How to live with the covid-19 virus instead of against it

Wednesday morning February 10th, 2021. An invitation from LABIOMISTA suddenly hits the mailbox of the transdisciplinary research group SoMeTHin'K. LABIOMISTA, an evolving work of art, not IN or WITH but AS a community. An aesthetically inspired study of the biological and cultural mix of life that is simultaneously lived in practice. 

KUL LaMouseion Nomads.JPG

The proposal:  an experiment, a voluntary lock down period, a deliberate, intentional quarantine.

The offer: the freedom to build a new community, a new socio-political, economic order, one that makes us more resilient to face the next pandemic, or crisis situations in general. 

The place: Protected Paradise: a living lab in society, where we can set-up a parliament of thought, where our own laws and rules can be created on the spot and voted in democratic understanding, a mini-society that would make a difference and is initiated from the idea of possibility rather than restriction. 

The group: artists, academics, students, and visitors related to LABIOMISTA.

The mission: to think and live with or amongst the virus, not necessarily work against it. To accept the idea that creation co-exists with chaos and that it is in the midst of a chaotic type of order that inspiration can be found.

The question: could the virus perhaps show us the way into inventing a new societal order? What would it look like, and how would it work? 

The ethos of a third sphere; Rancieres concept of “equal intelligence”; Butlers notion of “acting in concert”; Mouffe’s argument for “antagonism” and “differing” as part of a democrative process to address issues that matter. Where could such concepts lead us in this post-human rhapsody students and professors would become part of? This contract is based on the voluntary promise to commit to a period of quarantaine and to co-address the universal question of a new possible future from within a locally embedded learning space for knowledge creation. A school of life. A pedagogical invitation to 'act upon' the entangled nature of the linguistic, socio-political, material, spatial, ethical, cultural, artistic and bio-psychological for re-inventing society.

INVITATION ACCEPTED!

Nomads: Professor Karin Hannes, Hanne Vrebos, Ellen Anthoni, Chloé Dierckx from Research Group SoMe’Thin’K, faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven; Townsquare13; Dani O’Dean;  BrusselAvenir

6 april 2025. Amarante Swift, a social researcher, gets an invite for a working congress in the year 2121. He/she/they are excited because he/she/they haven’t seen their colleagues in months, since he/she/ they went in lockdown because of COVID25. Besides, in future congresses, creatures of different eras and different species sit around the table. Amarante enters a world where potential solutions to live with a virus are staged. Guided by cyborgs and a twitter bird, he/she/they debate with planets, chickens and the Covid25 virus to explore new ways of cohabitation. Amarante slowly figures out that creating a new relational ontology co exists with chaos.

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This fiction piece is the result of a deliberate, intentional quarantine of the authors as part of the unthinkable experiment in full lockdown period. Published in "Educational Fabulations: Teaching and Learning for a World Yet to Come."  Hannes, K., Vrebos, H., Anthoni, E., Dierckx, C. (2022). Protected Paradise. In: Educational Fabulations: Teaching & Learning for a World Yet to Come, Chapt. 13. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 978-3-030-93826-0.

 

LaMouseion Nomads, video diary

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