study program: weaving our fishing nets

16 November, 11-3pm
Typologies of Absence: The social life of abandoned places and constructing new forms of gathering with Sevina Floridou
This Saturday, November 16, we will meet with architect and researcher Sevina Floridou to reflect on resilient, persistent, spaces that defy spatial taxonomy and exist behind the glitz and structured narratives of dominant cultures through a walk in Nicosia. In the duration of their existence, these spaces centre on the constitution of empathic, materially-mediated experiences of the everyday—particularly of joy, love and happiness—emotions which are rarely encompassed or made visible, until abandonment befalls them.  Abandoned spaces are characterised by amassed dust. They survive due to an absence of redevelopment but  are also endangered spaces. Sevina Floridou is a practicing architect and innovative cultural heritage researcher. She is dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices, exploring the relationship between architecture, identity and space, co-relating these in what has always been a rarefied heritage pursuit. She publishes on how the island’s two main cultures, Greek and Turkish Cypriot, come together in space-time, through mapping temporal divisions, modernity, conflict and resilience.

9 November, 12:30 pm
Nature as an Archive with Maria Hajimichael
On Saturday, November 9th we will gather with Maria Hajimichael for an open discussion that will weave different knowledges, fields of study and experiences to put together multi-layered  histories of spaces. How can a cave allow us to explore the concept of nature as an archive? Using this question as a starting point,  participants will collectively try and write stories of places, through interpreting the language of nature. Each participant is invited to bring something with them that alludes to their personal idea of ‘nature as an archive’. Maria Hadjimichael is a researcher working at the crossroads of marine and coastal governance, political ecology and the Commons.

29 October, 5-8pm
echoes from the æther
with Gervaise Alexis Savvias 
On Tuesday, 29 October, join us for the workshop “echoes from the aether” with Gervaise Alexis Savvias. We gather to commune and entangle our threads with the grand ensemble; to honour the ghosts that linger and propel us forward. By way of knowledge exchange, fragmented poetics, and a series of proposed writing activities, this workshop is offered as a moment to gather echoes from the æther; ponder on how we might commune with those no longer with us, while equally recognising that the archive is a rehearsal for living, a blueprint for futures not (yet) attained. Participants are encouraged to bring an object that has haunted them for some time, if only because they are unsure why it continues to haunt them. This can be in the form of a photograph, archival object, ephemera, memorabilia, a text––the possibilities, much like haunting, are endless. Gervaise Alexis Savvias is a writer and artist-researcher currently based in Amsterdam. Their practice is predicated on an entanglement of poetic narratives, a scavenger methodology, and archival speculation—which altogether coalesces into an adamant refusal of the graveyard of memory.

22 October, 12-2 pm
collective embroidery with Tradition Now 
Join us on the 22nd of October to explore the creative possibilities of silk cocoon embroidery and its connection to the Cypriot cultural heritage. Using the raw material, processing it through traditional practices learned through local craftswomen, Tradition Now offers us the opportunity to get a glimpse and start learning this traditional craft, while at the same time narrating to us the histories of silk in cyprus. This workshop of a (mainly) female craft, is an opportunity for us to come together, to collectively create together and also to think together of the subjects and stories we want to choose to depict. This workshop will result in a large collective art piece of silk cocoon stories. TraditionNow is a homeware and clothing brand devoted to reviving threatened folk arts and crafts of the island of Cyprus. Scouting to record, document and preserve cultural narratives by collaborating with experienced artisans and creating artifacts to celebrate their origins that may be otherwise forgotten.

15 October, 5-8 pm
Pillow Talks with Nefeli Kentoni
On Tuesday the 15th of October, join us at Thkio Ppalies from 5-8 pm for the workshops “Pillow Talks” with Nefeli Kentoni. Together, we will delve into the quiet, intimate world of sleep — with whispered bedtime stories that drift through generations, carried on the breath of mothers, grandmothers, and guardians of memory. We will fish out these stories from the depths of memory, and transform them into tangible keepsakes—stitched into the fabric of a pillow, a resting place for both body and story. By the end of this workshop, each participant will have crafted/embroidered a pillow—more than a simple object, but a resting place for ephemeral and transitory stories, once unrecorded and now stitched into being. An attempt to document both oral traditions and dreamscapes for futures yet imagined. In this act of stitching, we honor the quiet, enduring wisdom that resists erasure, held in the warmth of language, fabric and thread. The spots for participating are limited, please DM the firsherwomxn account to RSVP. Nefeli Kentoni is a London based director, writer, and interdisciplinary artist. Her work negotiates the gaps between language and image, poetry and politics.

18 November, 1-5pm
A gathering by the sea
Nicola, Clara, Miriam & Seta want to give an occasion to gather on the shores of Larnaca. We will start from the highly surveilled and securitized port where the global flows of capital are made visible by marine routes, containers and warships. Following the trails of money across the shores we navigate the narrow strip of land still accessible behind the massive ‘development’ project ’The Land of Tomorrow’. We continue observing colonial and neo-colonial traces as we move towards the British Bases of Dhekelia. As we insist on inhabiting these commons we notice the language of futurity used by the violent structures that are promising “a new life by the sea”. Through writing and performative scores we hope to gather/reclaim these words, to make them liquid once more and return them to the landscape.

12 November, 2:30-6pm
Tattoo as self-publishing with L.M.Kaila
Next Tuesday, November 12, L.M. Kaila invites us to imagine our bodies as a text of scar tissue, burns, cuts and marks, all of which betray our most private lives. Tattooing one’s flesh becomes an editorial process on the body’s inherent capacity to carry stories, secrets, and meanings. Today our bodies are becoming showrooms, branded, trendy and hot. Tattooing has become an exclusive artistic practice that takes place in aseptic studios after processes of googling designs, booking an artist, surrendering one’s body to a professional and sealing the ritual with a monetary transaction. In contrast, Kaila’s tattooing practice stems from her engagement with underground movements and trans-feminist political collectives that share how to communise technologies, transmit knowledge openly and trespass the authoritarian concept of intellectual property by deconstructing the gatekeeping approach of professionalising practices. Through a workshop in DIY tattooing techniques, Kaila creates a space for an intimate ritual of traversing our personal bodily archives. Suggesting the art of tattooing as a self-publishing practice, the artist invites us to return to our bodies as archives. Questioning our relationship with pain and healing, she asks: Can self-inflicted pain become part of healing? Kaila’s tattooing practice stems from her engagement with underground movements and trans-feminist political collectives that share how to communise technologies, transmit knowledge openly and trespass the authoritarian concept of intellectual property by deconstructing the gatekeeping approach of professionalising practices.

2 November, 10-1pm
My library, Your library, Our library with Eleonora Antoniadou
On Saturday, October 2nd, we invite you to rethink the form of the library and unpack the idea of sharing knowledge, references, and moments. This workshop facilitated by architect Eleonora Antoniadou is an attempt to challenge the form and use of the library space as we know it. The participants will construct alternative, ephemeral “library” structures that can hold knowledge(s) in various forms and constellations. The structure will stay in the space until the end of the program to be adjusted and repurposed accordingly. Eleonora Antoniadou is an architecture practitioner, educator and researcher who lives and works between Nicosia and London.She is the founder of the interdisciplinary practice Superside Studio and an active researcher at the Royal College of Art, focusing on bodies as learning tools in architectural pedagogy. 

25 October, 6-8 pm
Traditional dance: a somatic collective memory with Ilaeira Agrotou Georgiou
On the 25th of October we will be gathering with historian Ilaeira Agrotou Georgiou to learn about the representation of Cypriot traditional dances as eternal and intransient, but also as historical markers of a developing national character. Dance historians, such as Elsie Ivancich Dunin’s writings on Romani dance celebrations during 1960s Macedonia, or Maltese Fuhraman’s exploration of the clash between European and demotic dances in the 18th century Eastern Mediterranean, have argued that traditional dances should be treated as oral sources. In their intricate and precise movements they tell a specific history of people weathering the political landscape around them in their everyday lives. Through colonial writings and archival footage, we will explore how the traditional dances of the island reflected grapplings with identity, gender and partition. We will especially focus on how dances reflect the anxieties around Cypriot women at a time when Cypriots were struggling to define and differentiate themselves into separate communities. Ilaeira Agrotou Georgiou has an undergraduate degree in literature from the University of Cambridge and a postgraduate degree in history from the University of Edinburgh. She has specifically focused on gender in British-ruled Cyprus.

20 October, 6:30 pm
screening: The world like a jewel in the hand by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
On Sunday the 20th of October, 6:30 pm we invite you to the first screening in the framework of weaving our fishing nets, co-learning assembly. The world like a jewel in the hand, a film by Ariella Aïsha Azoula,  travels over open books, looted objects and postcards to look for the imperial foundations of the world in which we live. Within this wide landscape it focuses on the destruction of the Jewish Muslim world that existed in North Africa, making it imaginable and inhabitable again. Objects and images are held captive in museums and archives outside of the places from where they were looted are only the visible tip of the iceberg of the mass colonial plunder of Africa. The film looks at them as part of the substantial wealth accumulated through the extraction of raw materials, labor, knowledge and skills, including the “visual wealth” attained by putting people in front of the colonizers’ cameras. (film duration: 58min) Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is an author, art curator, filmmaker, and theorist of photography and visual culture. She is a professor of Modern Culture and Media and Comparative Literature at Brown University and an independent curator of Archives and Exhibitions.