We are pleased to invite you to Spring Encounters 2024: Fun as Methodology!
Spring Encounters provides a platform for researchers, activists and artists to connect in a relaxed setting of informal conversations and action. Its purpose is to break the boundaries of disciplines and institutions, creating cracks for open dialogue and the sprouting of ideas. The 2023 edition of Spring Encounters demonstrated how grounding praxis in place, community, and their politics is critical for catalysing transformative change. The relationships we established in those encounters have become vital to our current actions.
By reflecting on how we designed and facilitated APR activities within and beyond Spring Encounters we realised the central role of fun in creating and enjoying shared learning practices that are inviting, inspiring and energising. Provoked by how fun fuels our own radical imaginations, at Spring Encounters 2024 we will explore and discuss how fun can drive the ways we come to know and what we consider valuable to know about when performing praxis.
Through the experimentation with fun methods ranging from radio to leisure, we invite you for another series of engagements with radical communities and places to continue nurturing actions and relations. The majority of our program is supported by Monash Graduate Association (MGA).
The encounters planned for this year are:
21 September | Radio as method: Sound Storytelling
Meeting at Catalyst Social Centre | 2 to 4:30 pm
Facilitated by Nicolas Guerra (APR)
With Priya Kunjan (3CR / RMIT)
Communication as a tool promotes connections between people and catalyses social change. Focused on storytelling, in this session we explore how radio and other audio mediums are a powerful tool for communicating research, community-building, and activism. In this session, we will also share some basic skills of using a microphone, capturing voices, and crafting narratives. Whether you’re an audio novice or a seasoned storyteller, in this session we open space to experiment, share, and challenge conventional thinking about media.
Click here to submit an abstract | Deadline: September 14, 2024 | Tickets here! (Please RSVP)
04 October | Paste-up as method: Spreading ideas without permission
Meeting at Schoolhouse Studios | 5 to 7:30 pm
Facilitated by Zheng Chin (APR/Monash University)
With Brian Coffey (RMIT University) + Dennis Grauel + Lewis Vincent (Nature Disturbed)
Whether you are an academic, politician, artist or activist, we all share a responsibility to make knowledge accessible. In this panel and workshop, we will explore and engage in the political act of knowledge dissemination. Our panellists will share their experiences in spreading ideas, and in the two-part workshop, participants will first learn to visualise their own ideas into posters and on a later date, we'll come together to paste these posters in public spaces, ensuring that our knowledge reaches the broader community.
Click here to submit an abstract | Deadline: September 20, 2024 | Tickets here! (Please RSVP)
18 October | Food as method: a dumpster-dive cooking competition
Meeting at Catalyst Social Centre | 5 to 7:30 pm
Facilitated by Corey Ferguson (APR/Monash University)
with Emily Wong (RMIT University) and Really Really Free Market
For this encounter, we play host to a cooking competition using wasted food surplus and communal kitchen activism to foreground and explore the regenerative power of food. Food as method positions the many intersecting capabilities of food to bring people together, share stories, nurture equity and mutual aid, and take action against the extractive, exploitative, and wasteful global food systems we depend on. Complete with a judges panel and a free meal we’ll be serving action and reflection on food rescue, collective cooking, and meal sharing as methods for participatory research and practices of community regeneration. So get ready chefs, your time starts now.
*This event is not supported by Monash Graduate Association (MGA).
Click here to submit an abstract | Deadline: October 11, 2024 | Tickets here! (Please RSVP)
30 October | Zines as method: More-than-human collaborations
Meeting at The Venny | 5 to 7:30 pm
Facilitated by Corey Ferguson (APR/Monash University)
with Stephanie Ochona (RMIT University)
A zine is a self-published, non-commercial booklet, typically made in small batches. Zines are easy to create—digitally or on paper—and are often printed, photocopied, folded, and stapled. They offer a platform for sharing niche or unconventional content that traditional publications might overlook. This Spring Encounter focuses on zine making as a methodology for sharing thoughts and ideas, in particular co-authoring with more-than-human agents that will play in our surroundings. What does it mean to co-create and publish with more-than-human world? Well, this is the time to explore it!
Click here to submit an abstract | Deadline: October 15, 2024 | Tickets here! (Please RSVP)
16 November | Leisure as method: A Swim in the Birrarung
Meeting at Deep Rock Historical Swimming Hole | 10 to 12:30 pm
Facilitated by Alexandre Faustino (APR/RMIT University)
With Rebecca Olive (Moving Oceans)
Our wellbeing is deeply connected to movement, emotions, thoughts, and interactions with our environment. Leisure activities can bridge these aspects, fostering connections with others, human and non-humans. In the final Spring Encounters session, we'll explore how swimming in local waterways can serve as a radical method for cultivating more intimate, respectful and caring relationships with urban waters. By experiencing the rivers' pulse, colour, smell, texture, temperature, and biodiversity, can we discover ways to regenerate the wellbeing of our collective water bodies and ecologies?
Click here to submit an abstract | Deadline: November 10, 2024 | Tickets here! (Please RSVP)
Abstract submissions and HDR presentations
The call for HDRs to submit their abstracts depends on the session they are interested in. Please check the above. If you wish to participate as a presenter, please submit here a short abstract (250 words) describing the work you would like to present and inform us which session is your work most related to. The sessions welcome research in different stages of development, from conceptual ideas to more refined/final products. Each of the HDRs presenting in each session will have 15 minutes to talk and all discussions will be made at the end of the presentations.
Presenters will be notified 7 days before each session.
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