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:: mindception ::
[ texts ]Invitation to the Online Gathering: with students and professors of the University of Rojava, Green Braids ecological project (Rojava) and Gulistan Sido, PhD In One Night (Ivana Momčilović) and within the curatorial project OASES (Tane Laketić / Youth Biennial)
April, 20 2025
SAVE THE DATE: May 10, 2-4 pm CET
Google Meet Link: https://meet.google.com/qoe-xqwd-vrc
Language: English (+ translation from Kurdish)We are solidarily inviting you to a conversation with Gulistan Sido, doctoral student at Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Paris), professor(s) and student(s) of University of Rojava (Autonomous Kurdish zone in North-East Siria), Ivana Momčilović (PhD in One Night) and Tane Laketić (Curatorial project Oases of Youth Biennial, Serbia).
The theme of oases aims to become a permanent political and poetical research, opening up opportunities to gather different free temporary territories1 in the shared space of collective resistance to the dominant and normative social oppression, human repression and environmental destruction. We consider that our time, marked by war escalations, is the desert - literally and metaphorically - in which oases become spaces of new resistance, articulating imaginaries of shared, better future firmly rooted in progressive efforts.
All mentioned is reflected in the action in which whole Kurdish population in Rojava is involved (professors, students, elderly people, kids, workers) planting of 4 million trees as a political act of reforestation of an area of North-East Siria inhabited by a Kurdish population where acts of planting were even forbidden in some periods by the Syrian state, in an area which subsequently became a desert. The same action, planting this time olive trees for peace happened at the inauguration of the Laboratory for Radical Peace in 2022 at the historical park of Orangeries de Bierbais in presence of Gulistan Sido representing Kurdish Rojava University and the Green Braids project, when Gulistan with many residents of Orangeries planted an olive tree in the name of their on-going struggle.
The concept of Oases and actions initiated by University of Rojava and Green Braids resonate with the intentions of the Laboratory for Radical Peace:
An idea of peace as radical dissensus in the world where war and state of exception make the unspoken consensus. It is a new idea of nature as the active refuge and place of a new reconfiguration of man and the world, of creation as a place of collective thought, hosting various experiments and meetings between migrants, refugees, and sedentary people around the idea of peace. For our part, we have the image of an imperfect and unfinished garden in which nature and man can be reconciled and agree, cohabit, without the idea of human domination over nature, in a relationship of equality. We are interested in how nature can play the role of an active shelter, from which it is possible to think about peace, the world, the dominant idea of war and to propose an alternative.
On the May 10th, Gulistan Sido will present the project Green Braids (Tresses Vertes) that was born in 2020 while professor(s) and student(s) from Rojava University will discuss about past and current struggles as well as reflect on the power of community and its solidarity on building a better future for all, interweaving with the actions of Green Braids. The experience they’ll share will be also concerning the current student struggle in Serbia by giving examples of support upon which we can organise together with students against the corrupt system in Serbia, embodied in global capitalism.
With this invitation, we would like to honor what Kurdish people of Rojava do and once more give them a platform of visibility for their incredible and continuous effort of reforestation in search of a healthy environment whose solidarity actions provide unrelenting inspiration to continue further with collective efforts to reconfigure the world and make alternative worldviews possible.
During the gathering students and professors of self-organised Rojava University will present their struggle for a new type of education and we will have occasion to give support to direct democracy 5 months of struggle by students in Serbia presenting individual and collective oasis in Serbian society today.
This gathering will come to an end with musical oratorio “Green Tress” (4’) | chamber orchestra, mezzo sopr, ten | 2023, dedicated to Green Braids project by Finnish composer Riikka Talvetie, composed after meeting Green Braids project on Guerilla Univesity 2020 organised between PhD In One Night and Rojava University.
