Reka. si, which means “the river in you” in English, is a research and arts institute that unleashes arts and its based techniques as innovative tools for participatory research and critical learning.
The institute brings an innovative methodology that unleashes the potential of performing arts and its based methods into the unlearning and learning process of knowledge that validates existing literature while opening new channels of knowledge and accreditation of information from within.
Mission and Objectives
We widen the horizons of intercultural communication and research on sustainability, migration and intercultural cooperation by integrating and using arts and its based techniques as innovative tools to unlearn and learn new means of knowledge generation and intercultural communication that is free of all forms of segregation and profiling.
Main Projects / Activities
We widen the horizons of intercultural communication and research on sustainability, migration and intercultural cooperation by integrating and using arts and its based techniques as innovative tools to unlearn and learn new means of knowledge generation and intercultural communication that is free of all forms of segregation and profiling.
Contact
Full Name: Samar Zughool
Job Title: Director
Head of the organisation: Samar Zughool
Email: samar.zughool@t-2.si
Research Papers
1. RESEARCH
- JUSTICE IN THE 21ST CENTURY; This work is a collection of five papers dedicated to the complex concept of Justice.
- OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE IN THE TIME OF MULTIPLE CRISES; Official Development Assistance (ODA) has been a mechanism for solidarity and for balancing the power dynamics of global politics through financial compensation. This document reflects on the trends accompanied by ODA in the past few years.
2. POLICY BRIEFS
- GENDER RESPONSIVE IMPLEMENTATION OF AGENDA 2030, FOR GENDER EQUALITY IN MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION; The social and labor integration of migrant women is an important starting point for equity and for closing the socio-economic gap between women and men in general.
- HOW TO STRENGHTEN SLOVENIAN FOREIGN POLICY AS AN ADVOCATE FOR PEACE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN PALESTINE is a policy brief where we address the Slovenian foreign policy toward the Palestinian struggle; we identify two streams from 2018 to 2019 and after the government change in 2020 to April 2022.
3. BACKGROUND PAPERS
- GENDER MAINSTREAMING, MIGRATION, INTEGRATION AND AGENDA 2030: Gender mainstreaming was introduced in Slovenia through the Equal Opportunities Between Women and Men Act (2002).
- NON-DISCRIMINATION IN MIGRATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT addresses inequalities among countries, including those related to representation, and calls for the facilitation of orderly and safe migration and mobility of people.
4. CASE STUDIES
- MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE IN SLOVENIA: In this case study we analyzed the measurements for social and labour integration from the lens of gender equality.
- HOW CAN INTERCULTURAL LEARNING CONTRIBUTE TO SUSTAINABLE LIVING is a study case where we elaborated on critical issues where learning through intercultural exchanges may contribute to building inclusive and sustainable societies that are responsive to the Agenda 2030.
ARTICLES
- EXOTICIASTION IN THE DECOLONIAL DISCOUSE – The Clash of Egos “We will Save Them from Us” and “We will Study Them to Upgrade Us.”
- GLOBAL EDUCATION THROUGH AN INTERCULTURAL LENSE
- HOW TO BECOME SESITIVE TO THE DIVERSITY OF OPPRESSION?
- THE ROLE OF FEMINIST FOREIGN POLICY IN SUPPORTING WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH AND NORTH OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
- THE IMPACT OF INTERCULTURAL SENSITIVITY ON OUR LEARNING STYLES
- THE ISLAMIZATION OF GENDER INEQUALITIES?
Participatory Art Practices
SAMA Community Arts: an interactive workshop and a public performative journey that generates new means of communication. The series of workshops has a trailer on YouTube. In the “SAMA Community Arts,” the artist co-creates public performative journeys that deconstruct social communication as free of the enforced binarism of “nation-state” and “state-nation” as both tools and products of colonialism. Using dance, movement and performing arts as a communication form widens the horizon of intercultural communication through critical learning to unpack and unlearn stereotypes and profiling in communication.
NOT your Scheherazade, an experimental performance in the series of creating the 1001 nights of NOT your Scheherazade. The performance is participatory to create new stories of NOT your Scheherazade. After the performance, the audience anonymously shares their feedback of emotions, feelings and thoughts through a digital tool. The artist uses the feedback in their writing of the 1001 Nights of NOT Your Scheherazade.
Decoding Resilience by the SIDE Collective
A road map which is much more than cleansing a shoe!
Based on Angela McRobbie’s book “Feminism and The Politics of Resilience. Essay on Gender, Media and the End of Welfare”. The SIDE artistic collective in Slovenia (Samar Zughool, Sammar Al Kerawe, Safa Hasan, and Behnaz Aliesfahanipour) created a performative journey of cleansing shoes in different locations in Slovenia while decoding and reflecting on the process of social and individual communications that they initiated or encountered.
The process aimed at creating situations of various power dynamics that tackle and explore the absence of boundaries between individuation and collective pressure.
The final exhibition consists of a road map of coding and decoding resilience through the following aspects:
v Systems, societies, politics, history and present; economy, gender, environment, coloniality and neocolonialism.
v Fears as parts of desires
v Desires part of fears
v Collective Pressures as part of an identity
v Individuation as part of the identity
v Slogans as the essence of activism for resilience.
The process lasted around six months and contained three stages with in-depth reflections in between and beforehand.
The first stage is “the veil of ignorance”, which is an experience of collective pressure in the series of performing the cleansing of shoes in various locations in Ljubljana.
The second stage is the “Shades of Accountability.” in this stage, through visual and performing arts, the performers, with more participants from the public, explored the connection of resilience to political structures and the internalisation of privileges and oppression on the one hand and the essence of activism as a form of resilience in another.
The third stage, “Embodying Decoloniality”, opened the space for emancipatory communication through performing arts; the artists create a space to imagine and perform new meanings of communication above the oppressive structure of citizenship.
The community art program was accompanied by the talented photographer Jelena Radusinovic, who documented the street performances.
Red in Resilience
Red in Resilience is a theatrical performance inspired by diverse journeys of “women in or coming from societies influenced by the ideology of Islam in a geographical location named the “Middle East.”
It is a community art performance reflecting on the concept of identities and resilience, visualizing an alternative ground where the state of being and its equal rights are free of enforced labels and roles, tackling the politics of gender, decoloniality, and freedom of our shared presence.
This is not a performance to attend but rather a performance to live!
The Performance is by Samar Zughool (Jordan/ Slovenia), performing artist and community art director, and Behnaz Aliesfahanipour (Iran, Slovenia), visual artist and human rights activist.