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| transiency_maja_kuzmanovic [2016-12-01 11:55] – maja | transiency_maja_kuzmanovic [2017-01-13 00:03] – maja |
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| This page is the informal log of my transiency process, in reverse chronological order. | This page is the informal log of my transiency process, in reverse chronological order. |
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| | ==== January 2017 ==== |
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| | === Week 48 === |
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| | In the first hours of 2017 I glimpsed [[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/video/2017/jan/12/australia-day-lamb-ad-tackles-indigenous-land-rights-and-immigration-video|Australia]] as I had previously imagined it, before I ever set foot across its quarantined border. A group of people - likely a conglomeration of several beach parties - had invented or spontaneously organised a game loosely based on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoits|quoits]] which involved covering a tree with looped glow-sticks. The tree was quite tall and the people in varying stages of drunkenness, so few of the glowing loops would reach their target. Successful throws received gaudy cheers, the ones that failed were jovially encouraged to try again. The tree was silently glowing in fading rainbow colours, surrounded by convivial echoes of laughter and multilingual conversations. The very air suffused with the ease of communal wellbeing and a relaxed, non-competitive playfulness. Diversity, social inclusion, non-judgmental collaboration, all qualities that the EU is explicitly aspiring to were playing out in front of me, on the other side of the globe. I knew it wouldn’t last, which only made this fleeting sensation of kinship with total strangers even more precious. |
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| | {{::vv-fest.jpg?650 |}} |
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| | Kinship, kinfolk, kindred spirits, kith and kin have been a leitmotif of my first week in 2017. The first couple of days I luxuriated in the verdant garden of the Blue House, in the company of Franscesca Da Rimini (GashGirl, doll yoko, liquid_nation, VNS Matrix...) and [[https://medium.com/@alkan|Alkan Chipperfield]], two of my favourite Aussies, both who I would consider kin. The remainder of the week I spent in Melbourne in the company of my extended family in-law, other kin, celebrating the "Vv Festival", which included several birthday parties, cocktails, pub-food, fine dining and backyard barbecues. |
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| | In between the festivities I was happy to begin exploring Melbourne as a potential nomadic dwelling. A warm midnight walk along the Yarra river and the [[https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/|botanic gardens]], together with the abundance of the [[http://southmelbournemarket.com.au/|South Melbourne market]] seem to hold a lot of promise… I’ve been skeptical of the infamous hipster cafe culture, but I’m beginning to experience other virtues - I laughed at myself while ordering a "decaf short mac" or an "iced matcha latte" and I can’t help but admit that - as someone who gets heart palpitations from coffee but likes fluffy drinks - I truly enjoyed the experience (of the drinks not the terminology). Beyond sophisticated food and drinks, I’m looking forward to delving deeper into the local geography and culture next week, when most of the family departs to other cities and continents. |
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| | In the rare pauses between being with family, I’ve often caught myself pondering FoAM as a kinship network, a "clanarchy" of sorts. I’ve heard most foamies (and some of their blood-relatives) describe themselves as part of the "FoAM family". Even if we don’t work together for years, there often remains a sense of belonging, which doesn’t seem to fade. When we meet new people, there are some who 'feel' like long lost relatives, while others don’t. In some subtle ways we’re akin (pun intended) whether or not we work together. Sometimes collaboration can get in the way of kinship, sometimes it enhances it… |
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| | I’m curious to explore how (and if) the FoAM network could function as a kinship network. In a way we already do. However, it’s not clear to me what would be required to maintain such a network when it isn’t bound by "work", but rather by likemindedness and care for each other. It might make sense to explore and experiment with diverse forms of kinship which could enrich and expand the FoAM network. I can’t yet clearly articulate what I mean by "FoAM as a kinship network", but I think it’s something worth contemplating. |
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| | {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/32070393112/}}\\ |
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| | ==== December 2016 ==== |
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| | === Week 47 === |
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| | {{::img_5072.jpg?300 |}}It’s been a while since I was involved in a full-blown family Christmas celebration. This year in Glenelg I was fully immersed, albeit occasionally distracted by jetlag, motion sickness, heart palpitations and painful lymphedema. My body felt like a marionette, wobbling on the strings of willpower, circling around breakfasts, lunches and dinners with extended family and family friends. Food and cooking (and cleaning) for days on end. Mountains of gifts, mountains of waste. Balancing on the fine line between generosity and consumption. With my socialist understanding of the spirit of the holiday, I put myself in service and helped where I was needed, which sometimes included simply getting out of the way. It reminded me of birthdays in the Kuzmanovic clan, which often numbered over thirty or forty people. Navigating such occasions is strangely similar to the state of mind I associate with being in the flow on my own. The sense of self dissolves into a state of alert attention. I felt like a leaf carried along the strong currents of a turbulent river. If I resist it in any way, it could become unbearable, but if I just let things happen, boisterous storms passed over me and through me… A good practice in how to avoid feeling "peopled out". From sunrise to sunset, the house was echoing with running feet of the young and old, a crying baby, children’s high pitched, high decibel voices and rapid fire of simultaneous conversations in a myriad of Aussie accents. When I’d return from a sunset walk along the beach, the soundtrack changed to all-night doof-doof of bad music and drunken destruction inflicted by our neighbours. |
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| | As the temperature cooled from 41.5C to 19C, facilitated by a storm of monsoon proportions, the family commitments thinned out and we could venture further afield, meet friends and collaborators in a pleasant mix of socialising and work-talk. Aside from reminiscing on times gone by, resonating themes included trans-local kinship networks, futures and transitions, various approaches to collapse, uncertainty and adaptation, life-writing and body-writing. Our [[Doing nothing]] is still intriguing to most, especially on organisational scale. |
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| | New Year’s Eve began for me with writing in the garden, basking in the warm glow of the last hour of sunlight in 2016. After a solid roast, Nik and I walked into the sunset and into the new year (most of the time against the current of crowds). It’s an important transition point for the two of us. The end of FoAM’s decade as a structurally funded "kunstenwerkplaats". We still have some funding obligations to fulfil in 2017, but the bulk of the work and responsibility was carried off our shoulders by the wind blowing from the Southern Ocean. |
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| | We walked along the edge of the water for hours, fuelled by whisky and smoked almonds. In the distance, the horizon a deep black expanse extending into infinity. Closer to the shore, the water lightened to a myriad of greys, continuously churned by the rolling waves and fast moving clouds. Above it all hung the southern sky, with its (for me) unfamiliar constellations… Around us the darkness was broken by fire twirlers, salt lamps, flash lights and the comical dances of disembodied glow-sticks, attached to limbs, necks and heads of humans, dogs and trees. The atmosphere was convivial and festive, yet hushed by the rumble of the ocean and the wind. We were surrounded by people, all moving but going nowhere in particular. |
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| | I wanted to meet the new year walking. We passed solitary meditators, intimate couples and small beach parties. The fireworks shot up, people stopped and cheered. we kept walking. Invoking our new year’s resolution to leave the burdens of the past behind and move forward, together, into whatever the new year may bring... |
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| | {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31177510074/}}\\ |
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| | === Week 46 === |
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| | A week of travel and transit, from from the northern to southern hemisphere, from winter to summer, from work life to family life, from the stillness of our Brussels apartment to the syncopated fluttering of the Blue House in Glenelg. In between Nik and I found ourselves celebrating 'winter' solstice in Singapore, one degree north of the equator, where duration of day and night remain nearly constant throughout the year. When the sun began returning to the northern hemisphere, at 6:44PM (local time) we were eating an Omakase (お任せ) dinner. Omakase, "I’ll leave it up to you". In one word, it intertwines trust, artistry, skill, spontaneity, grace, hospitality, lightness, deliciousness, flow and letting things be just as they are. Every sip and each bite was an invocation of these qualities. May they guide us as we begin to transition from inner journeys of the fallow year to the year of outward-oriented experimentation. |
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| | {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31208115763/}}\\ |
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| | === Week 45 === |
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| | I was hoping that the weeks before winter solstice would be truly fallow so I could enjoy the mysterious chill and darkness of the season, unfortunately this was not the case. Timeless, careless absorption in the present - one of the key aspects of the fallow year - emerged occasionally while walking along misty streets illuminated by Yuletide fairy lights. |
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| | Yet another pause in the fallow year (where pause means a flurry of fast-paced context-switching activity). A compromise. Meetings, conference calls, design sessions, accounting and administration. [[http://fo.am/tasting-fieldwork/|Promotion]] and [[http://lib.fo.am/hosting/december_2016|documentation]]. Scheduling. Work-related travel, with one Eurostar journey which lasted over eight hours (instead of two), due to suspected stowaways on the roof of the train and the convoluted incompatibilities between high-speed and regular train lines in Belgium. My final post-op checkup of 2016. A series of rushed farewells. Perseverance keeping emotional swings in check. From tension to hope, frustration to affection. |
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| | The week began with Rasa, Nik and I finally deciding to let go of our beautiful, yet entropic studio space, likely sometime in the spring of 2017 (legalities and details TBC). The week ended with the bittersweet aftertaste of our last FoAM apero as a kunstenwerkplaats. I spent most of my time wrapping up past commitments and consolidating plans for the near future. |
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| | The post-fallow stage of my transiency - the re-integration - has begun gradually filling with a series of experiments. From March to July 2017 my calendar includes bursts of collaborative activities (workshops, events, design sessions) interspersed with longer periods of solitary work, in Belgium and abroad. It looks like a comfortable rhythm, but doesn’t have much space for adding anything unplanned, ad-hoc or serendipitous collaborations. Instead, the first half of the year is about re-affirmation of existing working relationships, which Nik and I would like to continue in our new guise of a transient FoAM studio. For the rest of the year, I’d like to keep enough (head)space and balance between vision and adaptation to respond in interesting ways to whatever might emerge. |
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| | {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31135597824/}}\\ |
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| | === Week 43-44 === |
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| | My time in the last couple of weeks has been mostly future oriented, occasionally slipping into the troublesome past (with my convoluted invalidity status) and subsiding in the melancholic present (with unpredictable energy levels, and several endings to mourn and celebrate). The very near future - the last couple of months of the fallow year - required finalising travel plans to Australia, Singapore and Norway. After that, in the early spring of 2017 we will be entering a more outward-oriented phase of the transiency. I’ve decided that my transiency will continue in 2017, considering the many interruptions during 2016. From March onwards Nik and I would like to explore what it would be like for the two of us to function as a transient FoAM studio. Short collaborative experiments (in different places with a range of people) and periods of reflection, strategising and writing (in particular my memoir and the GYOW kaiseki articles, which I will not manage to finish this year). Although the "real" work will begin from March 2017, our collaborators are starting to need our input now (Marine CoLAB, Time’s Up, Arizona State University, Istrian Anti-cancer league…). To ensure that our "new" commitments remain in line with promising directions, we conducted a futuring exercise looking at longer time horizons and possible alternatives. |
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| | {{ ::img_4930.jpg?350|}} |
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| | We asked ourselves "What things that we resonate with should we commit to?" Over the course of this year we touched on this question in informal conversations, but this time we attempted to find possible answers with a structured 2x2 scenario exercise. From a forest of signals and change drivers, we ended up with four critical uncertainties and distilled two scenario axes: capitalism <-> post-capitalism and materialist anthropocentrism <-> ecological panpsychism. The scenarios helped us clarify which aspects of our work might be most relevant in the world today and in the possible futures which we can see emerging. While there were no surprises, the exercise helped us connect and distill some of our intuitive resonances to larger societal trends. We came up with a few speculative directions: |
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| | If we live in a world where climate chaos is tackled through materialist anthropocentrism in a capitalist society we might want to play the long game. We could spin-off Certainty Ltd. weaponising our work as tactical consultants for climate futures, crypto-currencies, uncertainty and antifragility. FoAM itself could exist as a refuge and an alternative without attempting to change, communicate or contribute, but simply to live and let live. An ark of sorts, where things can still be otherwise, on a small scale, ideologically isolated from most of the rest of the world. |
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| | If the world we live in has embraced a philantrocapitalist deep ecology, FoAM (as a Thalient Design Consultancy) could research and design holistic entanglements with non-humans as aesthetic and experiential services. We could provide situations and technologies for inter-species interaction and panpsychic dialogue. |
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| | In an anthropocentric post-capitalist society, FoAM (aka Facilitators of Aberrant Mysticism) would thrive in prototyping unholy alliances, mediating, facilitating and introducing weirdness to question dogmas and data alike. Our work with transiencies and transitions, as well as ritual observances could be fulfilling a dire need in this society. We could be recognised (with official status) as a distributed pagan post-theist cult/guild for education and growing worlds. |
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| | In a world of post-capitalist ecological panpsychism, a FoAM commons could grow into a trans-local kinship network, including human and non-human entities, individuals and collectives. It would describe itself both in terms of doing and being (together). A fluid entity, with ever changing activities and members, governed by shared organisational principles. Years of experience with emergent governance structures would allow us to become mentors and advisers for other commons. Our work would be diverse, recognisable as "FoAM" in its widening of the sentience spectrum - whether as transdisciplinary research, immersive experiences/art-worlds, species-connecting technologies or sentience widening retreats. |
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| | <blockquote>The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places. In urgent times, many of us are tempted to address trouble in terms of making an imagined future safe, of stopping something from happening that looms in the future, of clearing away the present and the past in order to make futures for coming generations. Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings." - Donna Haraway </blockquote> |
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| ==== November 2016 ==== | ==== November 2016 ==== |
maja