Poster short abstract:

The Chinese party-state rhetoric is focused on producing discourses of future environmental civilization whereas the current question of sustainability shapes the local greenspace as a space of uncertainty. Alternative digital narratives of awareness may evoke a sense of social responsibility.

Poster long abstract:

Over the past decade, China’s centralized politics have explored new resources to tame the sustainability question and hinder the possibility for narratives of crisis to institutionalize foci of social and territorial malaise. The party-state rhetoric has focused its attention on inverse discourses of future environmental civilization whereas the current conjuncture shapes the local greenspace as a space defined by uncertainty.

Taking Chongqing City as a case study, this poster shows how environmental crisis discourses may help redefine the commons in transitional times characterized by neoliberal practices of privatization of nature reserves and green objectifying high-end real estate advertisement. It points out how the crisis may become an opportunity for further uneven development based on individualized forms of environmental protection. On the other hand, alternative digital narratives of awareness may evoke a sense of social responsibility to understand the territorial changes and avoid a complete de-politicization of the commons.

This poster points out how the production and circulation of eco-commodities is deeply intertwined with discourses of proximity and emotion adding new meanings to landscapes characterized by an uncertain future.

Poster short abstract:

In current uncertain times, nature-based learning is needed to promote both children's relationship with nature and their well-being. By means of mutual care with a school garden, students can reconnect with nature and shape their environmental knowledge and attitudes through their lived experience.

Poster long abstract:

Children are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of the current waves of environmental, economic and health crises. As part of the EU-funded PLANET4B project, environmental behaviour and attitudes are being studied among students in a school garden in Hungary. The participatory action research project was first initiated in 2018 together with a Hungarian secondary school. The school garden was set up in an abandoned green area where we explored how attitudes and values held by students and teachers formed a more direct and interactive relationship towards nature. Throughout PLANET4B this project is continued and broadened with similar best practices to see if and how values and attitudes can be formed and changed over time in human-nature interactions. While no significant change of environmental attitudes could be measured quantitatively in the original school garden project, occasions to spend more time in the garden, and participatory techniques applied therein, generated an emerging open space. Thus shared values could be discussed and developed, as well as jointly held understandings on enjoyment, responsibility and care for heritage could be formed. Based on these results, we argue that human-nature interactions can be changed in school settings from a one-way passive to a two-way active one. Through consciously selected and carefully designed in-class and extracurricular activities a more relational view on nature can also be developed. Such a shift towards relational values requires that green spaces around schools are not considered simply as passive resources, but as active partners in teaching and community-building.

Poster short abstract:

After 1945 from Central Europe 10 millions of Germans were expelled. The German past of the regions was supposed to be forgotten, however, is still visible. Visual materials we present come from the fieldwork in the regions and are presented alongside the narratives collected through interviews.

Poster long abstract:

After 1945 from Slavic Central Europe up to 10 millions of Germans were expelled. Blamed collectively for the war, they were forced to leave behind their properties which in turn were acquired by the new settlers of various cultural backgrounds. The German past of the regions was supposed to be forgotten, however, despite the attempts to eradicate it, a lot of remains persisted and are still visible in the cultural landscape of these regions. In our project “Recycling the German Ghosts. Resettlement Cultures in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia after 1945”, we are interested in visualizing the haunted landscapes of Slavic Central Europe: how people and their traces that were to be forgotten are still present in many forms. We document these presences and how current inhabitants deal with the potentially traumatic past by engaging which what was left, e.g. recycling, suppressing, neglecting, uncovering it. We do fieldwork and archival research in three regions: in Polish Pomerania, Czech Sudetenland / Northern Bohemia and Slovak Hauerland / Žiarská kotlina. For the purpose of this poster, we identified places where the German past is still visible and evoke unsettling memories in the inhabitants, e.g. memorials, places of worship, cemeteries, vanished spaces, houses, and orchards. We analyze them as examples of haunted landscapes evoking various responses in current inhabitants of the regions. Visual materials we present come from the fieldwork in the regions we investigate and will be presented alongside the narratives collected through interviews and archival documents.

Poster short abstract:

Folklore’s Not Dead is a movement to question the current state of folklore focusing on cultural & environmental sustainability. The movement started in Czechia by rescuing the everyday folk dress from the garbage & finding ways to reconnect it to daily life — since then the movement has grown.

Poster long abstract:

Folklore’s Not Dead (FND) is a movement to question the current state of folklore focusing on cultural & environmental sustainability. The movement started over five years ago in South Moravia with participatory-based artist & sociologist Sonya Darrow along with Nadace Veronica (environmental foundation in Brno, CZ) & Jihomoravská komunitní nadace (rural folklore community foundation). FND started by rescuing what is known as the everyday folk dress from the garbage before it was forgotten while at the same time finding ways to reconnect it back to daily life. FND has spread outside of Czechia, inspiring other communities to start a dialogue on folklore.

The movement is an opportunity for all generations to question & start a dialogue on the current state of folklore practices and the way it moves with the rhythm of life — more importantly with today’s life. The folk practices need to breath with our daily life, not to be disconnected or used only in moments, but to go back to the embrace of a slower process to make objects & to find different meanings behind the traditions/rituals. In order to preserve culture for future generations it is important to develop traditions/practices along with a vision that focuses on environmental issues such as materials used for folklore. We connect folklore with the protection of nature and landscape. Therefore, seeking ways on how environmental concerns within specific regions intersects with cultural sustainability— for example: connecting environmentalists with folk artists (folk practitioners).

Poster short abstract:

One of the ways in which we maneuver the lived uncertainty of being in time/the world is through constructing material archives of our memories, generating affective or emotional territories. This poster ethnographically unpacks how everyday objects are experienced and enmeshed in the social world.

Poster long abstract:

This poster proposes the question: what kind of agency do objects have in the social order, and how is that agency affectively and emotionally experienced by people? It explores the position of objects in the social world. It ethnographically investigates how people understand and relate to objects around them in their everyday life, while also considering the impact objects have on people, hence showing how they are enmeshed within multiple complex social relations. This poster attempts to unpack this to show how, in times of uncertainty, the most banal of objects can not only anchor us or allow us to endure, but can also provide so much meaning and affect through acts of remembrances imposed on us by our bodies at junctures of time. This is done ethnographically using a collection of photographs and interviews. This poster is also accompanied by an online gallery: https://aliashaddad.pixieset.com/affectiveemotionalterritoriestheaestheticsoftimeandthecommodificationofmemory/

Poster short abstract:

The poster is meant to show how typefaces have taken on various forms, not only due to different methods and tools but also because new ideas and values play a part in a process that is hard to grasp unless we look back in time, put things in context and realize that all is dependent upon change.

Poster long abstract:

The poster is meant to show how typefaces have taken on various forms, not only due to different methods and tools but also because new ideas and values play a part in a process that is hard to grasp unless we look back in time, put things in context and realize that all is dependent upon change. The slow evolution of typefaces is put in historical context in a timeline that shows their use in few lawbooks from the beginning of the literary era in Iceland. The aim is to examine how the use and evolution of typefaces has left its mark on books. By designing the timeline, attention is drawn to different shapes of typefaces, their distinctive features at each time, their type names and when they were most commonly used.

The poster is a part of larger project about how to understand and re-evaluate the use and effect of typefaces, by exploring the effect that different uses of typefaces have, and examine how various symbols and typeface imagery can be understood. It is all about analysing if letters contain uncertainty in their narration by its forms rather than their sound-symbol.

Poster short abstract:

The poster presents how women navigate uncertain tellability when narrating stories of rape in a Finnish MeToo campaign. As increased tellability does not inevitably make an experience tellable for the individual, nor guarantee an audience willing to listen, speaking of rape was an uncertain project

Poster long abstract:

The MeToo movement was hailed for breaking the silence around the subject of sexual violence—creating discursive space for previously untellable narratives. However, if tellability is understood as stories that are accepted, while untellable stories are ones that are rejected (Shuman 2005), then tellability is not only determined by the experience but also by the situational and cultural context in which it is presented. Thus, the tellability of stories is connected to the reception of it—whether it is “heard” correctly, i.e., the way in which the teller intends. The breaking of silence around the subject of rape did not necessarily create an understanding and accepting audience, and thus speaking about rape continues to be an uncertain project (not the least aided by the inherent difficulty of the subject).

This poster summarizes the core findings from my Ph.D. project, in which I study how women narrate experiences of rape in testimonies shared within a national Finnish MeToo-campaign. I question how writers present and structure their stories when being given space to freely narrate these kinds of experiences, with the promise of being heard. How do the writers use genre and narrative tools to navigate this uncertain space of increased tellability? And what insight into the uncertain experiences of gender, sex, and rape does this narration offer us?

Poster short abstract:

Tradition archives are rich in source material for understanding vernacular ways of dealing with uncertainties of disease and illness.

Poster long abstract:

The COVID pandemic has brought to the fore ontological risks and uncertainties in the present. Just as today, communities in the past had to deal with the uncertainty of life produced by a myriad of diseases. Tradition archives can elucidate how communities deal with illness and disease and can prompt us to think about how we might tackle them today. This poster presents work on a doctoral research project that in part analyses correspondence about disease in the Norwegian Folklore Archive, particularly the use of nonhuman species and their products.

Poster short abstract:

The interactive analogue/digital foto essay asks how "the public" was trying to create security in Covid 19 times with a variety of measures. As a part of the dialectics of prevention, the attempts to create security in everyday life jeopardized everyday life at the same time on a different level.

Poster long abstract:

The poster intends to be an interactive analogue/digital (QR) foto essay. It comprises visual aspects of dealing with the then assumed uncertainties of the spread of the Covid 19 virus starting in 2020.

How was the security seeking public (as a figuration of multiple actors, not just the authorities) dealing with an anticipated risk in everyday life? Employing the method of a visual collage of fotos and videos taken by myself in these times the poster intends to show the variety of security measures from physical, mechanical barriers, inhibition technologies, selective or gadget access controls, multiple security procedures, public signs on the wall, postings, prompts etc. etc.

The contribution thus intends to focus on the dialectics of prevention. The sometimes desperate attempts of protection against an anticipated risk inflicts everyday life heavily with multiple side effects. While aiming to secure everyday life, it jeopardizes everyday life at the same time.