Ecodorp Bergen, The Netherlands, September 19-20
Forest Academy
Vibe of the Earth Festival 2020
Forest University laboratory is a location that will appear during the Vibe of the Earth Festival. Here we invite you to dialogue with non-human beings and perform a joint action. Connection to the ancient knowledge of Nature through communication with plants and other species, including ourselves.
More and more we hear about an urgent environmental situation. These voices started to sound long time ago but usually we don't try to listen to them. Now these sounds become louder. More people can recognize them. Human voices start to join this call, and now we can understand what they try to tell us. They tell us about reality. The reality we try to avoid with all of our strength. Still most of these voices are marginalized as they don't belong to a common type of symbolic language. These voices and signs belong to nature as an interconnected web of life. We believe that rivers, animals, trees, and mushrooms can talk with us and we try to give them a chance to be heard.
To hear these voices we should pass a journey. We should return to our roots, turn to our memory, our senses and bodies to change the way of our understanding. We refuse to see things which are in front of us. Returning the lost ability to hear and to see atypical voices and signs of human and non-human communication is our way to restore connections bounding us with the Sacred Web of Life.
A modern civilized man is separated from nature by language. Languages of non-human entities such as Forest exist in different rhythmics and on a different level of complexity comparing to languages familiar to us. Now the "language" of the interaction of our civilization with forest varies from an axe to a forestation: trees are planted in neat rows which complexity level has nothing in common with the real forest.
The same methodology of the axe is coming to the place of the Festival: already weak forestations on the territory of Ecodorp Bergen are under the risk of being cut down. We see only one egalitarian way to decide about the future of these trees: to invite them to the collective discussion of the necessity of such victimizing and make the final decision together.
Forest complexity level is much higher than the level of complexity of our technical systems which form our daily life. Actually those technical systems are like big Lego construction sets. The forest has not only a greater number of elements and connections than all technical systems we created, but those connections are also dynamic and a part of them is implicit. For instance, mycelium that started to be referred to as "the tree internet" is more complex than the internet. Mycelium and trees form a more complicated and resilient structure than calculated determined algorithms of the technosphere.
We understand we need a new scientific approach in which we invite to collaborate with scientists and keepers of the ancient knowledge of Nature. What we can learn not in sterile laboratories but in the forest university laboratory? Such laboratories you can find all over the world where nature still thrive. We invite you to one of them. Here you won't meet scientists in labcoats but just humans who believe in and search for new methodologies of studying and exploring our world. We will hold different lectures, body practices, meditations, and rituals. Our content and formats reflect the deep-ecology methods. Also we will invite you to try some of the technoshamanic practices based on the conscientious use of modern technologies.
Organizers
Future Foundation
Future Foundation is an ecosystem of projects with several focuses and methodologies, connected and mutually reinforcing each other. The areas of our projects are transformation of culture through transformation of person; protection and support of freedom expressions in the virtual space and real life; prototyping and scaling technological and humanitarian practices; education and promotion of new technologies for sustainable future; studies and publications connected with science and liberal arts (especially interdisciplinary studies).
Future Foundation is an ecosystem of projects with several focuses and methodologies, connected and mutually reinforcing each other. The areas of our projects are transformation of culture through transformation of person; protection and support of freedom expressions in the virtual space and real life; prototyping and scaling technological and humanitarian practices; education and promotion of new technologies for sustainable future; studies and publications connected with science and liberal arts (especially interdisciplinary studies).
The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)
GEN catalyzes communities for a regenerative world. GEN is a growing network of regenerative communities and initiatives that bridge cultures, countries, and continents. GEN builds bridges between policy-makers, governments, NGOs, academics, entrepreneurs, activists, community networks and ecologically-minded individuals across the globe in order to develop strategies for a global transition to resilient communities and cultures.
GEN catalyzes communities for a regenerative world. GEN is a growing network of regenerative communities and initiatives that bridge cultures, countries, and continents. GEN builds bridges between policy-makers, governments, NGOs, academics, entrepreneurs, activists, community networks and ecologically-minded individuals across the globe in order to develop strategies for a global transition to resilient communities and cultures.
