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Lab short abstract

This lab explores foraging in urban Poznan as an emplaced, convivial way of knowing in a polarized world. Participants join guided attunement exercises and a foraging walk with an ethnobiologist and forager, document their experiences in multimodal field diaries and share reflections and materials.

Lab long abstract

Foraging offers a compelling lens through which to examine a polarised world marked by inequality, dispossession, and ruination. Once tethered to rural subsistence, it is now dismissed in some contexts, romanticized in others, and increasingly folded into the logics of commodification. For those who forage, it might figure as a necessity, hobby or calling, yet it consistently enables and fosters agency and relationality. Foraging thus both mirrors contemporary polarisation and cultivates more-than-human belonging and conviviality.

Taking place in the city of Poznań - whose name shares its roots with the word ‘poznanie’, meaning ‘knowing,’ ‘cognition,’ or ‘recognition’ - this Lab explores foraging as a way of knowing grounded in sensory, embodied, and place-based encounters.

Participants are invited to sensuously engage with the city under the guidance of Polish ethnobiologist and forager Lukasz Luczaj. The lab welcomes 10-30 participants and is structured into three parts. We begin with a guided attunement exercise. This will be followed by a one-hour foraging walk in the surroundings of the Morasko Campus, which participants document via a multimodal field diary. Lastly, participants finalize, share and discuss their field diaries and their experiences with each other.

A selection of materials produced in the lab may be presented as a collaborative contribution in the exhibition "Foraging at the Edge of Capitalism" opening in October 2026 at the Anthropological Museum in Heidelberg, Germany. Pre-registered participants will be given three short preparatory texts on foraging in Poland, the city of Poznan and sensory anthropology.

Registration:

https://forms.gle/Z7FjaPf7auLpJViC9