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| The course is intended for those with education or experience in landscape architecture, art, artistic research, curating, commons, ecological farming, or activism.
The fundamental pedagogical approach of the course is based on the articulation of sites, concepts, and people. Each participant is asked to choose a particular site, understood as a site of action and a site of knowledge. Concepts emerging from the site provide a grounded theoretical approach to the practice. Every year, a new theme and collective site is proposed as a starting point for collective projects.
Theme 2023 – 2024: Al Masha – Rural Commons
The Arabic term Al Masha refers to communal land equally distributed among farmers. Al Masha can only exist if people have decided to cultivate the land together. The moment they stop cultivating this land, they lose possession of it. Thus, in order for Al Masha land to come into being, it must be activated and its possession continuously enacted by common use. Today we may ask: is it possible to reactivate the cultivation of the rural commons, expanding the meaning of cultivation to other human activities that imply a common taking care of life?
During the process of modernization, rural commons have been marginalized: they were considered unproductive, inefficient, and corrupt. Founded on local trust and reciprocity, kinship and friendship, rural commons were threatening the centralized and abstract constitution of the nation-state. Today, due to the economic, environmental, and humanitarian catastrophe created by the modernist fundamentalism of endless exploitation, progress, and salvation, the rural commons have regained interest, challenging the stereotypical image of the rural as being trapped between conservative politics and traditionalism.
In the south of Italy, the concept of restanza – a combination of the words resistere (to resist) and restare (to stay) – is reclaiming a different practice and view for people who decide to live in rural areas. This is not a conservative or nostalgic choice, but rather a transformative experience open to a renewed relation with the environment, food production and migration.
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