Seminar SoSe 2025
Dr. Juliana Canedo, Marina Resende Santos, İnci Nazlıcan Sağırbaş

the earth we tread
Reimagining Land Relations Through Insurgent Practices

What does “land” mean? How do you use the word “terra”? And how do you define “Boden”? These words’ varied and disputed meanings reflect our complex relationships with the ground we inhabit. Today, the interlocked crises of the environment, displacement, and housing call for a restructuring of these relationships.

The seminar will identify symbolic and material practices engaged in people’s attempts to reclaim their connection to the land and community. We will look into some critical histories, conflicts, and struggles over land, asking who belongs to the land, who the land belongs to, and what makes the land. We’ll draw connections between global land use movements, especially from Brazil, Turkey, and Germany, and use artistic and design research to produce creative pieces around sites in Berlin.

The class includes embodied exercises and site walks. With those, we’ll examine perceptions of land, the agency of non-humans, and spatial claims in everyday life, uncovering practices that challenge dominant narratives of development, extractivism, and human exceptionalism.

The course is open to students of any discipline, including, but not limited to, urban planning, ecology, sociology, geography, art, and architecture. The group will be selected through an interest form provided in the first session.

This is an X-Tutorial funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the State of Berlin as part of the Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments by the Berlin University Alliance.

Photo: © May Makki, 2023

Download poster here.