A bureau, and practical gardening workshop 

Saturday 1 May, 12noon onwards

Led by Gaja Pegan Nahtigal 

An Introduction to Neighborhood Gardening is a physical bureau and practical workshop taking place both online and individually per household led by amateur, enthusiast gardener Gaja Pegan Nahtigal. It will take place around the neighborhood of Irisbuurt in Eindhoven throughout the day of Saturday 1 May. Through this workshop you will be introduced to the basic principles of gardening and all the living and nonliving participants involved.

Everyone who is keen to join is welcome! All ages and skills are invited. Be that an experienced gardener who can contribute an abundance of knowledge or a complete beginner wanting to learn. We hope through this workshop a first hand experience with gardening will spark long term love for this easy, rewarding and immensely important skill.

How will the event work?

Due to current restrictions we will not be able to arrange a collective gardening experience. Instead the neighbourhood gardening bureau will be situated outside Onomatopee (2a Lucas Gasseltraat, 5613 LB Eindhoven) on the afternoon of Saturday 1 May. 

1 hour time slots can be booked for up to four households per hour from 13.00 to 16.00 to visit the bureau, collect gardening tools, create seed bundles and select a spot on the neighborhood map before embarking on an afternoon of gardening.

Event outline

12.00: Online Introductory lecture by Gaja on neighborhood gardening

13.00-16.00: One-hour time slots available for up to four households per hour. Please email amy@onomatopee.net to book a slot. Once confirmed drop by Onomatopee during your approved time-slot to create a seed package, select a gardening spot on the neighbourhood map and collect tools to begin gardening

17.00: Online debrief to discuss experiences of gardening [optional]

Places for this workshop are limited and time-slot booking is required so please secure a time-slot by contacting amy@onomatopee.net.

Time slots available are: 13.00 // 14.00 // 15.00 // 16.00 - 4 households max per 1 hour time-slot and must be secured at least 4 hours in advance.

Please bring along any coffee grounds, egg shells and banana peels you may have used in the week prior to the workshop. 

About the facilitator:

When Gaja Pegan Nahtigal (b.1996, Slovenia) takes care of her little vegetable garden in the middle of the city, she feels a similar sense of mystery and curiosity as she felt wandering around forests and fields as a child. By sharing her experience and knowledge with others first hand, she aspires to create more action in our local and consequently global environment.

Being in a place

Workshop on investigating (personal) relationships with place

Hybrid workshop beginning online Saturday 17 April, 17.00 and ending Saturday 24 April 10.30-12.30 at De Kloosterbos, Eindhoven

The workshop “Being in a place” offers a site-based practice to investigate one’s relationship with a place and strives to expand our collective understanding of how we relate to our environments in general. Each participant chooses an outdoor space close to their daily life – a place one likes to go, spend time at, that is close to your home and that you would call ‘nature’, ‘landscape’ or ‘garden’. Through a series of short exercises, executed individually within a one week time period, we will dive deeper into our ways of being in a particular place. 

The exercises are designed to question and deepen our understanding of ‘inhabiting landscape’ - a long-term research subject of the workshop host Anna Maria Fink - and are inspired by the activities of walking, playing, collecting and caring. Every participant will keep an individual diary where we collect our findings. During the final workshop planned to be hosted at a local community garden* we will share and examine these findings through the creation of a collective exhibition.

This workshop is for everyone and anyone with an interest in getting to know more about their local surroundings and their ideas on how to relate to our diverse environments. This workshop is particularly suited to those able to dedicate time to an exercise of up to half an hour per day over a period of one week.**

Event outline:

On Saturday 17th April we will group together for a short online introductory meeting in order to get to know each other and the exercises. Each participant will receive 5 short exercises to carry out the following days at their selected location. During the week you will also receive some impulses for thinking about places to stimulate your experiences and observations. If the current COVID19-measures do not allow for our physical gathering we will meet online also for our final workshop and create the collective exhibition also online.

On Saturday 24th April we will meet physically at a community garden in Eindhoven where we will share all of our findings in a collective exhibition.

About the facilitator:

Anna Maria Fink (1987, AT) is a designer, researcher and teacher that works with notions of landscape. Her studio Atelier Fischbach unravels people's connection with their environments through small scale spatial interventions as well as experimental practices and publications. For more information take a look at: www.annafink.eu

*All Meeting Grounds events take place in accordance with RIVM rules at the time of the event. If we are not able to physically meet at the given date, the workshop will be moved online. 

**Please note that not all exercises have to take place on a specific day, you can alter the timetable to suit your needs and availability

Places for this workshop are limited so please secure a spot by RSVPing to amy@onomatopee.net

Online event link

Noticing Acts

(Story telling for surviving well in times of climate crisis)

A two-part hybrid workshop taking place:

Thursday April 8, 17.00h

Sunday April 25, 12.30-14.30

*Participation at both workshops is not necessary but is encouraged.

Places are limited so please rsvp to amy@onomatopee.net

Noticing Acts invites you to join in a hybrid online and offline event dedicated to the practice of collective story-telling with(in) community gardens. Through our shared narratives we will explore the garden as both a literal and imaginary space for establishing stronger environmental identities. The event is aimed at those who are enticed by the desire to change our climate narrative, and who have an interest in the practical ways we can practice the commons and in effect build stronger environmental identities.  

Noticing Acts will take the form of a two part workshop.  

In the first part of the workshop we will meet online on Thursday April 8, 2021.  

In the second part of the workshop we will meet in Eindhoven at our chosen community garden. 

ACT I

During the online workshop, workshop attendees will share stories of their relations to the environment. The event will begin with a listening activity and somatic ritual. Then we will all engage in a free writing prompt: In our garden I will grow...  

In the second part of the online activity we will share the stories written and through our collective narratives we will create a virtual garden, based on our imagined narratives.

ACT II

For the offline activity participants are invited to the community garden. Here participants will be guided through a series of Instructions for Noticing rendered as various activities to engage in whilst in the garden. After the investigation, participants are invited back to the meeting point where they will engage in adding their findings to the map of the virtual garden from Act I.

About the facilitator:

Amy Pekal ( b.1993, New York) examines how dominant ideologies shape western culture’s understanding of the natural world.  Informed by intersectional feminism, she creates propositions, environments, and situations that decolonize the dominant dualisms between nature and culture to imagine and enact ways of working across difference, human, more-than-human, and otherwise. 

This workshop will take place in April when we hope physical meet-ups will be permitted, place will however be limited therefore a reservation is necessary. To participate at one or both workshops please RSVP to amy@onomatopee.net 

Online workshop event link

Thursday 1 April, 17.00

Online workshop

Our current political systems are often viewed as complex or lacking in accessibility. Yet the essence of politics is simply to collectively manage resources and to - within conflicting ideas - find common grounds and create policy around them. An excellent example of a simplified political system is the community garden. In the community garden people gather together to take care of and distribute one or more resources. In this 1 hour workshop the community garden is taken as a tool to rethink and debate our current political systems. 

Through this workshop you will build, through debate and different tasks, your ideal “virtual” community garden and define how it is managed, by considering questions such as:

What would your garden look like? Would one person take ownership over it? Would it be led collectively? Would it work with rotation systems? Would it need a voting system? 

The workshop follows tasks surrounding the following subjects: 

1) Defining boundaries; 

2) Fitting rules to local circumstances;

3) (Collective) Decision making;

4) Monitoring;

5) Graduated sanctions;

6) Forms for conflict resolution

(Ostrom, 1990). 

The workshop will take place in the virtual realm and the aim is to combine the knowledge and views of a diverse range of people and to demonstrate the value of collectively building systems through different expertises and perspectives. 

Don’t hesitate that a lack of knowledge in the political field will hold you back, it is rather the contrary. Everyone and anyone who is interested is a warmly welcomed addition.

About the facilitator: 

Noor Bootsma graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven and currently follows a master of European and International Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her interests lie in connecting people with different expertises and perspectives to rethink policies and systems.

RSVP is necessary for this workshop. Please contact amy@onomatopee.net to reserve a place

Event link

Human and non-human students from the Rietveld Garden Department will present their project live from their garden classroom. They will discuss how the garden began and slowly evolved over time. Touching upon issues such as Utopia, future pedagogy, social engagement, public art, post-covid academia, student-led learning and the production of space. 

This 60 minute digital conversation will include a short workshop interlude, plus invited guests.

About the facilitators:

The Garden Department is an outdoor classroom and garden at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam

Please RSVP to this event by emailing amy@onomatopee.net

Event link

IN ADVANCE FOR THIS WEBINAR, REGISTER HERE 

With guest speakers: Giuditta Vedrame and Paolo Patelli (Friction Atlas), Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (legal scholar, theorist and artist), Recetas Urbanas (architecture collective) and Heleen de Hoon (theatre practitioner and dramaturge).

In many countries around the world, public places, our sites of living and work, have been marked by new rules and regulations. Colored circles, lines and arrows show us how to move, lead the path to follow, suggest where and how to stay, and in turn redesign our mobility and daily interactions.

With the idea of ​​starting a reflection on the use of public space – which is now increasingly regulated, limited and reduced – since 2014 Paolo Patelli and Giuditta Vendrame, through the project Friction Atlas have collected, classified and make visible the laws, rules and devices that regulate the way people move, meet, use and gather in public space.

Within the framework of Meeting Grounds, this panel discussion will focus on the conditions of performativity and public space, law and protocols and art and theory with invited speakers and guests Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (legal scholar, theorist and artist), Recetas Urbanas (architecture collective) and Heleen de Hoon (theatre practitioner and dramaturge).

Join us on Thursday 1 October from 17.00-19.30 for this public panel discussion hosted at Onomatopee and as part of the Meeting Grounds Edition #2 Strijp-S public programme. This event will be held physically in the space, as well as digitally via Zoom and Youtube.

Please note that places for the physical event are limited, so places must be reserved by emailing amy @ Onomatopee.net

For this event, we recommend tuning into Instagram Live via a laptop or computer screen for the best experience. 

For our final writing workout will be looking at the themes of: escapism, becoming the walk and the emptiness of surrounding spaces

This fourth writing exercise combines routes of escapism to position oneself in an unfamiliar environment. Quiet streets and vacant landscapes offer a “blank canvas” of un-interrupted material. Through scenes of unknown streets, the absence of human activity invites opportunity to imagine spatial scenarios. During lockdown increased indoor activity challenges empty public spaces. 

Gorleston-on-sea has experienced the lockdown of its community but welcomed the acts of nature that have taken over its high street, residential arenas and vast open beach landscapes. 

As an invitation to engage in this environment, this writing workout will take you on a video walk through the lockdown landscape of Gorleston-on-sea. As a way to explore a new form of navigation as we aim to familiarise ourselves with the environment on a more personal level whilst simultaneously challenging our ideas of public and private.

How do we involve and understand a landscape for the first time and how does this differ to the following times we experience it? 

What are the effects of experiencing a new landscape for the first time via the platform of a screen? 

Join us for the Reading Room, a reading space where we collectively listen to an audio work/podcast/video together before discussing the topics around public and private space.

For this session we will be listening to: Space 10 Imagine podcast - Sharing is Caring - Redefining home: investigating shared spatial living structures

You can find the podcast here. 
https://space10.com/imagine-podcast-episode-4-sharing-is-caring/
https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/explore/stories-of-home/

As we find ourselves confined to our domestic environments we explore new boundaries of shared spaces, resources and time in a speculative podcast by Space10’s. The series title ‘’Imagine’’ explores spatial scenarios relating to the scene of shared living environments.

During the collective meeting grounds session, we will co-listen to the podcast for 20 minutes before taking the time to discuss relationships and boundaries that underpin shared co-operative living dynamics, and effects of the lockdown on such scenarios. 

In relation to the current pandemic the ideology of living amongst a fixed community could satisfy our desire for more physical interactions. To question this, we will define the rules that support the foundation to positive co-inhabitant living, and what happens if these boundaries become crossed and blurred.

In response to this speculative re-imagining of co-living spaces we explore the ‘Stories of Home’ collected via the “Museum of the Home”. The personal accounts address lockdown effects, including belonging within a home environment, the feeling of space within multifunctioning rooms, and examples of appreciations of the home in the current pandemic.  

We invite you to the collective space of listening to the podcast and hope to be welcomed into your experiences of home during these challenging times.

The Common Room invites you to join a group discussion focusing on the topic of REframing redundant public spaces into multifunctioning domestic extensions.

For this discussion group we will be exploring mediums of spatial interaction whilst occupying the inbetween

During this Common Room session we will position ourselves as a collective group within a selected landscape via the medium of webcamming. In doing so we aim to explore the spatial dynamics that arise as we share this common landscape. 

You will be invited to share with us your current location through the medium of Google Street View enabling us to navigate the environment as if we were physically walking along the street and explore these ideas of inside/outside public/private.

As we position ourselves in these very in-betweens spaces of public and private domains, we aim to investigate where do these boundaries lie between one another, how the gaze of others affects our sub-consciousness understanding of being watched when we only occupy our domestic homes alone (especially in this current period of mass video calls for professional, personal and social use).

As we begin to navigate where the private begins in the public, and the public in the private we aim to consider the questions of:

• When one has to spend all their social, leisure and professional working time within one arena of space, how do the pre-existing norms and values of that environment change? 
• Do our relationships of spatial attachment conform or oppose conventional norms of post-pandemic times? Can we stretch our borders of personal space to demand occupancy of multiple environments? How can we extend the borders of our domestic spaces? 
• Are we constructing a new collective domain that offers answers to this in between space?
• How can our ideas surrounding spatial attachment adapt? Does it help us to watch and observe public spaces that are beyond our reach in order to manage confinement?

Join us on Thursday 4 June for Notes on Texts, a session that annotates a library. It understands reading and writing to be fundamental library practices, and asks how new readers/writers may participate in producing texts that both describe the collection and represent themselves. 

This session will take place with (and within) the bootleg library, a shared digital and physical collection of republished texts. 

Bootlegs; unauthorised copies of source publications that represent ourselves, our multiplicity and our shared interests. 

A library; a collection of texts and also the readers collected around them.

Previous bootleg library sessions have been moments to meet in various spaces with the people who frequent them, discuss things we read, add to the collection, and offer each other contingencies through the texts we share. 

For this session we'll meet online in a web conference, in the digital bootleg library, and in a real time collaborative text-editing environment. We'll explore how the mediums and techniques we use will shape the texts we share. You are invited to experiment with styles of annotation to imagine ways that we can guide each other towards the things we read. How can we enrich texts through our annotations, and what kind of new texts can we produce through our notes?

Join us via Jitsi here

Over the past few months we became more and more accustomed to the private, domestic sphere; and our ability to access physical libraries, book shops and book clubs became either totally limited or transferred to the digital. 

As a response The Wave and Meeting Grounds invite you to turn your very own bookshelves into a book shop ‘n’ swap. 

Join us on Wednesday 3 June at 18.00 (CEST) to collectively explore each of our own bookshelves, choosing up to three of our favourite texts from our private stacks to share and discuss together. 

At the end of the session we will organise a postal book swap between all participants so we can continue to learn from our readings and grow our community through conversation. 

Join us via jitsi here

Join us on Tuesday 2 June for the IFL x Meeting Grounds // A life in a day : fragmented reading of Audre Lorde's Zami 

Let IFL (informal feminist library) add rhythm to your day with a fragmented reading of Zami : a new spelling of my name, a biomythography by Audre Lorde.

Three reading sessions are organized throughout the day, tackling different time periods of Audre Lorde's life based on her autobiography Zami : a new spelling of my name. 

Meet IFL librarian Pauline Agustoni as she reads out loud parts of the texts before opening a space for discussion and commentary at the end of each reading.

Organized by IFL in collaboration with Onomatopee for their program Meeting Grounds, the event inscribes itself in a series of online events on public libraries.

There is no prior reading needed and you don't necessarily have to attend all three events. You can download the ebook version of Zami by emailing info(@)paulineagustoni.com or amy(@)onomatopee.net 

Reading times :

Morning - childhood : 10am-11am

Midday - young adulthood : 3pm-4pm

Evening - adulthood : 8pm-9pm

Join us for all three events via Jitsi here or on Instagram Live @onomatopeenet

Join us for Club Silencio: The Reading Edition.

Both as a form of public intervention, and as an exploration into intimacy and readership in digital space, Meeting Grounds invites you to join our second Club Silencio, the reading edition.

For one hour you are invited to join us in a common, digital space where one thing and one thing only is expected of you: you must remain silent. For this edition we are focusing on the act of individual yet collective reading. So please bring along a book to read.

During Club Silencio we want to take the time to experience and consider reading practices in the digital public sphere. How can the collective act of individual reading form a moment of personal focus and group intimacy?

This one hour session will be audio recorded and later released on the Meeting Grounds SoundCloud page as an archived field recording. We therefore ask you to keep your mics on for the duration of the session as background noise is expected and welcome.

The chat box will be opened for the final 10 minutes of the event for an optional group discussion on the experience.

Join us via Jitis here

The themes for Cahier 3 of our upcoming Meeting Grounds Zine Publication will be announced on Friday 29 May via Instagram Live.

The themes will be collectively decided upon as a result of our discussion group, reading group and writing workout for Cycle 3: Codes of Community, Intimacy of Care in Digital Space, part of the ongoing Meeting Grounds Online programme.

You will be given one week to produce one page in response to the themes. 

The deadline will be Friday 5 June.

All responses will be included in the online version of the zine cahier and a selection will be chosen for the physical zine. 

We are open to all forms and styles of response.

All responses must be send to amy@onomatopee.net

And for those wanting to share their work and ideas in a more communal environment. We have organised an informal Meet-Up for Friday 5 June at 18.00 at jitsi to those who want to share your responses, ideas and contributions, or others who want to explore the themes presented further.

For our third writing workout of the series we will be conducting a session looking at Visible and Invisible Community Symbols.

meet at instagram live @onomatopeenet

Our next reading group will discuss a selected chapter from Olivia Laing’s “Funny Weather” to examine the tumultuous relationship between intimacy and loneliness in the digital sphere.

Audio version

Original Essay

For full access to Funny Weather join our Online Library via the Slack group

Joining  the Meeting Grounds Slack group gives you access to a selection of titles that each work with ideas around public space in the physical and digital spheres.

Both as a form of public intervention in digital space, and as an exploration into intimacy and silence as community codes, Meeting Grounds invites you to join Club Silencio. One of the most inclusive, least demanding clubs you will find in the digital sphere.

For one hour you are invited to join us in a common, digital space where one thing and one thing only is expected of you: you must remain silent.

You are welcome to come and go as you please. You may bring along a book, complete some writing, practice meditation, or just soak up the experience of this shared moment of silence. 

The idea behind Club Silencio is to take this time to experience and consider silence in the digital public sphere. What does silence mean as a form of communication, as a community code and as a way of being individually yet collectively together for a moment of group intimacy? 

This one hour session will be audio recorded and later released on the Meeting Grounds SoundCloud as an archived field recording. We therefore ask you to keep your mics on for the duration of the session as background noise is expected and welcome. 

The chat box will be opened for the final 10 minutes of the event for an optional group discussion of the experience. 

For our next Common Room, we invite you to join an informal group discussion focusing on topics of community and social solidarity at a time when we are notably lacking in physical contact yet our digital presences have considerably increased. 

The discussion group offers an open space to share our ideas and experiences around codes of community in the digital sphere, and ways in which we conduct care and intimacy online. 

We have included suggested reading materials as a starting point, however reading is not essential for participation. 

Questions we want to raise and discuss during the session:

• What codes of community and communication do we adopt in the digital sphere?

• How do we define digital public space and digital communities?

• How do we care for and maintain digital communities and digital public spaces?

• How are our ideas of proximity, intimacy and care changing?

• How are our individual and collective online identities changing?

As part of this discussion group we also want to create a collective archive to capture this current moment and process of change. 

Please bring along one reference point, it can be a text, a website, a film, or a podcast that has made you relate to the idea of community over this isolation period.

Suggested reading:
the sound of my voice
piratecare introduction

Meeting Grounds works on a programme and publication basis.

To celebrate the influx of community spaces being created in response to current restricted social and physical measures, the Meeting Grounds Online programme wants to produce a publication that s community-led and horizontal in approach.⠀

The Meeting Grounds Goes Online publication will therefore consist of a total of four Cahiers created over a period of two months, that each respond to a different set of themes. Every three weeks we will announce the themes for each Cahier and contributors will have one week to create and send their responses to amy@onomatopee.

We are encouraging and accepting a range of responses, from all forms, styles and disciplines.

Once all four zine cahier open calls have ended we will compile all contributions and print the zine at the Onomatopee Space at the end of June. The publication will be distributed for free.

Cahier 1 Open Call Announcement: Friday 17 April 18:00 via Instagram live @onomatopeenet

Deadline: Friday 24 April

Public Space and

• The body
• The mind
• Citizenship
• Community

Cahier 2 Open Call Announcement: Friday 8 May 18:00 via Instagram live @onomatopeenet

Deadline: Friday 15 May

Themes TBC

Cahier 3 Open Call Announcement: Friday 29 May 18:00 via Instagram live @onomatopeenet

Deadline: Friday 5 June

Themes TBC

Cahier 4 Open Call Announcement: Friday 19 June 18:00 via Instagram live @onomatopeenet

Deadline: 26 June

Themes TBC

*All Netherlands time

Our second writing workout will be led by Amy Gowen and Amy Pekal and will focus on us recalling our memories of the countryside. We will be using writing prompts to reinvision and reconnect our relationship to nature.

FOLLOW us for our writing workout series that will flex your fingers and get those creative juices flowing. We will look at different forms and techniques of writing and that relate specifically to using and thinking about space and movement. Feel free to share your writing at the end of the workout via our organised and secure pad, or keep it to work on further at a later date.

Writing Workout Two: Rewriting the Rural

Wednesday 6 May 17.30-18.30 via Instagram Live @onomatopeenet

Writing Workout Three: Topic TBC

Wednesday 27 May 17.30-18.30 via Instagram Live @onomatopeenet

Writing Workout Four: Topic TBC

Wednesday 17 June 17.30-18.30 via Instagram Live @onomatopeenet

*All times are based on Netherlands time zone

In light of COVID-19, one of the emergening phenomena is the colonization of the Rural, the reclamation of public space in areas often neglected and overlooked. In an effort to escape the over-crowded urban environments of major cities, the more affluent sections of society have been retreating to their second homes, which are, more often than not, situated in rural outposts.  

The result of such retreats and, essentially, colonization, lead to increased populations in smaller areas and a higher risk of the spread of covid in the rural locations that already face limited resources and less funded healthcare facilities. Even everyday activities and places such as supermarkets have seen an influx of not-so-local shoppers, taking over their smallholdings. All to the extent that permanent residents now feel scared to leave their homes and to visit their local public spaces in fear of excessive use and overcrowdedness. 

This second cycle of the Meeting Grounds Goes Online programme will be working with artist Amy Pekal to investigate the relationship between the rural and urban in these current times - two sites that are so often spoken of in terms of binaries and dualisms. Collectively we want to examine the values we place on such spaces and of our habits of usership and care. 

Bio: Amy Pekal (b.1993) is an artist, researcher and writer currently living and working in the Netherlands.  In her practice, she examines how dominant ideologies shape our understanding of the natural world. As a visual ethnographer, investigating and constructing environments are fundamental elements to her methodology. Her practice requires long-term and durational investigation of earth cycles and the communities that work with them. Through fieldwork, she collects material and immaterial data; field sketches, conversations, and objects such as earth, stones and sounds to form textured portraits of under-visible places and the communities that commit to the care and ongoing use of these environments. She takes the objects back to the studio in an effort to preserve ongoing processes. Some of the collected matter such as earth and other elements end up in her sculptures. The amalgamation of performative acts in the process are the building blocks that is the impetus towards ecological wholeness. 

MEETING GROUNDS GOES ONLINE - Missed one of our events? Here’s where you can find them!

We have finished the first cycle of the Meeting Grounds Goes Online programme, looking into public space in our current times. Both in terms of the restrictions placed on our access to physical public spaces and the digital communities that are being created in response. 

For the Meeting Grounds Goes Online programme we have organised a series of ongoing discussion groups, reading groups, writing workshops and a podcast series.

During these events over the past two weeks we have looked at ideas of citizenship, community and the body and discussed balconies as semi-public spaces, walking as a right to citizenship, and how we can flaneur our own domestic spaces. 

If you missed any of our events and want to catch up you can find them at: https://www.onomatopee.net/exhibition/meeting-grounds-goes-online/.

Thursday 30 April, 17.30-18.30 (Netherlands time)

Held via Zoom

The Reading Room reading group will discuss a selected chapter from one of the featured titles in the Meeting Grounds online library, to look at particular issues, topics and questions regarding public space in our current times.

For this week's Reading Room we will be discussing a selected chapter from Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, focusing on the relationship between the rural and the urban. You can access and download the text via our Meeting Grounds Reading Room Slack group.

Join the Meeting Grounds Slack group to access a selection of titles that each work with ideas around public space and to download the reading for each Reading Room

All events will be recorded unless otherwise requested and for archival purposes on the Onomatopee website Meeting Grounds page.

This event is in collaboration with artist Amy Pekal.

Bio: Amy Pekal (b.1993) is an artist, researcher and writer currently living and working in the Netherlands.  In her practice, she examines how dominant ideologies shape our understanding of the natural world. As a visual ethnographer, investigating and constructing environments are fundamental elements to her methodology. Her practice requires long-term and durational investigation of earth cycles and the communities that work with them. Through fieldwork, she collects material and immaterial data; field sketches, conversations, and objects such as earth, stones and sounds to form textured portraits of under-visible places and the communities that commit to the care and ongoing use of these environments. She takes the objects back to the studio in an effort to preserve ongoing processes. Some of the collected matter such as earth and other elements end up in her sculptures. The amalgamation of performative acts in the process are the building blocks that is the impetus towards ecological wholeness.

Reading Room One: Thursday 9 April 17.30-18.30

Rebecca Solnit Wanderlust: A History of Walking looking at walking as an act of citizenship

Reading Room Two: Thursday 30 April 17.30-18.30

Olga Tokarczuk Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead looking at the relationship between the urban and the rural

Reading Room Three: Thursday 21 May 17.30-18.30

Reading and topic TBC

Reading Room Four: Thursday 11 June 17.30-18.30

Reading and topic TBC

*Netherlands time

All held via Zoom

In light of COVID-19, one of the emergening phenomena is the colonization of the Rural, the reclamation of public space in areas often neglected and overlooked. In an effort to escape the over-crowded urban environments of major cities, the more affluent sections of society have been retreating to their second homes, which are, more often than not, situated in rural outposts.  

The result of such retreats and, essentially, colonization, lead to increased populations in smaller areas and a higher risk of the spread of covid in the rural locations that already face limited resources and less funded healthcare facilities. Even everyday activities and places such as supermarkets have seen an influx of not-so-local shoppers, taking over their smallholdings. All to the extent that permanent residents now feel scared to leave their homes and to visit their local public spaces in fear of excessive use and overcrowdedness. 

This second cycle of the Meeting Grounds Goes Online programme will be working with artist Amy Pekal to investigate the relationship between the rural and urban in these current times - two sites that are so often spoken of in terms of binaries and dualisms. Collectively we want to examine the values we place on such spaces and of our habits of usership and care. 

Join us for our upcoming discussion group, reading group and writing workout dedicated to investigating this colonization of the Rural.

Bio: Amy Pekal (b.1993) is an artist, researcher and writer currently living and working in the Netherlands.  In her practice, she examines how dominant ideologies shape our understanding of the natural world. As a visual ethnographer, investigating and constructing environments are fundamental elements to her methodology. Her practice requires long-term and durational investigation of earth cycles and the communities that work with them. Through fieldwork, she collects material and immaterial data; field sketches, conversations, and objects such as earth, stones and sounds to form textured portraits of under-visible places and the communities that commit to the care and ongoing use of these environments. She takes the objects back to the studio in an effort to preserve ongoing processes. Some of the collected matter such as earth and other elements end up in her sculptures. The amalgamation of performative acts in the process are the building blocks that is the impetus towards ecological wholeness. 

MEETING GROUNDS GOES ONLINE - Missed one of our events? Here’s where you can find them!

We have finished the first cycle of the Meeting Grounds Goes Online programme, looking into public space in our current times. Both in terms of the restrictions placed on our access to physical public spaces and the digital communities that are being created in response. 

For the Meeting Grounds Goes Online programme we have organised a series of ongoing discussion groups, reading groups, writing workshops and a podcast series.

During these events over the past two weeks we have looked at ideas of citizenship, community and the body and discussed balconies as semi-public spaces, walking as a right to citizenship, and how we can flaneur our own domestic spaces. 

If you missed any of our events and want to catch up you can find them at: https://www.onomatopee.net/exhibition/meeting-grounds-goes-online/.

Discussion Group 2: Escape to the Countryside, The Colonization of the Rural

Tuesday 28 April, 17.30-18.30 (Netherlands time)

Held via Zoom

A workbook will be produced and presented during the discussion using The White Man's Dilemma in Ecofeminism by Maria Mies, Vandana Shiva as a guiding text.

No prior reading is necessary.

This event is in collaboration with artist Amy Pekal.

*Bio: Amy Pekal (b.1993) is an artist, researcher and writer currently living and working in the Netherlands.  In her practice, she examines how dominant ideologies shape our understanding of the natural world. As a visual ethnographer, investigating and constructing environments are fundamental elements to her methodology. Her practice requires long-term and durational investigation of earth cycles and the communities that work with them. Through fieldwork, she collects material and immaterial data; field sketches, conversations, and objects such as earth, stones and sounds to form textured portraits of under-visible places and the communities that commit to the care and ongoing use of these environments. She takes the objects back to the studio in an effort to preserve ongoing processes. Some of the collected matter such as earth and other elements end up in her sculptures. The amalgamation of performative acts in the process are the building blocks that is the impetus towards ecological wholeness.

Bring a beer, a glass of wine, or some fine cordial and join our zine making session where will be producing responses to different prompts on public space. All submissions will be created within this specific time frame and at the end of the session your work will collected together to be printed and made into a zine collection at Onomatopee Projects.

Meeting Grounds works on a programme and publication basis.

To celebrate the influx of community spaces being created in response to current restricted social and physical measures, the Meeting Grounds Online programme wants to produce a publication that s community-led and horizontal in approach.⠀

The Meeting Grounds Goes Online publication will therefore consist of a total of four Cahiers created over a period of two months, that each respond to a different set of themes. Every three weeks we will announce the themes for each Cahier and contributors will have one week to create and send their responses to amy@onomatopee.

We are encouraging and accepting a range of responses, from all forms, styles and disciplines.

Once all four zine cahier open calls have ended we will compile all contributions and print the zine at the Onomatopee Space at the end of June. The publication will be distributed for free.

Cahier 1 Open Call Announcement: Friday 17 April 18:00 via Instagram live @onomatopeenet

Deadline: Friday 24 April

Public Space and

• The body
• The mind
• Citizenship
• Community

Cahier 2 Open Call Announcement: Friday 8 May 18:00 via Instagram live @onomatopeenet

Deadline: Friday 15 May

Themes TBC

Cahier 3 Open Call Announcement: Friday 29 May 18:00 via Instagram live @onomatopeenet

Deadline: Friday 5 June

Themes TBC

Cahier 4 Open Call Announcement: Friday 19 June 18:00 via Instagram live @onomatopeenet

Deadline: 26 June

Themes TBC

*All Netherlands time

Join us for a bi-weekly writing workout that will flex your fingers and get those creative juices flowing. We will look at different forms of writing and writing techniques that relate specifically to using and thinking about space and movement. Feel free to share your writing at the end of the workout, or keep it to work on further at a later date.

Writing Workout #1: Cyberflaneuring

This weekly reading group will look at a chapter in one of these selected titles where we can discuss.

Join the Meeting Grounds slack group to access a selection of books that focus on public space

Reading Group 1: “Citizens of the Streets: Parties, Processions and Revolutions” in Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking

The Common Room
Each week we will spend an hour discussing a different topic related to public space within our current times. A text will be selected as a departure point for the conversation but reading is not essential. Join the conversation, to share anecdotes, experiences, theories and ideas.

This first edition will be about balconies as semi-public spaces.

Part meetup, part workshop, part collective exploration, this event aims to challenge the conventions around reading and personal/public librarianship. Everyone is a librarian, but how do we navigate with the political and sociological implications of what we read and what we choose to place on our bookshelves. How can we explore our relationship to reading and librarianship through the lens of the public and private realms.

In this meetup, we aim to examine the Meeting Grounds temporary library that has been created and transformed throughout the week, alongside pictures brought if from each participant of their own personal libraries at home according to categories such as gender, nationality, sexuality and materiality. 

Through this exercise and our subsequent discussion we will investigate the ways in which the books that we read and the bookshelves that surround us in our daily lives are interwoven with wider political structures and debates. In this, we are particularly interested in countering hierarchies of knowledge that inhabit our bookshelves and our reading practices both in public institutions and in the private domain. Everyone is a librarian, but what responsibilities does this come with?

Please bring along a picture (either digital or physical) of your bookshelf, or a collection of books that you own.

A work session with Simon Browne

what will we do?

     we’ll have an introduction to the “bootleg library”, which is a shared digital and physical library of bootlegged texts. let’s make user accounts, download and upload some texts, talk about what we’re reading and how we like to organise our bookshelves, and together discuss libraries, both private and public.

what to bring?

     a computer and some of your favourite ebooks (PDF, EPUB, whatever)

about the bootleg library

     the bootleg library is a digital, and physical collection of texts. the library consists of bootlegged texts, not in the sense of cheap knock-offs, but instead as unauthorised, fairly faithful reproductions of source publications. the physical library is a growing collection of republished books, currently stored in an old champagne case. most of these are bootlegged by library members, some donated by visitors. the digital library is a collection of ebooks, served from a small computer running open-source software.

the current collection

     the bootleg library is small but growing. texts are individually uploaded and catalogued by readers who are motivated simply by the desire to share what they read. and so the collection represents the readers and their interests, which range from critical theory to feminisms to literature to technical manuals and zines (and a lot more).

All are welcome to join in. Tea, coffee, soft drinks and snacks will be provided throughout the day.

Join us for the first meet up of Meeting Grounds’ first edition. Centred around exploring the Bibliotheek Eindhoven as a public space and a social space - a site of conviviality.

This informal meetup will act as an introduction to the broader programme of Meeting Grounds as well as the themes of this particular edition. We will consider questions around the nature of what makes a public space and why such spaces are important in contemporary society. Using this as our starting point, we will then situate our ideas directly in relation to the Bibliotheek Eindhoven as we begin to examine the library’s importance to the city of Eindhoven as a space that can be understood as both public and social.

This first informal meet up and discussion will be introduced by City Curator, Amy Gowen, tea, coffee, drinks and snacks will be offered as we delve deeper into our understandings of the Eindhoven Public Library.

Ahead of Meeting Grounds first edition, we will explore the Witte Dame area with a collective City Walk Workshop.

This workshop is free and part of the ongoing Meeting Grounds programme.

Inspired by SerraGlia’s “City Wanders” project, this workshop is aimed at anyone with an interest in art, design, visual perception, architecture, urban space and communication, to together explore urban scapes with fresh eyes.

“We are used to walking the same route every day. We are so keen to get where we’re going as quickly as possible that we ignore all the beauty and wonder induced by the visual elements around us.
The result is that we tend not to see anything special in our daily routines - not because there’s nothing interesting to look at, but because we’re paying attention only to practical matters.
It’s different when we go somewhere for the first time - as a tourist, for instance. We notice things that surprise and inspire us. Away from home, even a supermarket or a barber’s sign gains an unexpected charm. But is it possible to discover something wonderful without having to travel to a new place?
This workshop wants to bring that tourist state of mind into our everyday routine.”

The workshop will last for two hours, in which we will explore the Witte Dame area, home to the first edition of the Meeting Grounds, by collectively walking, documenting and photographing the area so as to seek the unfamiliar from what can be typically understood as familiar grounds, and to determine key visual clues that are specific to the street, the area and city that can help us to depict power signs and symbols and ways of navigating our shared public spaces. Through this workshop we hope to provide fresh insights and perspectives in our interpretation of what makes a public space in Eindhoven.

RSVP to amy@onomatopee.net

Presenting our new project Meeting Grounds.

…

In the physical form of travelling mobile trailer, Meeting Grounds is a grassroots project that operates as an assembly point to explore, articulate and question the current functions of planned urban space, shared public resources and technological advancements in the city of Eindhoven. In doing so, this year-long series of meet-ups aims to activate the social, ethical and moral foundations of the sites in which we enjoy our cultural life and establish common ground whilst doing so.

…

Join us on Thursday 30 January at 19.00 at the new Onomatopee space for the launch of Meeting Grounds and to help shape this shared space within our remarkable city. Collectively we will discuss ideas of publicness, connectivity, shared spaces and alternative ways of orienting the city aided by presentations and food.

Sequence of events:

19.00 - 19.30
Introduction by City Curator Amy Gowen and tour of the Meeting Grounds trailer.

19.30-20.30
Presentation by Noor Bootsma on Eindhoven City Archive and Woensel-West projects.
Sandberg Instituut Studio for Immediate Spaces (SIS) Graduates present their graduation projects and showcase a public intervention in the Onomatopee space.

This will be followed by an optional collective Q + A over food and drink presented by Francesca and Elia

Guest Speakers

Noor Bootsma is drawn to design that has the ability to create understanding. Her aim is to combine design with more complex political and social topics in order for people to create and join discussions. Noor focuses on field research and storytelling as key elements of her projects and believes that it is vital to listen to the small stories in order to understand the big topics.

Noor will present her Eindhoven City Archive and Woensel-West research and projects.

Elia Castino and Francesca Lucchitta

Elia Castino and Francesca Lucchitta are recent graduates for the Sandberg Instituut programme Studio for Immediate Spaces (SIS) a two-year Master programme focused on space-related practices. Francesca Lucchitta is a visual communicator and researcher. She explores the intersection between architecture, nature and anthropology to understand how historical changes can bring about a different perception, use and memory of natural areas. Elia Castino works at the intersection between art, architecture and design. Interested in the spatial and ideal construct of the home, he investigates ways of inhabiting, generating routines, setting up scenarios for quotidian occurrences.

Elia and Francesca will present their graduate projects and also consider the ways in which we experiencing a space through a food-based invention.

“The problem of the spatial condition of human existence or, to put it more simply, of the concrete space experienced and lived by humans.” O.F.Bollnow, Human Space

POSTPONED

A workshop run by Simon Browne, Paloma García and Artemis Gryllaki

We read texts, and write notes in the margins; usually in private, isolated from other readers. We come across texts with others’ notes on them; the author unknown, their thoughts obscure. What happens when we share our notes, vocalise and perform them?

In this workshop we’ll read, annotate and discuss an open letter which asks for pirate library practices to come out of the shadows. We’ll read aloud and perform parts of the text, enriched by our doubts, sympathies, tensions and diverse understandings. We’ll personalise the text, opening it up for collective conversations. Our voices will occupy the space and leave traces on the text.

All texts and writing material will be provided at the beginning of the workshop. Tea, coffee, soft drinks and snacks will be available.

POSTPONED

Everyone is a librarian is a week long event exploring what it means to house multiple library spaces (both public and private) in one temporary setting. Each day will include a series of workshops and activities that explore different areas of reading and librarianship and the responsibilities that come along with it. The aim is for the library to evolve throughout the week, transforming the trailer into a performative, hybrid space that may look or feel different each and every time you enter.

Build-A-Library

Day 1: Monday 30th of March, 10.00-18.00

Here is the chance for you to collectively select, build, categorise, catalogue, code, design and produce a temporary, performative library within the Meeting Grounds mobile trailer. For one week only we will be housing books from a range of different academies, schools, museums, libraries and individuals across Eindhoven, all of which can be used to create and evolve our very own public reading space in the trailer. 

Together we will build this temporary library from scratch, looking to explore each of the processes of librarianship along the way. Discussing what it means to host all of these different libraries in one temporary space alongside what it means to create and curate a library - how objective and inclusive can the act of librarianship truly be? Let’s find out!

Librarianathon

Day 2: Tuesday 31st of March & Day 3: Wednesday 1st of April

Day 2 and 3 of the programme offer the chance to meet the librarians from each of the contributing libraries who will share their knowledge around their personal takes on the categorisation of books and documents. Together we will observe how a trained librarian views the temporary library and what it means to be a professional librarian. They will have the opportunity to move the books around, to re-categorise, to add or to take away - all whilst leaving traces of the books that were there before. 

You are invited to join, intersect, challenge and change their decisions in these sessions, to question or to observe all to understand how each librarian views and understands their role and the responsibilities that come with it.

Meet Up #3: Unlearning the Bookshelf

Day 4: Thursday 2nd of April

On the penultimate evening of the programme, we will host Meeting Grounds Edition 1, Meet Up #3, a gathering around the shelves of the self-made library. During this meetup we will discuss what knowledge has been included and excluded, what audiences and members are attracted by certain libraries and what spaces does this in turn create. We question if the temporary library in the trailer could be seen as a public space, how does it act as a library space and for whom? 

Each participant should bring along a physical or digital photo of their own personal libraries, so we can begin to discuss and unravel how our everyday shelves intersect with ideas of politics, representation and intersectionality and accessibility.

The Reading Room is OPEN

Day 5: Friday 3rd of April and Saturday 4th April

For the final day you are welcome to join us in the temporary library to celebrate our reading room. Feel free to come and take a look at the books, read, discuss and share ideas. Stay as long as you want! Together we will look at which books have been popular, what we are missing in the collection or which might seem better off somewhere else. You can read together or in silence, stay for 10 minutes for 5 hours. Tea, coffee and cake will be served and reading groups are more than welcome!

During the day of Friday 3rd April, performance and readings will take place in the reading room throughout the day, all around the ideas of collective reading, authorship and voice.

Meet up #2: Unlearning the Bookshelf, Thursday 2 April 2020, 19.00-21.00

Part meetup, part workshop, part collective exploration, this event aims to challenge the conventions around reading and personal/public librarianship. Everyone is a librarian, but how do we navigate with the political and sociological implications of what we read and what we choose to place on our bookshelves. How can we explore our relationship to reading and librarianship through the lens of the public and private realms.

In this meetup, we aim to examine the Meeting Grounds temporary library that has been created and transformed throughout the week, alongside pictures brought if from each participant of their own personal libraries at home according to categories such as gender, nationality, sexuality and materiality. 

Through this exercise and our subsequent discussion we will investigate the ways in which the books that we read and the bookshelves that surround us in our daily lives are interwoven with wider political structures and debates. In this, we are particularly interested in countering hierarchies of knowledge that inhabit our bookshelves and our reading practices both in public institutions and in the private domain. Everyone is a librarian, but what responsibilities does this come with?

Please bring along a picture (either digital or physical) of your bookshelf, or a collection of books that you own. 

POSTPONED

A future vision of the library sees it make the transformation from institution to function, becoming more flexible, agile and able to realise new revenue models in the face of increasing austerity, and decreasing literacy levels. But what becomes its new function? In a purely functional sense, how can the library continue to give access to knowledge, and how can library members have a say in what is acquired? During our session, we will lay the foundations for the development of the new Boekstekje Bureau branch of the Eindhoven Public Library, one which responds to the needs of its members, reflects on what is missing or under-represented in its collection, and offers directions for new growth. The Boekstejke Bureau creates space, time and care for collective discussion and questioning of the role and function of library cataloguing, collections, potential and missing books, open access and membership participation.