A Zine of Ecological Imaginaries

Seminar / WS 2025/26 / UdK Berlin — Studium Generale / Co-led with Ivana Papić

Fluid Dictionary: A Zine of Ecological Imaginaries is a praxis-based multidisciplinary seminar exploring how language shapes ecological futures. At its core lies the Fluid Dictionary — a living, collective glossary in motion that transforms seminar sessions into a space for tracing, reworking, and (re)inventing ecological vocabularies.

Through storytelling, readings, and field encounters, participants examine how language mediates ecological imaginaries — the relations between human and more-than-human worlds — while envisioning alternative planetary futures.

The seminar addresses five interconnected themes: Feral Kinships, Composting Capitalism, Fluid Futures, Displacement & Rootedness, Tentacular Thinking.

Each session combines theoretical readings with experimental word-making through sensory, game-based, and performative methods. Participants collectively generate new lexical entries that challenge anthropocentric norms, contributing to an evolving dictionary.

Field research includes visits to:
•  Allmende-Kontor  — an intercultural community garden on Tempelhofer Feld
•  Floating University — a site for experimental ecological practice
•  Colorama — an independent publishing space dedicated to zine-making as cultural activism

The seminar culminates in a collaboratively produced, riso-printed zine-format glossary, publicly launched in December 2025. The zine functions as both artistic artifact and political act of imagination — documenting speculative terms for futures shaped by more-than-human relations, multispecies kinship, and ecological justice.

Key thinkers engaged: Donna Haraway, Silvia Federici, Madina Tlostanova, Maria Mies, Vandana Shiva, Tao Orion, Katerina Kolozova, Mihaela Miroiu, Krassimira Daskalova, Žarana Papić, Suzana Marjanić, Marija Geiger Zeman, Marina Gržinić, Alexandra Kollontai

Building on: Fluid Dictionary: Stitching the Words in Motion (Studium Planetare, SS25)

8 sessions, October–December 2025, Thursdays 12:00–16:00 
Zine launch: December 2025