CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: ABOAGORA Retreat VIII – apply by April 30, 2025!
The ABOAGORA Retreat VIII: Repairing for Peace invites MA Arts Students and Doctoral Researchers in the arts, humanities, and sciences to imagine peace at the time of accelerating militarisation. What kind of peace is promised by the securitisation of all aspects of everyday life? How to repair relations needed for peace as something other than a transactional, compromised or predetermined contract? The Retreat takes place September 7–9 on the island of Seili in the Turku archipelago.
ABOAGORA – Between Arts and Sciences is an annual symposium that brings together academia, the arts and society. The 2025 main event Venus, the Bringer of Peace will be held September 10–12 in Turku.
The ABOAGORA Retreat VIII: Repairing for Peace
The current time of escalating conflicts over resources and reorganisation of the global axes of power urgently calls for solidarities between situated struggles. We are witnessing a steep reversal of the progress achieved in recent decades on both social justice and ecological protections. Militarisation as a deterrent against war is already a state of exception, a looming disaster for the environment and for democracy. It can only be countered by intersectional alliances between resistance movements that are now largely dispersed across generational, identitarian, cultural and geographical divides.
The ABOAGORA Retreat 2025 searches for imaginaries of peace that address the interconnections between societal and ecological breakdown across local and global scales. The Retreat sets out to bring together research from different fields that critically and creatively examine militarisation and securitisation, historical and today’s peace movements, narratives of resistance to the languages and logics of war, collective practices that actively repair the ground for peace, or other related topics.
The Retreat offers a momentary pause in habitual patterns and processes of practice, and space to share, listen and reflect attentively together. It also implies a retreat from the conventions of boundary-making between disciplines and epistemologies, in order to nurture an ecology of practices. The Retreat is a great opportunity to converse with artists and researchers from different fields and backgrounds, and a prospect for exciting new collaborations!
Program
The Retreat is directed by curator and researcher Taru Elfving (CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago). The program will be structured around talks, walks and workshops focused on the dialogue and sharing of research questions and methods between the participants. The island of Seili with its multifaceted history and ecology will inform the activities. The program will also include an introduction to the work of the Archipelago Research Institute hosting the retreat. The selected participants are invited to contribute their own questions and activities to the program in an online introductory meeting in June (week 24, June 9–14).
The retreat is free of charge, and it includes and covers:
- transport between Turku city center and Seili (traveling to Turku is at own cost)
- lodging in Seili on 7–9, September
- coffee, snacks, and lunches during the retreat and ABOAGORA: Venus, the Bringer of Peace
- free admission to ABOAGORA: Venus, the Bringer of Peace
- accommodation in Turku during ABOAGORA, 10–12 September
The retreat participants will discuss their work in a joint panel session on September 11 at the ABOAGORA: Venus, the Bringer of Peace event at the Sibelius Museum in Turku.
ABOAGORA – Between Arts and Sciences is an annual symposium that brings together academia, the arts and society. The 2025 main event Venus, the Bringer of Peace, will be held September 10–12. The event brings together viewpoints from social sciences, cultural studies, natural sciences, and the arts to explore the theme both literally and metaphorically. The event program will be announced in the beginning of June.
How to Apply?
We welcome applications from Doctoral Researchers and MA Arts Students based in Finland, the Nordic countries, and the Baltic countries. Apply by April 30th via this Webropol form. Notification of acceptance will be given by the end of May.
What is ABOAGORA?
ABOAGORA brings together academia, the arts and society. This exciting annual event consists of interdisciplinary discussions, sessions and performances that combine scholarly and artistic viewpoints. Since its inaugural year 2011, the Symposium has offered a forum for researchers, artists and the public to establish new dialogues and discover new forms of collaboration. ABOAGORA is a joint effort by the University of Turku, the Turku University Foundation, Åbo Akademi University, the Åbo Akademi University Foundation and the Arts Academy of Turku University of Applied Sciences. In 2024, we launched a new seven-year thematic plan, The Planets, inspired by Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite of the same name.
Contact
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at aboagora@utu.fi.
ABOAGORA is a meeting place for researchers and artists, an enabler of cooperation and a space for new creation. The project’s annual activities include an international three-day main event organized at the Sibelius Museum in Turku, a research retreat and open Avant Aboagora pre-events. The project launched in Turku’s capital of culture year 2011 is now a pioneer in the field of science and art cooperation. The event is based on the ethos that comprehensive problem solving requires not only interdisciplinary approach but also combining scientific and artistic perspectives. The organizers of ABOAGORA are the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi, Turku Academy of Arts, Åbo Akademi University Foundation and Turku University Foundation. ABOAGORA in 2025 is supported by the Kone Foundation, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation and Svenska Kulturfonden.