BIP - "The apple is a migrant, too. Apply puppetry to the cultural history of migration".

18 November 2024

EUniWell
International
International

The University of Konstanz is organizing the BIP (hybrid intensive program) "The apple is a migrant, too. Apply puppetry to the cultural history of migration" as part of the EUniWell alliance.

Pommier avec des pommes en premier plan et un vaste champs de pommiers derrière — apple orchard © Freepik‎

Course description

All around Lake Constance, apple trees grow. Here, they are a symbol and the embodiment of home. Nothing could be more homely than apples – and nothing could be more wrong than this sentence. Genetically, all apples stem from the Tien Shan mountains sitting right on the border separating China from Kazakhstan. For millions of years, they have grown there in large forests. Spread by bears, silk route merchants, Greek and Roman soldiers, the apples slowly moved westwards as well as northwards. With the apples, ideas and stories migrated. They mixed with the stories of the peoples they met on their way. And so did the people who grew, harvested and sold them.

This course will explore migration stories and cultural theories of migration with the apple as protagonist. It will combine seminar readings and discussions with theatrical exercises taken from object and puppet theatre: we will mainly work with paper as a highly flexible medium. The central questions are: Who narrates migration? Do you just tell the kind of sequence of events that we call a 'story'? Somebody moved from A to B. While moving, he or she passed through C. Whenever in C... etcetera. Or can the narrative itself be a migration? And, if so, how?

The seminar will be beautifully located in Blumenfeld Castle, a cultural center surrounded by apple plantations. Moreover, Blumenfeld offers different types of rooms and spaces: the open space of the courtyard in contrast to the secluded space of an 18th century lock-up cell. The blooming garden is atmospherically completely distinct from the sparse space of the wooden roof truss. From a 1990s wedding room you move directly into a 16th century living quarter.