School of Commons

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School of Commons We’re a learning community dedicated to the study and development of self-organized knowledge production—through commons based methods and practices.

Hosted at Zurich University of the Arts SoC is a community-based initiative dedicated to the study and development of self-organized knowledge, located at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), but taking place mostly online.

Feedback Session: Counter Care with Loren Beard & Sheila Shankar13 October 2026
17:00 CEST / 10:00 CDT
Online · Free and...
30/09/2026

Feedback Session: Counter Care with Loren Beard & Sheila Shankar

13 October 2026
17:00 CEST / 10:00 CDT
Online · Free and open to all

Join via Zoom (link in bio)

How do you practice counter care? 🌱

Counter Care attends to the subversive, relational practices that sustain life under conditions designed to exhaust it: the improvisations, refusals, and solidarities that make life possible where institutions withdraw.

At the heart of the project is a living, open-access archive of strategies for survival, kinship, and transformation, tracing how marginalised communities build networks of endurance and mutual aid outside and against the systems working against them.

In this 90-minute session, Loren and Sheila will introduce the archive, its lineage, and the conditions that shape it. Then we’ll move into a guided writing reflection and small-group exchange, before closing together with a feedforward: what should go into the archive, into our own work, into the commons we’re building?

Come with curiosity about your own care practices. Contributions, provocations, and questions welcome.

✨ About the facilitators

Loren Beard (she/?) is a writer, researcher, and PhD candidate based at the University of Chicago.

Sheila Shankar is a q***r South Asian American therapist, educator, and researcher.
Part of our Alumn* Network Program.

Visit our website for the full session outline and reading resources: schoolofcommons.org

Water BodiesOrganised by Georgia Leigh-Münster and Brigitte HartFree — no tickets or experience required. For the locati...
10/09/2026

Water Bodies

Organised by Georgia Leigh-Münster and Brigitte Hart

Free — no tickets or experience required. For the location, DM Georgia Leigh-Münster or tinysound if you’d like to come along.

Join Georgia and Brigitte on the foreshore Sunday the 20th in central London, where we will explore the Thames’ ecology and history at afternoon low tide. Delving into the waters, mud, currents, stories and life within and without, we’ll meditate on the greater ecosystem of the water and the different ways we may sense into watery spaces.

We invite you to dream into the waves with us 🌊

Peer Learning Session: TEXT ONLY HOME PAGEFacilitated by Sasha KurlykaTuesday, September 1518:00–19:30 (CEST)OnlinePubli...
10/09/2026

Peer Learning Session: TEXT ONLY HOME PAGE
Facilitated by Sasha Kurlyka

Tuesday, September 15
18:00–19:30 (CEST)
Online

Public / Join us via Zoom (link in bio)

This skill-sharing session is for multi-disciplinary artists interested in exploring text-based computer art / web interventions. An algorithm is control: completely defined and knowable (even if not known in practice). But then it meets reality — combinatorial scale, or randomness — and it is no longer controlled. This session is a space to discuss and reflect on our experience of text in digital spaces, and for multi-disciplinary artists to consider how web-based text artworks or interventions could (or already do) fit into their practice.

Structure:

Computer art minus computer: historical and current examples of non-computational algorithmic art and writing, including combinatorial poetry and ASCII art.
Cultivating critical and creative readership: reflection & discussion exercises for “reading like a writer,” applied to creative writing and web-based text art.
Making, sharing, and documenting an interactive text-based web intervention: no prior coding experience required. Includes a walkthrough using Neocities for hosting a static HTML/JavaScript site, and ffmpeg for compressing screen-recording documentation.
(This session will not cover generative AI or LLMs.)

Resources: Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer; Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism; smallfile.ca; kurlyka.neocities.org/campus

Sasha Kurlyka (kurlyka.neocities.org) is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist working with text, participatory performance, web-based choreography, interactive installation, and figurative practice. Born in Ukraine, and having lived in the USA before Germany, they speak three languages somewhat well, and two more as a learner. Their mother-tongue is early-90s eastern-european economic anxiety.

Image: Highly compressed videos of two works by the artist, “bordercontrol.js (ongoing/wip)” and “Berlin Campus 2025”

Part of our Alumn* Network Program

Peer Learning Session: TEXT ONLY HOME PAGEFacilitated by Sasha KurlykaTuesday, 15.09.202618:00–19:30 (CEST)OnlinePublic ...
10/09/2026

Peer Learning Session: TEXT ONLY HOME PAGE
Facilitated by Sasha Kurlyka

Tuesday, 15.09.2026
18:00–19:30 (CEST)
Online

Public / Join us via Zoom (link in bio)

This skill-sharing session is for multi-disciplinary artists interested in exploring text-based computer art / web interventions. An algorithm is control: completely defined and knowable (even if not known in practice). But then it meets reality — combinatorial scale, or randomness — and it is no longer controlled. This session is a space to discuss and reflect on our experience of text in digital spaces, and for multi-disciplinary artists to consider how web-based text artworks or interventions could (or already do) fit into their practice.

Structure:

Computer art minus computer: historical and current examples of non-computational algorithmic art and writing, including combinatorial poetry and ASCII art.
Cultivating critical and creative readership: reflection & discussion exercises for “reading like a writer,” applied to creative writing and web-based text art.
Making, sharing, and documenting an interactive text-based web intervention: no prior coding experience required. Includes a walkthrough using Neocities for hosting a static HTML/JavaScript site, and ffmpeg for compressing screen-recording documentation.
(This session will not cover generative AI or LLMs.)

Resources: Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer; Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism; smallfile.ca; kurlyka.neocities.org/campus

Sasha Kurlyka (kurlyka.neocities.org) is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist working with text, participatory performance, web-based choreography, interactive installation, and figurative practice. Born in Ukraine, and having lived in the USA before Germany, they speak three languages somewhat well, and two more as a learner. Their mother-tongue is early-90s eastern-european economic anxiety.

Image: Highly compressed videos of two works by the artist, “bordercontrol.js (ongoing/wip)” and “Berlin Campus 2025”

Part of our Alumn* Network Program

“Seeds are not simply biological matter. They are part of social worlds.” 🌱In our latest interview, SoC alums Lena Pozdn...
07/09/2026

“Seeds are not simply biological matter. They are part of social worlds.” 🌱

In our latest interview, SoC alums Lena Pozdnyakova and Cyrine Ghrissi talk food, ecology, and art through Broudou School, a mobile food commons based in Tunis, Tunisia. We explore seeds as memory and metaphor, the politics of food in Palestine and Tunisia, and why recipes are “living documents” rather than fixed traditions.

Full conversation on School of Commons Substack. Take an e-walk and discover more insights from Cyrine through the online show “Food, Seeds and Solidarity” at Studio106LA — linked in bio.



—

About Broudou School
(Sara Bouzgarrou, Cyrine Ghrissi, Aziza Gorgi, Mary Sarsam, Emily Sarsam, Raouia Briki)

A collective and multidisciplinary learning environment devoted to artistic research on ecology, agriculture, and food, and part of the School of Commons 2025 cohort. Emerging after three years of independent research and publishing through the BROUDOU publication series, Broudou School explores the future of food from a decolonial, ecological, q***r, and feminist perspective. Working alongside researchers, farmers, and artists, the collective organizes workshops, field trips, and experimental residencies and food experiences in collaboration with the artist residency and project space Mouhit in Tunis.

The learning platform acts as a meeting point bridging theory, creative practice, and embodied learning, where members share research and learn from others around the world facing similar challenges in the pursuit of social justice and food sovereignty.

“Seeds are not simply biological matter. They are part of social worlds.” 🌱In our latest interview, SoC alums Lena Pozdn...
07/09/2026

“Seeds are not simply biological matter. They are part of social worlds.” 🌱

In our latest interview, SoC alums Lena Pozdnyakova and Cyrine Ghrissi talk food, ecology, and art through Broudou School, a mobile food commons based in Tunis, Tunisia. We explore seeds as memory and metaphor, the politics of food in Palestine and Tunisia, and why recipes are “living documents” rather than fixed traditions.

Full conversation on School of Commons Substack. Take an e-walk and discover more insights from Cyrine through the online show “Food, Seeds and Solidarity” at Studio106LA — linked in bio.

Back from the summer break — and there’s a lot coming up. Here’s a quick overview, first shared in our Substack newslett...
28/08/2026

Back from the summer break — and there’s a lot coming up. Here’s a quick overview, first shared in our Substack newsletter 👇

💌 Our Long-Form Interview series returns — first up, Cyrine Ghrissi on food as commons + the Broudou School project, in conversation with Lena Pozdnyakova.

📅 Our Autumn/Winter Programme spans a real mix of formats and themes. We kick off with public workshops and peer learning sessions — from unpacking the methods and environments that shape School of Commons, to skill-sharing around text-based computer art, to exploring the language of fashion and wearable aesthetics through a q***ring somatics lens.

Alongside that, we’re hosting a community Town Hall for open conversation on where School of Commons is heading, a feedback session on Counter Care and the relational practices that sustain us under exhausting systems, and — over in Florence — a playful, collaborative gathering exploring commoning through games (open call still open)

All open to the public — please join us 🌱

Link in bio for more 🔗

Making Public Session: Ways & Workings, a public workshop
Ways & Workings (W&W) is a methodology developed by School of ...
28/08/2026

Making Public Session: Ways & Workings, a public workshop

Ways & Workings (W&W) is a methodology developed by School of Commons that brings together the themes, methods, and environments shaping our learning and knowledge spaces. It works as a navigational tool — connecting different sites of work, practice, and research in ways that can be picked up, reshaped, and reused far beyond SoC itself. Our approach is deliberately informal and against-the-grain, focused on the overlooked and underrepresented ways of working that don’t usually get named.

In this session, we’ll explore how W&W has supported practices of self-organisation, and sit with a harder question underneath it: what does it mean to archive the in-between, the ephemeral, and the process — not just the finished outputs?

What to expect:

- An introduction to Ways & Workings — what we mean by method, environment, and theme
- A collective look through submissions from our recent Gathering in Zurich, read through navigational, supplementary, and reflective lenses
- Open discussion on archiving process and the in-between
- Space forl reflection 

 📅 Date: Tuesday, 1 September
 🕒 Time: 18:00 - 19:30 CEST  (90 minutes)
 📍 Location: Zoom (link in bio)

This workshop is open to the public — so bring a colleague, collaborator, or anyone curious about alternative ways of working and organising.

Facilitated by Amy Gowen and Chantelle Lue

   ZHdK

24/07/2026

🌱 Summer Newsletter is live!

From CERN IdeaSquare in Geneva to four days of learning, making, and gathering at Zurich University of the Arts — thank you to everyone who shaped this year’s Gathering with your curiosity, generosity, and care. 💛

We’re heading into summer break now (back 17 August ☀️), but there’s plenty coming when we return: long-form interviews, a Town Hall, and peer-learning sessions.

Plus — our open call for Play for the Commons in Florence, with Alter’azioni Firenze, is live now. Deadline: 7 September.

Read the full newsletter for more info — link in bio 🔗

Introducing: Art in ExileA project by Elvira Koroleva — art critic, curator, and media manager based in Warsaw, and part...
30/06/2026

Introducing: Art in Exile

A project by Elvira Koroleva — art critic, curator, and media manager based in Warsaw, and participant in School of Commons 2026.

Art in Exile explores how artists with disabilities and migration backgrounds contribute to contemporary art and cultural life in Switzerland. Focusing on questions of visibility, access, representation, and belonging, the project examines how lived experiences of disability and displacement reshape artistic practice and challenge dominant cultural narratives.

Through research, interviews, and curatorial inquiry, the project engages with artists, institutions, and communities to identify more inclusive models of cultural participation and support. It also considers how museums, residency programmes, and cultural organisations can create lasting conditions for artistic development and equal participation.

Research questions emerging through the project include:

— How can artists with disabilities and migration backgrounds be more fully recognised as essential contributors to contemporary art ecosystems in Switzerland?

— What curatorial, institutional, and community-based models best support their visibility, agency, and professional development?

— How do experiences of disability and migration influence artistic practice and cultural narratives?

https://schoolofcommons.org/program/labs/art-in-exile

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Zürich

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