Thinking and dwelling in the ‘here and elsewhere’ through language(s) and storytelling, we strive for a future architecture which stretches across cultural, geographical and/or emotional distance, yet remains grounded in everyday communities and the politics of home. We are interested in writing as an experiment in sharing everyday struggles and building collective narratives of care; the role of listening in agency and creating future communities; and translation as a collective act of fictioning.
Reinventing in a decolonial context the language cafe (språkcafé) provided for new immigrants and refugees to practice Swedish, we invert its only rule—that we must write and speak in (and become more) Swedish. Thus the language café becomes a tool for experimenting collectively with a richness and multiplicity of languages and knowledge. With ‘svenskaspråket’ as one expressive option amongst many, we employ language as a tool for empathy beyond concrete linguistic understanding.