Common Dreams School - Survival Toolkit

Maria Lucia Cruz Correia

Cifas invites Maria Lucia Cruz Correia to lead the Common Dreams School in order to explore, imagine, create alternatives to face climate changes.

The recent Covid-19 pandemic and the planetary emergency is no longer an imagined concept, it is part of the world’s colonial history and it will contribute to long-term degradation of human and non-human ecosystems.

During four week-ends taking place every season of the coming year, the Common Dreams School offers interwoven meetings to see, think, discuss, dream and experiment survival kit proposals to adapt to the newness and the unknown that we are facing.

Throughout this series of communal experiments and hands on, we will focus on the essential survival tools dealing with health-care, modes of kinship, environmental and climate justice.

During the gatherings, we will set an intention, to experiment with different methods, as an alchemic transformative process, using new dialogues and vocabulary to resist the entangled mess we live in.

Each session will take place in situ, in a different environment; in the nature, in an abandoned mythic building, in public square…

Common Dreams School - Kit de survie

Session 1 - Autumn

_Shelter – Kinship – Health _

Regenerative activism for mental health, grounding ourselves for the unexpected and the unknown.

Location: Rouge-Cloître Dates: 30-31 October 2020
Guest: Steven Desanghere

Session 2 - Winter

Survie - Endurance - Activation

Valuing the sense of togetherness while accessing the knowledge we inherited to creatively seizing survival.

Location: Maison Uccle Dates: 5-6 February 2020

Session 3 - Spring

Organizing - Climate justice - Ecocide

Dealing with the “im-possibility” of a fair or just climate governance while equipping ourselves with tools in preparation for the recognition of ecocide as a crime.

Location: (exact location to be confirmed)
Dates: 23-24 April 2021
Guests: Marine Calmet

Session 4 - Summer

Possibility - Becoming - Newness

Summing up previous sessions work-in-progress/sharing. Activating the ideas explored in previous sessions in a format to determine collaboratively with the group (reading, live presentation, action in public space…?)

Location: Urban, in situ (exact location to be confirmed)
Dates: 25-26 June 2021

Participants: Artists, activists, researchers, scientists, doctors, farmers, philosophers, climatologists, lawyers, biologists, economists...

Common Dreams: Floatation School, is an ongoing autonomous climate school, taking different formats according to partners and territories, offering workshops on survival, sustainability, climate adaptation, climate grief and loss of landscapes.

First edition (2017-18) Vooruitkunstcentrum, City of Gent, Kask, Urban Meds
Second edition (2019) Contour biennale 9, "Coltan as Cotton”, Straathoekwerk Mechelen, Piraten van de Dijle
Third edition (2020-21) Far Nyon and Head School of Arts.
Fourth edition (2020-21) Cifas, Brussels
Fifth edition (2021-22) Dream city, Tunisia

More info:  http://mluciacruzcorreia.com/works/common-dreams-flotation

Maria Lucia Cruz Correia

Correia's artistic work speaks her deep engagement for environmental crises and climate change.
She reacts to the ecological crimes of our times by bringing audiences into a participatory environment that connects the artistic with the voices of scientists, activists and lawyers. Her actions tackle human disturbances by proposing clinical esthetics that unveil human and non-human interconnectivity.
While proposing participatory articulations as temporary and autonomous platforms, Correia's work is informed by contemporary discourses on the anthropocene and environmental justice.
Most of her projects are participatory tools as proposals for utopian public services to disrupt social immunity to environmental pollution.
Since 2013, Correia is artist part of the program city residency in Vooruitkunstcentrum and her work is being supported by Imagine 2020 network. In 2017 she received the Roel Verniers Prijs at the Theaterfestival with her first theater piece Voice of nature: the trial and in 2020 she was shortlisted for Coal prize with her most recent project Kinstitute.