Islands of Conviviality

Islands as a way of life, as a way of learning.

In early autumn 2026, a small research procession departs from Split, the ancient Roman coastal city, and crosses the seas between Brač, Hvar, and Vis: three islands that each, in their own way, host ways of living away from the mainland. We eventually arrive on Vis, an insular territory with a deep history of refuge and autonomous actions.

We travel together also to explore the legacy of Ivan Illich (born September 4th 1926), a Croatian-Austrian thinker who, through his best-known writings—Medical Nemesis, Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality—posed generative challenges to the industrial-modern institutions that still presume themselves to be ‘indispensable.’ Illich insisted on environmental health, offered a vocabulary for institutional alterity, and emphasised the importance of technology as convivial tools rather than as deterministic fate. Illich’s concept of “conviviality” denotes tools and institutions that serve people, not the other way around, thus strengthening their autonomy, mutuality, and ability to cooperate freely.

In the year of his 100th birthday, we gather in and between places that shaped his life and thinking, as only “one month after his birth he was put on a train, and then on a ship and brought to the Island of Brač.”

Now, amid collapsing international orders, infrastructures of “openness,” technopolitical fascism penetrating all spheres of life, and a climate that is changing everything—many of Illich’s questions land with new urgencies. Islands of Conviviality treats these not as the inheritance or heroism of one thinker but as situated invitations to think and act with hosts, guests, visitors, local humans and nonhumans, landscapes, ecologies, others. Each island carries Illichian threads:

Brač — Plenty and Remedy. Around the agroecological project Divja Herbal Crafts OPG of Armina Pilav, her family and other Earth companions, and the centenary day of 4 September (Illich’s birthday): land practices, herbal knowledge, foraging, fermentation, embodied non-institutional care, and silence as a commons. Medical Nemesis unfolds as a walking itinerary from Bobovišća N.M. led by Damir Ugljen and Armina Pilav then in Divja kitchen and garden, with sensorial communing process ‘Hands in Food’, eaten from a shared table. ‘Hands in Food’ will lead us to the next occasions of conviviality, a collective morning visit to the Hermitage Blaca and at the sunset an immersive Soundscape in Vičja Vala Bay produced and shared with the public by sound artist and musician Manja Ristić.

Hvar — Heritage and Holiday. The Adriatic as an archive of experimentation in decommodified pleasure: what do people come to islands to find? What does visitation, also as tourism, amplify and erase? Who gets to rest and play together? Decommodified pleasure excursion through the streets of Stari Grad and a workshop where we ask “what does a summer cost?”

Vis — Tools and Autonomy. At ISSA on the hill above Komiža: Solar conviviality as energy, water, communications, solar-powered web hosting. Sharing tools for an intermittent internet, a diurnal digitality. What infrastructures of autonomy might look like against a world of enshittified platforms, mega data centers and proprietary clouds. 

The sea is itself part of the program hosting the Sea Symposium, a set of slow, processual research crossings in which each boat becomes a site of situated, contextual unlearning and learning by co-doing, of specific crew conviviality, of re-schooling in new frameworks of reading and responding, and of learning a conviviality in a temporality different from that of land. We are sailing and co-learning with Nautilus Adriaticus, Quelili and Ermenautica and their captains Morana Miljanović, Dennis Schep and Matteo Aria.

The Islands of Conviviality programme runs at four scales:

Public — everyone welcome, no registration needed.

Public, limited participation — open to all, but with limited seats. You will need to register, and sign-up details will appear here in the coming weeks.

For participants and volunteers — the on-water days between islands and the Sea Symposium sessions on board. The boats hold only so many people, and the project’s slow, research-processional spirit asks us to keep things gentle and unhurried. 

A small number of volunteer programme-contribution slots remain for those willing to lead a short reading, listening, cooking, or making sessions on boats during one of the crossings or island days. To propose something, please write to laulotti@gmail.com, kkenjar@gmail.com, and ja@jamieallen.com with a short note on who you are and what you would like to contribute to the processional. To be added to our small notifications list for info or spots as it becomes available, please write to the three listed.

By invitation — closed to the public. Small, in-the-room working sessions for specific invited and collaborating communities.

We continue to seek partnerships, support, boats, and connectivity that might further enhance the journey, its topics, and its reach. If you’d like to help, in any form at all, please simply reach out.

Program

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---