How can the tarot, and related divination practices, teach us to move differently through the city? How can we sense, fall into and out of, the layers of time that surround us in the city? Could using the tarot help us find new depth or new layers in the work of urbanists, architects and artists?

In this combined lecture and workshop by Adeola Enigbokan, the premise is that the city itself is built in layers of time. Look at the crumbling walls in Tel Aviv, the scaffolding in New York; the season changing in Moscow’s inner courtyards, pass workers digging into the vast maze of sewers, pipelines and wiring under the ground in any city; observe the buildings with their facades from different times, and imagine the constant movement, the rotation of occupancy and design, the many small ways in which people, plants, animals, and (super)natural forces have modified the environments, accumulated over time: sense the how the city is built in layers of time. The city is full of pockets of rhythm, into which one can fall just by walking around. To move through this maze of streets, is to move through time itself. So this is what the tarot is for: learning how to fall into and out of different layers of experience; how to recognize them—how to pay attention.

Whether Marseille or Milan, the history of tarot cards and divination practice is tied to cities. Both in the sense of cities as physical and geographical agglomerations, and cities as civilizations: sets of practices, habits and traditions which speak to the “cultivation” and “domestication” of human, plant, animal. In divination practices, like the tarot, the physical, the geographical, the civilizational, all combine with something more, something unnameable: potential, maybe, or the unexpected—what is latent—the time that sits just adjacent to this time.

Programme

20:00 - 21:00 Lecture

21:00 - 21:30 Break

21:30 - 23:00 Workshop

Adeola Enigbokan

Adeola Enigbokan is an environmental psychologist. Dr. Enigbokan explores how the spaces in which we live and work can better express our values and commitments, as individuals and organisations. Dr. Enigbokan holds a PhD in Psychology from the City University of New York and a BA in Anthropology from Columbia University. Dr. Enigbokan currently lectures in Urban Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and Architectural Design at Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Dr. Enigbokan has studied and practiced with the tarot and various forms of divination from Africa, the Americas and Asia, since 2002.

Thursday Bite

Before the Thursday Night you can grab a bite to eat with the speakers and staff of Het Nieuwe Instituut. At 18:00 Het Nieuwe Café will serve a light vegetarian meal. Dinner vouchers are available for € 7.70 up to a day before the particular Thursday Night event via the Tickets link.

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