Interspecies care options and the Second Shift

What is the second shift and what happens when it ends?

We invite you to a meeting and workshop for children and adults – an opportunity to relax together after work.

What is the second shift and what happens when it ends? What kind of work awaits us after work? What do people do and what do the animals we employ and exploit do? What do we dream about and why do we work in our sleep? What do animals in cages and pens dream about? And who has to work so that we can sleep? What does it mean to truly care for ourselves and others, and what is the status of care in a system based on exploitation, growth, undervalued work? And why is it important to see the connections between caring for people, animals or plants? How can we connect hands, paws, tentacles and claws together?

Come to an interspecies gathering at the Prague Pasture to create, talk and care together.
There will be a creative programme for children with artist Kristina Fingerland, focusing on how we can care for others through working with textiles and stories. With the collective Second Shift, we will be telling and reading stories that show the cracks in the current system and offer stories of a different, more empathetic way of functioning.

Refreshments will be provided on site (and other refreshments made from local produce can be purchased), as well as materials for making.

The Second Shift is a feminist web magazine. It is published on the first Monday afternoon of every month. Second Shift aims to present feminist perspectives on society that emphasize social justice, postcolonialism, and queer experience. Another starting point is a suspicion of hierarchies, whether they express the superiority of men over women, culture over nature, reason over emotion, or humans over animals and the natural world around them. The second shift seeks to explore a world beyond artificial dualities. More about the project at www.druhasmena.cz

MgA. Kristina Fingerland, (*1991), has long been involved in her practice on the topics of sustainability and family, ethics and ecology. She enjoys working with text, textiles, drawing and autobiographical elements. The artist actively exhibits and teaches. Kristina studied illustration and graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she also completed an internship in the sculpture studio. She also studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and was on a study placement at the Glasgow School of Arts in Scotland in the studio of painting and printing.

The Pasture is a community garden with an animal sanctuary. Pastvina strives to be a synonym for a safe space where community means a community of people, animals, plants and things. It believes in recycling to the core – building principally from waste materials, giving space and care to almost 300 animals that no one else cared for, and treating people the same way: homeless women, people with all kinds of disadvantages find employment here.
More about the project at zahradapastvina.cz.

The event is held in Czech language. Free entry.

Directions to the Pastvina Community Garden
Address.
The easiest way to get there is by public transport from Letňany station (line C), from there take bus lines to the Vinořský hřbitov stop (direct lines 159, 378, or with a transfer lines 195, 201, and others). From the Vinořský hřbitov stop, it is about a 5-minute walk – head towards the Vinořský brook and Cukrovarský pond, crossing between them to V Podskalí Street, which soon ends at the pedestrian path. Follow it and you will see the sign Pastvina. As you walk up the hill, you will come out at the main gate into the Pastvina Community Garden.

This event is part of the Living Beyond Their Names series of dramaturgy by Eva Kot’átek (Institute of Anxiety), a series of public events of workshops, discussions, performances, etc. that aim to introduce children to the world of animals, plants, fungi and other non-human inhabitants of our world and to think together about more meaningful and sensitive ways of living together.

Photo documentation (c) Karolína Matušková

Graphics (c) Kristina Fingerland

The event is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Prague City Hall and the State Culture Fund of the Czech Republic.