Six houses in Ségou: reading Mbembe from the ground

This lecture on 16 April 2026 at 2:30 pm, starting from the exhibition Things, Soil, Space: Ségou, Mali, reflects on Achille Mbembe’s notion of “general ecology”, as developed in La Communauté terrestre, through the observation of six houses in Ségou. From this perspective, everyday objects can be understood as actors in domestic space. In many homes in southern Mali, they are placed and used close to the ground. From this position, they participate in broader gestures and ways of moving the body within spaces of dwelling. Attending to objects within this ecological fabric, where bodies, gestures, words and materials intertwine, opens a view onto the aesthetics of contemporary living spaces and onto particular ways of inhabiting land and relating to the living.

Lecture by Elvira Pietrobon.
Elvira Pietrobon is an architect and holds a PhD in urbanism. Based in Mali since 2018 and a member of the Mieruba Art Center in Ségou and the agro-cultural centre Le Lac de Lassa in Bamako, her work examines the interaction between peasant practices and processes of urbanisation, opening perspectives to rethink ways of inhabiting from the vantage point of Mali across domestic, urban and territorial scales.

Organization
Antonio di Campli, professor of the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning-DIST and Camilla Rondot with the support of Saman Farhadi.

For more information, please contact Antonio Di Campli and Camilla Rondot.