There are (at least) two stories of globalisation. The first is a tale of common techniques and needs, the desire that people feel to share the knowledge, situations and challenges of living in ways that meet their needs while asserting the rights and dignity of the Earth. The second tells of the untenable institutionalised practices of solely capital-driven extraction and production, and the speculation that creates widespread wealth disparities, injustices and ecological violence. Many such stories of globalisation have become intensified and more apparent during the corona virus pandemic, itself a truly global experience and catalyst for awarenesses that has advanced new kinds of ambiguous “planetary intimacies”. Ideas and practices of this “planetary intimacy” are often polarised by culture wars and wars against nature, but can also be opportunities for new solidarities and renewed means of sharing knowledge and practices between concerned communities. How can we recompose and heal the ways that industrial globalism already connects us and keeps us apart?
FieldPlatform / PlataformaCampo is a Ground Test, a research network and media platform prototype that both critiques and creates new planetary intimacies between Switzerland and Colombia. The project positions methods and perspectives drawn from critical, creative media practices in art and design, and somatic, bodily practice-as-research. Working and learning with communities, we test new community-led ways that digital media might connect specific stories of globalisation, told by those affected by them. Diverse communities from different registers of labour and society will be brought into conversation through the project: for example, employees at banking and investment firms in Basel will be linked to mining communities in and around Medellin, geoengineering researchers in Switzerland to Colombian communities working toward sustainable agricultural practices, artists and designers from both countries coming together to explore ways to collaborate and exchange experiences through hybrid, by-directional media making.
Funded by the Leading House for the Latin American Region and supported by the FHNW Hybrid Education Community.
