Author: Trojan Horse

A Week On An Island With Trojan Horse – The Summer School Reader

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A Week On An Island With Trojan Horse – The Summer School Reader

Edited by: Ott Kagovere, Hanan Mahbouba, Jaroslav Toussaint, Arlene Tucker, Andre Vicentini, and Tommi Vasko
Texts by: Hanan Mahbouba, Marianna Maruyama and Arlene Tucker, Jaroslav Toussaint, Andre Vicentini, and Tommi Vasko

105 × 180 mm
134 pages
Edition: 500
Graphic design: Ott Kagovere and Keert Viiart
Published by Trojan Horse
ISBN 978-952-65706-0-0
2025

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Welcome to the Trojan Horse Summer School publication! It’s our pleasure to have you visit the summer school through book format. 

This book—just like the summer schools—is a collection of personal memories, reflections, and interpretations. Rather than documenting the thematics that arose, and what happened in the summer schools so far, our aim is to talk about the phenomena around and in between events.

Summer schools are always intense experiences. We live together outside for a week, sharing the usually quite sunny weather, as well as the everyday maintenance routines: preparing breakfast, doing the dishes, warming up the sauna, and taking turns organising workshops. After a couple of days, the group usually feels comfortable with each other. When the week ends, it feels sad to say goodbye. For a couple of weeks, the group chats stay active with pictures from the island and from home. And then slowly, everyday life takes over, and the intensity fades. Still every now and then, even after years of silence, a message might appear in the old group chat. Random memories from the island are likely to pop up just as heart, animal, and celestial emojis are attached to the message.

You can buy the book directly from us here. The book will be available in selected bookstores soon!

Trojan Horse Summer School 2025

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TROJAN HORSE SUMMER SCHOOL 2025
“The Day After Amnesia”
August 4–10, 2025
Bengtsår, Finland

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Thank you to all the participants who joined this year’s summer school with lots of generosity and engagement. Thanks to Bengtsår island for welcoming us once more and to the T.H. working group that helped the week unfold with care.

During the 10 years of organising summer schools we have probably forgotten many things. This summer again we unlearned and re-learned how to be designers, facilitate collective living and pose urgent questions. Certain things remain solid every time: the curiosity for learning together and the will to become more aware bodies that foster solidarity.

We forgot old patterns and departed from the island back to the mainland with new friends, energy, and inspiration.

The Day After Amnesia was a collective experiment to leave behind the patterns and burdens of the [fossil-capitalist, colonial, extractivist] present and to try-out alternative ways to live collectively as artists, designers and architects beyond the status quo. This year’s program unfolded from a question: if you, your community, or the planet we inhabit were able to forget something in order to re-learn, what would that be? The proposal to forget certain habits, social norms or personal behaviours, was a trigger to make space for prototyping, embracing and putting in practice political and utopian speculations from our different perspectives. We believe that togetherness and mutual care are ways to collectivise and disentangle our individual struggles.

The Trojan Horse Summer School took place as a camp on Bengtsår island in southern Finland. The location, remote from ordinary life, is an inviting context to re-imagine our daily lives, rhythms and explore different approaches to unlearning as a way to resist, build resilience and envision radical futures.

The themes we addressed and explored together relate to:
#Relational social system — technological infrastructure
#Self-organization, Commons and peer-to-peer learning
#Rituals, Inhabiting practices and role-playing games

Trojan Horse Winter School 2025

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Cover picture for The Trojan Horse Winter School 2025: "Trans-local Social Organisms" White and orange text on dark blue background.

TROJAN HORSE WINTER SCHOOL 2025
“Trans-local Social Organisms”
February 6–9, 2025
Kolari, Finland

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The Trojan Horse Winter School arose from a desire to reflect on what it meant for collectives and situated practices to exist as networks across borders.

The winter school approached collective practices as social organisms and reflected on potential trajectories, research paths, and projects such organisms (Trojan Horse and others) could take in the coming year(s).

Structured as a seminar, the Winter School blended moments of learning and reflection—such as workshops and roundtable discussions—with outdoor activities and time for rest. How could care, degrowth, and sufficiency be embraced in creative practices? Which critical tools or approaches could be developed in order to explore alternative lifestyles? How could ethics be mobilized through the use of spatial, artistic, and speculative practices? How could different publics be engaged and trans-local networks maintained after the age of social media?

Trojan Horse Summer Retreat 2024

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TROJAN HORSE SUMMER RETREAT 2024
August 5–11, 2024
Bengtsår, Finland

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The Summer Retreat 2024
This year we’ll focused on the needs of making spaces for alternative and collective education. We did that by working on fostering the political and the collective. Deconstructing ideas of efficiency focusing on straight forward career paths, and established education mechanisms in design art and architecture.

With the retreat, our aim was to create an environment for self sustainable open education and peer-shared experience where participants can unwind, build meaningful connections, and openly share the everyday challenges and questions we found urgent at that moment. The week-long immersive program was meant to become a relaxing space to spend time together, encourage experimentation and promote a profound understanding of collectivism, care, and shared knowledge.

Trojan Horse aimed to hold space for equality, and invited multi generational cooperation, based on safer space practices and intersectionality principles. 

The island became a chance experience to take a break from everyday struggles with low threshold and in a self sustainable open education and peer-shared experience.

The Location
Located on the island of Bengtsår.

About Trojan Horse
We (the Trojan Horse) have been organizing activities, including summer schools and gatherings on the island since 2016. Trojan Horse warmly invites designers, artists, architects, theorists, curators, and all individuals with a passion for these disciplines to join us.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Costs_
80€ + self organized return trip to Santala costs + possible camping gear, (let us know if this is a problem, we might be able to help with some things.)

Includes: Meals and support at Bengtsår (everything, except camping gear, see more below)

Traveling to Santala_
Approximately 30€ from Helsinki with VR – self booking, the sooner the better. 

Choose a connection that arrives at Santala on Monday at 13:14, (the connection leaves from Helsinki at 11:35). We return with the train that departs from Santala on Sunday at 13:44 (the connection arrives to Helsinki at 15:40).

What we provide_
4 meals a day, sauna, possibility to borrow kayaks and rowing boats, sport opportunities (football/basketball field and balls), fishing sticks, boat trip to another island, possible trip to Hanko (extra costs).

Accommodation_
On the island there’s a few designated camping spots where we camp, with a shed covered facility where we have electricity and tables. There’s showers on the Sauna building and the city’s wifi network. You can read more about Bengtsår island and facilities here.

Schedule & Program_
We will make a more detailed program for the week together on the island. The daily schedule will follow a daily rhythm below, but not all sharing moments will be full of program. There will be plenty of time to relax and hang out.

Breakfast_  9:00 – 10:00
Check-in_  10:00 – 10:30 
Possible sharing moment_  10:30–12:00
Lunch_  12:00 – 13:00
Hike & Reading / Digestion_  13:00 – 15:00
Possible sharing moment 2_  15:00 – 17:00
Dinner_  17:00 – 18:00
Possible sharing moment 3_ 18:00 – 19:00
Sauna_  20:00 →

Nylon Borders

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Nylon Borders – L.A.R.P.
Two-day workshop by Trojan Horse at Luonnos project space, Helsinki
Tuesday November 22, and Thursday November 24, 2022 17-20

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Nylon Borders was a Live Action Role-Play (L.A.R.P.) exploring questions related to socio-economic class and identity in the field of design. Through asking and addressing questions related to everyday struggles and inherent positions of power, the Nylon Borders L.A.R.P. explored how inequality is produced and reinforced in education, media and everyday work of designers.

As a process, the L.A.R.P. framed an possibility for design practitioners to critically explore identity and power from a creative and safe place of suspension and play. Practicing the suspension of the determined or judging self, allowed us to listen to others, and better unfold the knowledge within the group. 

Within the discourse of design, we questioned what kind of knowledge is accepted, and whose voices are properly heard. We understood that the possibility to define how a more desirable future reality should look like, must be filtered through an intersectional lens of personal awareness of privilege and power. The L.A.R.P. aimed to explore how life experiences – as existential and material vulnerabilities – can be better taken into an account in design culture and education.

Nylon Borders L.A.R.P. consisted of two intensive workshop days that made space for researching, writing and playing, as well as documenting the process and debriefing collectively what happened.

Workshop 1 – Tuesday November 22, 17:00–20:00
– Introduction to Live Action Role-Play
– Discussing the background reading
– World-building through creating characters and framing the history and back-story of the L.A.R.P.

Workshop 2 – Thursday November 24, 17:00–20:00
– NYLON borders L.A.R.P.
– Debriefing the L.A.R.P.
– Reviewing the collectively produced documentation (notes, texts, drawings and photos.)

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Nylon Borders L.A.R.P. was a continuation of Trojan Horse collective’s research on role-playing as a research tool. We have previously organized two significant role-plays Nörttimuotoilusymposium in 2017 and Foreign Affects and in 2018. In 2019 Kaisa, Ott and Tommi edited, wrote and designed the book ‘Borrowing Positions – Role-playing Design and Architecture’ in which role-playing is framed as a research tool for design and architecture. The motivation behind these initiatives was to see if L.A.R.P. could function as a method and experimental platform for testing out ideas designers and architects are not brave enough (or able) to voice in daily practice. We asked: Could it be possible to participate in discussions openly and without the fear of ridicule and failure? Who or what shapes the roles of designers and architects in a contemporary society? How can we illuminate the power structures and responsibility behind taking, building or defining roles as designers and architects? How flexible are these roles?

Trojan Horse Summer School 2022 – Reconnection: ​​Collecting, revisiting, gathering and curriculum building through interdisciplinary practices

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Trojan Horse Summer School 2022: Reconnection – ​​Collecting, revisiting, gathering and curriculum building through interdisciplinary practices

Trojan Horse Summer School 2022
“Reconnection – ​​Collecting, revisiting, gathering and curriculum building through interdisciplinary practices”
August 8 – 14, 2022
With Kaisa Karvinen, Hanan Mahbouba, Marianna Maruyama, Jaroslav Toussaint, Arlene Tucker, Tommi Vasko, and Andre Vicentini

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This year’s summer school built a platform for reconnection.

There were brief daily presentations and an exercise/reflection related to the themes we have explored over the years. We reflected on what has changed, what has happened, and how the research subjects were/weren’t affected during this time.

This year’s summer school was also an opportunity to look beyond the role of design research and artistic practices in the context of current situations. We aimed to experiment in autonomous education looking for ways to make meaningful and revolutionary design research and artistic practices in the context of today.

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(Re)configuring Territories Summer School 2025“Ecologies of Trust”

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(Re)configuring Territories Spring School 2022
“Speculative Educational Institutions and Cities of the Near Future”
With Linda Boļšakova METASITU (Liva Dudareva and Eduardo Cassina) and Ingrid Svanfeldt
June 13 – 19, 2022

(Re)configuring Territories research programme continued as a week-long Spring School on June 13 – 19, 2022. 

The spring school explored the politics of collective imagination in the midst of the socio-political and technological upheavals. How do the changing perceptions of territorial relationships, the experiences of belonging to a place, the multiple spatial layers of history, and their connection to human and non-human agencies shape abilities to imagine futures? What are the possible roles and structures of educational institutions that could develop the necessary skills and knowledge of political imagination?

The Spring School consisted of three overlapping workshops which together formed a School for Speculative Environmental Education.

Read more on the (Re)configuring Territories website.

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Live Action Role-playing the City
LARP (Live Action Role-Play) -workshop
June 3–5, 2022
Narva, Eastern Estonia

During the weekend Narva unfoldes as a series of spaces, events, and creatures. The cityscape gives a frame for the exercises and at the same time, the exercises become active players in the city.

Live-Action Role-playing the City was a weekend-long workshop that explored performative artistic research in the context of urban surroundings. How can cities be approached by means of LARPs? How can LARP exercises be used for questions dealing with the city? What kind of power structures emerge?

In the workshop, participants read texts, built scenarios, wrote characters and did performative walking exercises in the context of Narva.

Read more on the (Re)configuring Territories website.

Trojan Horse Summer School 2021 – “Fire of Talk, Action and Care”

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Trojan Horse Summer School 2021 cover picture for the website
Trojan Horse Summer School 2022 – “The fire of talk, action and care”

Trojan Horse Summer School 2021
“The fire of talk, action and care”
August 2 – 8, 2021
With Dorothy Zablah, Mercedes Balarezo Fernández, Sara Kaaman, Kaisa Karvinen, Roby Redgrave, Jaroslav Toussaint and Tommi Vasko

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The 2021 Trojan Horse summer school gathered around the topics of fire. For us, fire is an energy, an element, a metaphor, a spatial material entity and a historic setting for holding dialogue. 

During the first half of the summer school week Dorothy Zablah and Mercedes Balarezo Fernández hosted workshops about care and timelessness as resistance. These magical explorations included meditation with Ceremonial Cacao, exercises with voice and body connection, and collective non-linear sense making.

In the second half of the week the Trojan Horse board took time to think about how work and organize our collaboration now and in the future. We also hosted the Trojan Horse annual meeting and invited the Trojan Horses of the previous years to return to Bengtsår for the weekend.

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“The fire of talk, action and care”

In the time of human beings, fire and its craft have been integral to the livelihood, survival and reproduction of human life, societies, cultures and a shared understanding of the future. Today however, fire contains heavier narratives. From the ongoing burning of fossil-fuels, to seasonal bushfires beyond human control, fire has become a destroyer as much as it is a builder, enabler and sustainer of life. Fire is also a signifier of emotional and physical intensity, a force for the raging social and environmental injustices the world faces. In our processes of rebuilding and relearning, fire can become a means to gather and a reminder of the importance of our relationships and reproductive work.

In the book The End of Man A Feminist Counterapocalypse, writer and researcher Joanna Zylinska asks: 

“[I]f unbridled progress is no longer an option, what kinds of coexistences and collaborations do we want to create in its aftermath?”

In striving for more caring co-existences, the 2021 Trojan Horse summer school was about the fire we can create together in the act (and scenography) of coming together to talk. Here our aim was to use fire as the center for our action, dialogue, democracy and communality.
The summer school saw the need to strengthen architects, artists and designers’ underrepresented but fundamental skills of inter- communication and dialogue, building upon our knowledge and definition of what it means to work creatively now and in the future. In this summer school we kindle the fire of our fields, and work to understand art, architecture and design and their potential to become more effective as intersectional, decolonial and anti-racist practices.

(Re)configuring Territories Spring School 2021

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(Re)configuring Territories Spring School 2021
With Francisco Martínez and Andra Aaloe,
Maria Muuk, and MYCKET (Mariana Alves Silva, Katarina Bonnevier and Thérèse Kristiansson)
May 31 – June 6, 2021

(Re)configuring Territories programme Spring School 2021 took place during the Covid-19 pandemic.

We were very happy to be able to host participants both at Narva and online. Three simultaneous workshops took place mentored by anthropologist Francisco Martínez and urbanist Andra Aaloe, graphic designer, baker and writer Maria Muuk, and architecture, art and design practice MYCKET (Mariana Alves Silva, Katarina Bonnevier and Thérèse Kristiansson).

Read more on the (Re)configuring Territories website.