Workshop Call - Building a New World
Building a New World: A Report on Today. An Online Workshop on Senses, Bodies, and Democracies
When: Friday, 11th December 2026; 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM GMT
Last date to register: 30th November 2026
In order to have sustained conversations, we are limiting the workshop to maximum of ten people on a first come, first serve basis
To join, sign up by emailing us at: Aishwarya.Walvekar@warwick.ac.uk or Mouli.Banerjee.1@warwick.ac.uk
The year 2026 marked uprisings across the world led by youth against the decaying systems of governance across countries like India, Brazil, France, Serbia, to name a few. Younger generations who were relegated by many to being occupied with appearances and social media were on the streets, putting their bodies at the stake, and demanding accountability from the governments.
The parameters of who gets to put their bodies out there in the protest and how, is indeed a political question but also a deeply visceral, affective and embodied act. Political participation looks different to different people: protesting in streets, educating, agitating, and organising through social media or in the community, and sometimes even over arguments at the family dinner table. As right wing populists, authoritarians, and fascist leaders clenched their fists around the marginalised, we experience our politics emotionally. Fear becomes a discourse in legal frames of censorship, and also manifests in the literal chilling of the spine, the pit in the stomach, the numbing of the body and brain as we witness global news. Simultaneously, there is also hope, a renewed sense of community, a protest in another country infusing enough optimism in a WhatsApp group chat, and an optimism necessary in the continued fight against fascism.
We live in times that are constantly recorded, consumed, and transmuted. As our bodies live through and participate in these struggles for democracy, we also get to reimagine our relationship to the community, the state, and to ourselves through these archives of our emotions.
In this workshop, bring us your archive of emotions. Let鈥檚 build a new world together by imagining myriad ways in which today鈥檚 fragments could be stitched together for the future.
- How did a very real survival instinct of fear transform into an act of courage for you?
- How did you speak up even as fear gripped around?
- How did you show up even when it felt meaningless?
- What materials did you use to transform your emotions of hopelessness, fear, sadness, anger and such into acts of holding your ground?
Drawing on Slavoj Zizek鈥檚 (Liberal Fascism, 2026) critique of the Left鈥檚 intellectual laziness with the usage of 鈥榝ascism鈥� and provocation to rethink defined categories to navigate the challenges of the present, we call on you to bring to the workshop fragments and scraps that have held you through the hopelessness of our contemporary times and transformed into acts where you 鈥榮howed up鈥�.
Bring us everything: your photos, videos, notes, writings, audio notes, field notes, artworks, posters, (anonymised, if you wish) screenshots, reposts, readings, anecdotes! The only catch: all original media must belong to you, and all readings or reposts must be citable.
Together, we will create our Report on Today, a collaborative product and a reminder to build the future together while reporting on the present and critically reflecting on it.
In order to have sustained conversations, we are limiting the workshop to maximum of ten people on a first come, first serve basis. To join, sign up by emailing us at: Aishwarya.Walvekar@warwick.ac.uk or Mouli.Banerjee.1@warwick.ac.uk .