Introduction

2 PM – 2:30 PM

Discourse

2:30 PM – 4 PM

Becoming the monsoon forest

Lecture by Harshavardhan Bhat

How do we understand more-than-human vegetal emergence in/with/under monsoonal transformation? I often like to introduce the monsoon to people by telling them that it is the change in the direction of the wind that carries the ocean to the sky, blanketing the geological spatio-temporality of the Indian subcontinent, transforming its air and everything in its temporal wake with the possibility of life. This paper thinks through the invasive vilayati kikar which has overwhelmed native monsoon forests and arid ecologies in South Asia. Drawing from fieldwork in the Delhi region conducted during monsoon 2018, 2019 and the winter of 2018, and by thinking with literature and reports from ecology, biology, politics, anthropology and natural science—I attempt a brief situated narrative that explores the vegetal emergence of the plant, its natureculture spirits and embodiment in/with the monsoon—finally, closing this work with a discussion on the monsoon and its ontological stickiness – and methodologies that become monsoonal.

Harshavardhan Bhat is a researcher and writer currently based in Bangalore, India. Harsh’s doctoral work Ways of Monsoon Air explored the ways through which anthropogenic materialities disrupted and informed a social science of the monsoon, calling for monsoonal methodologies in comprehending and engaging with entangled transformations. He holds a PhD in Architecture and Cities from the University of Westminster and an MSc in Comparative Politics (Conflict Studies) from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Method

4:30 PM – 6 PM

Lecture by Paolo Patelli, Aarhus University

In some sense
A computational planet is composed from sensing technologies, a common world from a sense of attachment and commitment. Between thinking and feeling, sensing and intuiting we capture signals from radically different subjective worlds. How, where do senses interact, interfere, compose worldviews?

Paolo Patelli manipulates architecture and artistic practice. He engages with the materialities, scenes and atmospheres at the intersections of space and society, technologies and environments. He is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Critical Environmental Data at Aarhus University. He holds a PhD in Architecture and Urban Design from Politecnico di Milano (2015).