation to erased histories of genocide, we will consider strategies to confront and counteract archival absences, the inaccessibility of sources, and legal impasses around the use of documents. We will reflect on the function of documents and the use of translation as a form of resistance.
 
18:30 – 19:00

The Listening Space
A collective pause for listening—to sound, to speech, to what resonates in the room

Evening Session

20:30 – 22:00

Storytelling circle
Each evening, we convene a storytelling circle—a space to invite ways of introducing one’s practice and to improvise. 

DAY 3

Friday, 23 January

Weaving Lexicon into Practice

Morning Session

11:00 – 11:30

Opening the Circle: Sensing the Day

11:30 – 13:00

Wake Work and Critical Fabulations
This session engages with generative methodologies for counter-erasure. We will explore Christina Sharpe’s concept of “wake work” as a mode of attending to the enduring afterlife of colonial violence, and Saidiya Hartman’s practice of “critical fabulation” as a way to navigate archival silence. These approaches become tools to prototype speculative forms of remembrance and re-imagination.

Afternoon Session

14:00 – 19:00

The Lexicon in Practice
A final, practical session to translate the concepts of our three-day inquiry into tangible forms.

14:00 – 15:30

Collaborative Making
This session is dedicated to collective making. Together, we will give form to our concepts, drawing on the tools of wake work and critical fabulation to shape them into tangible interventions.

15:30 – 16:00

The Listening Space
A collective pause for listening—to sound, to speech, to what resonates in the room

16:00 – 20:00

Closing Circle
In this final synthesis, we will share our prototype concepts, weaving together our shared glossary with the terms that have emerged across the confluence. We close by articulating collective and individual commitments to carry this work forward.

Storytelling circle
Each evening, we convene a storytelling circle—a space to invite ways of introducing one’s practice and to improvise.

Seminar 1: 25 - 27 November 2025

Grounding a Shared Lexicon: Diagnosing the Colonial Library

This initial confluence is dedicated to a collective diagnosis. We begin by examining the symptoms of the very system we operate within: how publishing has served as a tool of empire, constructing narratives that justify violence and perpetrate erasure.

Our main task is to establish a common ground and a shared lexicon for this inquiry. We will learn from articulations such as the "colonial library," the "textual enterprise," and the "archive of coloniality”—unpacking their mechanisms and logics. Through collective reading, discussion, and workshops, we aim to ground ourselves in a shared understanding of the insidious infrastructures of surveillance, control, and power we are up against.

This is not a space for premature solutions, but for thorough, shared diagnosis. The common foundation will lay the essential groundwork for all our future inquiries into practices of counter-erasure.

Day 1

Tuesday, 25 November 

Diagnosing the Tool of Empire

Morning Session

10:30 – 13:00 

Grounding Our Inquiry

A welcome to establish our common purpose: diagnosing the mechanisms of the "colonial library." We begin building a shared lexicon by introducing key frameworks and contributing personal offerings that reveal our individual positions within these systems.

Accompanied by Chiara Figone and Iman Salem

Afternoon Session

14:00 – 16:00

Deconstructing the Textual Enterprise

A session dedicated to unpacking the architecture of imperial knowledge. We start with a collective reading of foundational critiques to diagnose how the "textual enterprise" operates. This leads into a practical workshop on "striking the archive," where we learn to identify and deconstruct the logic of colonial documents and images.

16:00 – 18:00

“Striking the archive” is a workshop conceived as a conscious act of reappropriation of the colonial archive. Its objective is not the elimination of problematic images, but rather their careful deconstruction from within, to subvert their dominant narrative. The method combines critical analysis with a creative process: starting with the selection of a photograph, the mechanisms of the colonial gaze are deconstructed.

Workshop by Iman Salem

Evening session

20.00–22.00 

Listening Session

Day 2

Wednesday, 26 November 

Analysing Archival Symptoms

Morning Session

11:00 – 13:00 

Part I 

Publishing as an anticolonial action

Workshop by Lydia Amarouche of Shed Publishing 

This session analyses the symptoms of the publishing industry. We investigate how mainstream publishing has historically functioned as a tool of empire and explore how independent practices diagnose and respond to these erasures.

Afternoon Session

15:00 – 17:00

Part II

Publishing as an anticolonial action

A continuation of our diagnosis, focusing on the production of a small publication

Evening session

20.00–22.00 

Reading and listening Session

Day 3

Thursday, 27 November

Synthesising the Diagnosis

Morning Session

11:00 – 13:00

The Archive as a Technology of Power

Engaging with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay's work, we deepen our diagnosis by examining the archive not as a neutral repository but as an active technology of power. We explore what it means to "strike" it and open a space for "potential history.

Afternoon Session

14:00 – 18:00 

Weaving Our Lexicon & Situating Our Practice

We synthesise our three-day diagnosis by collectively defining the key terms and challenges we have identified. This act of weaving a shared understanding allows us to situate our individual practices within this common framework and outline the essential groundwork for our future confluences.