Starting again to begin to end

Things have been quiet around here again. In March 2021, we welcomed baby Agatha Tuuli to this world. Her second name Tuuli is Finnish and means ‘wind’, which so far seems to fit her character. I’ve been on a six-months-babybreak and am now slowly returning to work. This time, I took it quite serious with the break and did not get involved in too many other activities and projects. Common(s)Lab has been on a break with public events since corona started, with small exceptions such as an online reading group and an outdoor gift market last year, but we managed to publish a zine about the past three years from 2017-2020 (find the pdf here).

In May/June this year, I’ve been to an online festival on Rural Commons, where some events took place physically in Rovereto and other parts of the Alps, which was really interesting particularly regarding the question about the diverse rural-urban relationships that unfold in a continuum often unseen and undiscussed in the commoning discourse. The Urban Commons Research Group, which I am a part of, has continued working hard on a collective handbook, which shall be published soon. More info is the to follow.

The title of this post is ‘starting again to begin to end’, and this is something I would like to focus on in the next months: to write, read, and analyse, in order to finalise this project and thesis by the end of 2022. I am anxcious to see how things come together, share all of my collective findings, and about what comes next when this project comes to an end…

Image: Swans by the Landwehrkanal (DW enteignen – we had a bunch of elections recently in Berlin & Germany, amongst other (electing a new parliament/Bundestag), there was a citizen referendum on a law for the expropriation of the larger housing companies such as Deutsche Wohnen (DW) in order to return apartments to public property and fight real estate speculation in the city – and it won! 🙂