Dispatch: Harvesting Non-Western Epistemologies (ongoing)

Adelina Luft

7 May 2024

This is the first in a series of dispatches from Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life (2023–24), a freestanding course at The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, Siliștea Snagovului, Romania. The course explores how we might rethink technology in relation to the world, via convivial tools and towards self-sufficiency outside the paradigm of globalisation. It combines readings, gatherings and offerings between the group’s participants and invited guests.

Aligning with documenta fifteen’s harvesting practice of recording discussions and meetings through the subjective eye of the “harvester”, I transfer here my notes of some of the reading materials shared in the course Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life.

My notes are made on paper dividers used for categorizing expense accounts for Romanian bulky grant reports. These interconnected, non-linear reflections – part of an ongoing series of dispatches – are based on selected texts by authors including Blair Stonechild, Ivan Illich, Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu, Clint Carroll, Marija Gimbutas, Kyle Whyte, the Zapatistas, Valiana Aguilar, and Leanne Simpson.