In the course of this semester we will build a world. This is very easy: Every story creates a world. Even the smallest element of a narrative hints at a broader context, an environment with its own rules, a milieu with specific inhabitants. This is also very hard: As story-telling, but also story-believing and story-sharing animals, we are not satisfied with just any other world. We want to collectively imagine stories, maps, figures, gestures, languages, games that help us to think and think with. “Think we must! (Virginia Woolf)”, exclaim Isabelle Stengers, Viciane Despret, and Donna Haraway. And also: "We need new stories!" In this seminar we'll ask: Why? How? Which ones?

Starting from and focusing on a particular place, we'll fabulate protagonists and speculate scenarios, we'll sketch possible and impossible futures, pasts and presents, we'll put layer on layer on layer and thus create a thick imaginary on and around this place. We'll investigate into what stories inspire us, what is necessary for building imaginary worlds together, and what can be shared with others. This seminar will be in workshop format, and, at the end, we’ll invite others to our world. We get help from thinkers such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, Anna Tsing and Alexis Shotwell as well as from the many forms of SF; "science fiction, speculative feminism, science fantasy, speculative fabulation, science fact, and also, string figures" (Haraway).

The course will be presented at the kick-off of the Department of Site-Specific Art on Thursday, March 3rd, 2022 at 10 a.m. at Paulusplatz 5 in 1030 Vienna. All questions regarding the course can be discussed there.

can be held in german or english depending on your preferences and needs. the texts and videos we'll consult are in english/american.