Cultuurhaven x The EcoBody Collective #8

GATHERING 8 graveyarding: Multispecies Care - cultivating relationships and care across species boundaries
Guest: Wendy Harcourt
Hosts: Karolina Rupp & Irene Charlotte Jahn

In this encounter we speculate on our interspecies entanglements in life and after death. We will look at how to understand death through art, science and culture. What is interspecies care after our death? How can we act with responsibility and care in our dying? In what ways when we die do our bodies nurture other species in a chain of mutual life-giving?

Bio: Wendy Harcourt is Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She was born in Australia, lives in Italy and works in The Netherlands. She joined the ISS in November 2011 after 23 years at the Society for International Development, Rome as Editor of the journal Development. She has published widely on post-development, feminism and critical development theory, sustainability, gender and development issues. From 2017-2022 she was coordinator of the EU H2020-MSCA-ITN Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN) WEGO (Well-being, Ecology, Gender, and Community). She is editor of 14 books and her monograph: Body Politics in Development: Critical Debates in Gender and Development published by Zed Books in 2009, received the 2010 FWSA Book Prize. She is series editor of the Palgrave Gender, Development and Social Change series and Bloomsbury Academic New Critical Thinking in Development series. Her new book, the first in the series, will be Conundrums of Care: feminist entanglements in critical development studies to be published open access end of 2025.

The EcoBody Collective is back with a second iteration of their gatherings, called ecobodying (a verb rather than noun) in an attempt to widen even more what ecofeminism can literally do. In other words, a little shift away from Ecobodyism towards ecobodying.

In the upcoming four sessions in November and December we will welcome one guest per gathering who will guide us through the evening. This time, the EcoBody Collective invited researchers from the Erasmus University Rotterdam to fill the spaces at WEST Den Haag with embodied content and to discover non-linear ways of sharing their knowledge. They will build on previous dialogues and experiences seeking to explore different methods of putting academia, art and activism in dialogue with each other. All together we will be connecting the dots between different strands of political ecology, decoloniality, and ecofeminism—all to be experienced in an accessible, embodied manner.

Each event includes a shared meal.

18:00 Come if you’d like to engage in embodied cooking.
19:00 Join for the meal
19:30 Start of program
21:30 End of gathering

Any body is welcome.