Seminar WiSe 2025/26
Marina Resende Santos, İnci Nazlıcan Sağırbaş

The Earth We Tread II
Reimagining Land Relations Through Insurgent Practices

What does “land” mean? How do you define “terra”? And “Boden”? These varied and disputed meanings reflect our complex relations with the grounds we inhabit. Today, the interlocked crises of the environment and displacement call for a restructuring of those relations. With this aim, we’ll draw from insurgent practices such as global land use movements, especially from peasant, local, migrant, and indigenous perspectives.

We will foster our imagination through artistic and design research, combined with embodied exercises, mapping workshops, and site walks. Through readings and site visits, we will discuss the perceptions of land, the agency of non-humans, and spatial practices that challenge dominant narratives of development, extractivism, and exceptionalism in our own contested and layered ground in and around Berlin.

Throughout the semester, we will continue to collectively produce a Land Glossary, which we started in the summer semester. The course will culminate in a printed edition of the glossary and a public gathering, where we will present our interventions and mappings created.

Participation is open to any student with an interdisciplinary interest connected to the themes mentioned. The seminar is structured in two blocks of 4 and 3 full days, in October and January. In addition, we will have a screening evening and two guest presentations on dates adjacent to the blocks. If you’re interested in joining the course, show up in the introductory session or contact the facilitators beforehand.

Photo: © May Makki, 2023

Download poster here.