10.09 | 19h | Tante Emma
A Workshop on Hospicing and Outgrowing Modernity. During this event, at AmEnde there is running the every Wednesday KüfA.
Modernity is a way of organizing life that promises progress while depending on separation, exploitation, and infinite growth. Its dominant story claims that with enough innovation and the right leaders, we can fix what’s wrong. The book ‘Hospicing Modernity’ by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira offers a different perspective: the system’s harms – colonialism, imperialism, ecocide, and deep inequality – are not accidents or malfunctions, but the very conditions upholding the system.
Rather than rushing to repair or replace modernity with a “better” version, this workshop invites us to slow down, face discomfort, and accompany modernity’s ending with grief and care. We will recognize our deep entanglement in the violence and unsustainability we oppose – not to induce guilt or paralysis, but to begin the harder work of composting modernity’s cultural, emotional, and institutional remains.
This means tending to the mess together, while leaving space for new ways of being to emerge without overwhelming them with our projections or need for control. Through collective reading, reflection, and simple embodied practices, we’ll notice our escape mechanisms (denial, blame-shifting, moral superiority) and explore how to stay present with what we would rather avoid.
Event Schedule:
– Grounding & Check-in
– Introduction to the topic
– Reading an English text passage + questions in silence
– Sharing resonances to the text – drawings or movements are welcome
– Embodied Practice / Pause
– Very short Check-in, perhaps in pairs
– Collective Holding, seeing what wants to emerge
– Closing & Check-out
As a native German speaker I’m happy for us to switch to German during the conversation if that feels easier for the whole group.
If you’d like to grasp Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s way of thinking, I warmly recommend this interview with her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTEMgpW3H60
From this event, a reading circle might emerge – if you feel called, write to tatze@hacari.org.