15 Wendy Wuyts Vitalija Povilaityte-Petri This workshop explores BE+LONGING through the lens of plants, ecocriticism, and political ecology, where locality and the specific ecologies of Antwerp are central. By engaging with the ambivalent concept of the Pharmakon (Derrida made the note that often the medicine can be the poison and scapegoat), students will investigate how plants embody preventive, curative, and contested meanings, raising questions of belonging, othering, and blame. The program combines short lectures on philosophy, pharmacy, medical anthropology and ethnobotany and a short intro on the political ecology of nature-based health knowledge in Brussels Health Gardens (on the first day) with embodied and sensory practices in the Rivierenhof, including forest bathing, foraging, and processing plants into recipes or design materials. Through these experiences, students will reflect on patterns, connections, rituals, and ceremonies that shape our relationships with ecologies, and on how to move from theory and art to forms of collective action. The participants will be divided into 3-4 groups, and on the second day each group will be appointed a plant, whether considered invasive, alien, or native, such as hogweed, Japanese knotweed, nettle, or willow. These plants will serve as guides for exploring local ecologies of being, longing, and healing, while confronting social narratives of usefulness, toxicity, and exclusion. We also want to encourage the collection of healing questions, as sometimes the question an apothecary or designer asks can itself be healing and preventive medicine. This workshop is therefore not about problem-solving, but about cultivating the critical and healing questions that allow us to reimagine belonging with/in wounded landscapes. The workshop culminates in the creation of an Apothecary for Antwerp, a shared offering that gathers the students’ reflections and practices into a collective response to the question of what it means to belong, ecologically, socially, and politically, here and now.
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