Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- transiency_maja_kuzmanovic [2016-12-11 21:49] – maja
+++ transiency_maja_kuzmanovic [2017-02-05 10:55] – maja
@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 This page is the informal log of my transiency process, in reverse chronological order.
+==== February 2017 ====
+=== Week 52 ===
+I’m enveloped in darkness. The darkness of the pre-dawn hour while I write this entry. The darkness of early February, the in-between time of Imbolc and the inception of spring. The darkness of the fallow land and the fallow year, teeming with vigorous yet bitter energy of life below its surface. The darkness of a crumbling cocoon, too tight for the creature craving to emerge from within. "//Not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb//" ([[http://valariekaur.com/2016/11/a-sikh-prayer-for-america-on-november-9th-2016/|Valerie Kaur]]).
+{{::schiphol_bladerunner.jpg?600 |}}
+On Thursday morning, when the flight from Singapore landed in Amsterdam, the first announcement I heard was "//Watch your step when you get off the aircraft, there is a technical problem with lighting in parts of the airport.//" Under the watchful eyes of the grim security personnel, we descended into a dark corridor, pulsing with emergency strobe-lights. A river of flight-dazed passengers walking slowly in a disordered line, up a rickety escalator, people’s faces glowing eerily green. I felt as if we stumbled onto the set of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner|Blade Runner]]. Cyberpunk incarnated. The colour faded into bleak shades of greys and browns when we stepped off the train in Brussels…
+A stark contrast to the cheerful pinks, reds and oranges of the Chinese New Year that illuminated our last walk along Marina Bay only half a day earlier. The first days of the Year of the Rooster heralded interesting opportunities for the nomadic FoAM studio in Asia Pacific. We spent several tropical evenings in the company of [[https://twitter.com/honorharger|Honor Harger]] (and Co.), discussing times of transition and complexity, technological and social innovation, consciousness and religion, and a myriad of possible futures in Singapore as a temporary outpost for FoAM’s nomads.
+<blockquote>//We are curious about the changing relationships between human and non-human worlds, in what Whitehead calls “mysterious reality in the background, intrinsically unknowable". We’re particularly interested in exploring ecological connections between worldviews, including kami (shinto), viriditas (christian mysticism) and panpsychism (philosophy). How can we translate animist or mystical attitudes towards interconnectedness of all life into worldviews compatible with contemporary (or future) techno-materialist societies? How would such perspective transform our relationships with humans and non-humans? What parallel arts, science or technologies become possible? Our focus is on creating experiences to convey or encourage a sense of wonder. Our media include Romantic Machines, the vegetal mind, meditative environments, rites of passage, human scale systems and non-human technologies...// - Excerpt from a letter Nik and I wrote in Singapore
+</blockquote>
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31907128593/}}\\
+This was a week of contrasts and crossroads. From 33 to 3 degrees Celsius. From a city that buzzes with seemingly effortless efficiency, to a city that seems to struggle with blockages of all kinds. From an optimistic sense of lightness and possibility to a sense of drowning in mud. From distilling insights for the future to unravelling the convoluted commitments of the past. From connectedness to separation, from offers to demands, from abundance to scarcity. From thriving to surviving.
+<blockquote>Brussels is a city for those who have patience, time and imagination. It is for those who question the increasingly frenetic pace of urban life and work. It is for those who appreciate understatement and refuse homogenising labels and manufactured “hip” concepts. Perhaps, however, what keeps Brussels attractive is its latent sense of expectancy, the promise of a perpetual becoming which is never fulfilled.
+- [[http://theartnewspaper.com/comment/comment/why-brussels-is-not-the-new-berlin/|Katerina Gregos]]
+</blockquote>
+I’m not going to dwell on my frustrations with circumstances in Brussels again. Suffice to say that I find the phase of re-integration quite difficult. The process of transition necessarily results in change - often manifest as finding a new role in an existing context, the transformation of the context itself, or a move to a completely new context. The only approach I haven’t yet tried with FoAM in Brussels is the latter. What I find difficult at the moment is that the direction and pace of my personal transition seems to be at odds with the place where I currently live and work. So much so that I don’t see any way back. It feels like I’ve outgrown the cocoon that has sustained me for years - if I don’t break out, I will suffocate and perish. I’ve seen this reaction with FoAM’s transients in the past. Our advice to them was almost always to stay close to where their renewed energies lie and to find ways to let go of the unsustainable ties to the past, no matter how painful the cutting of ties might be.
+During the past year I have glimpsed my preferred futures and experienced resonances with new places and people across the globe. Yet there are forces of friendship and commitment that keep pulling me back to Brussels and into old habits, behaviours and situations. It takes a lot of energy to resist, especially when paired with feelings of doubt, guilt and shame that I’m letting people down. It’s painful to cut ties to a place and a context, when there are people I care about who will remain. I don’t want burning bridges to light my way, I want to leap off the bridge into a bioluminescent sea…
+<blockquote>The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon, focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm (…). On the Offshore Lights you can live any story (…) and no one will say you're wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind.
+- M L Stedman, The Light Between Oceans
+</blockquote>
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/32597315871/}}\\
+==== January 2017 ====
+=== Week 51 ===
+The week began in Melbourne and ended in Singapore, with a social stop-over in Adelaide for a few days in between. Farewell to Australia and its motley collection of people and places, which increased my belief in the value of "strong opinions weakly held". My experience in the last month was one of stark contrasts and a few incongruities (beyond just the weather and the landscape). Farewell to my fellow hermits, cancer patients and mer-witches, to close family and remote acquaintances. To those precious people with whom I renewed and deepened bonds that defy geographic distances, and to those with whom I felt a creeping distancing of mindsets and lifestyles. Those who grew up, those who are still growing, and those who - like me - will probably never grow up.
+After a smooth flight on one of my favourite airlines, we arrived in our temporary "jaunty" studio in Bukit Batok, with only a few days before the end of the lunar year. The studio is in a peculiar building, our neighbours ranging from car mechanics to mysterious import/export dealerships. Further afield we’re surrounded with national parks, residential blocks and highways. I write overlooking a water-tower, three giant lightning-rods, a Buddhist temple with amputated swastikas and a stray piece of jungle destined for development in the near future. The monotonous sound of ceiling fans and cicadas is occasionally interrupted by screeching tires and echoing gongs. It’s good to be back in Asia, with its convoluted entanglement of the past and the future, where impermanence and tradition co-exist in surprisingly congruous juxtapositions. So familiar, yet so appealingly "other" to me.
+{{::img_5433.jpg?480 |}}
+We are in Singapore for only a week, so we immediately settled into a comfortable routine. Waking up before dawn, going for walks ahead of the heat or rain, we talk, write and rest during the day, then roam the city after dark. It takes a while to get used to the tropical food and climate, so I’m quite tired and lethargic, with occasional and unpredictable bursts of energy. One of the best aspects of the fallow year is being able to follow my natural biorhythm more often. Obviously I feel better, less stressed and more capable when I can wake up without an alarm-clock, when I can rest if I feel tired and allow the rest to last as long as it takes - minutes, hours or even days. It must be possible to organise my post-fallow work in accordance with my physical needs. I know it makes me more effective and more resilient, but it takes quite some discipline to resist falling into the maelstroms of constant "business" when working with others. I believe that having a clearer direction and a set of principles could help. I’m planning to take time in the coming weeks to distill the insights from the last twelve months. I’d like to articulate a direction, together with a set of hypotheses and experiments for the next phase.
+On the 27th of January was the New Year’s Eve in the Chinese lunar calendar. We cheered to it with a delicious mandarine-scented cocktail in the Tippling Club. Let the year of the Fire Rooster begin!
+//"Fire by its very nature is the element associated with brilliance, warmth, passion, spark. So a brilliant and enthusiastic rooster, combined with the salient characteristics of fire, heralds an enterprising and fruitful year, a year of results, achievements. This year we can fulfil all of our dreams."// ([[http://www.ibtimes.com/chinese-new-year-2017-animal-year-fire-rooster-zodiac-sign-meaning-explained-2481889|Zhao Li]]).
+Well, the Fire Rooster couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Time to mark the beginning of the end of the fallow year…
+=== Week 49-50 ===
+Nik and I operated as a transient FoAM studio in Melbourne for a couple of weeks. We began by developing a sense of the city as a place to live and work - sourcing food, walking, taking public transport, frequenting places suggested by locals, meeting friends and family. We arranged to meet specific people who could help us find our way into (working in) Melbourne. Through a range of planned and spontaneous conversations with young and old (including a chance encounter with Stuart Candy on a tram), we uncovered some of the opportunities, challenges and practicalities we would be faced with if we decided to work more extensively in Australia. The most promising directions for our work in Melbourne include connections between health/wellbeing, futures, entrepreneurship, research and experience design. Food futures resonated with most people we spoke with. While this might be an easy entry point, our work with inhabiting uncertainty might be most useful in the long run (considering the city’s environmental, economic, (multi)cultural and infrastructural issues). There were several conversations that lead to possible offers in academia, but I would prefer to work as FoAM on the edges of academia and other sectors. We left with a sense of possibility, a list potential collaborations, and an intention to return in about a year.
+Aside from paying attention to the world around us, I was conducting an experiment of my own: observing if and how my body can find a new balance after surgery, long distance travel (and it’s associated side-effects) and a few weeks of physically disruptive lifestyle (managed through medication and meditation). The basic requirement to be able to become a "drifter" in the transient/nomadic FoAM studio is that I must feel well enough to work wherever I am. In other words, I should feel at "home" physically and mentally. Based on my experience in the last six months, this can take 1~2 weeks, depending on my activities and surroundings. The time is substantially reduced if I can organise my own time and cook most meals at home. After I find a physical and mental balance, I can focus better on working with others and contributing within the local context. My current working hypothesis is that we could have 3-4 nomadic bases per year, with occasional shorter travels in between (if needed). I’d like to keep one of the bases in Brussels, at least for 2017. I know I’d like to spend longer periods in Croatia, and that I’d like to give Melbourne a try. For the rest, I remain open to different possibilities, and observe where I feel a strong resonance (like Japan).
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/32092510410/}}\\
+<blockquote>We no longer have roots, we have aerials. We no longer have origins, we have terminals."
+—  McKenzie Wark </blockquote>
+Operating as a FoAM studio in Melbourne included not only the aforementioned experiments, but also collaborating with people on site and remotely. We wrote two articles, facilitated two personal scenario workshops (promising line of work, though economically unsustainable in its current form), co-ordinated upcoming events in Europe and maintained bits of remote admin and logistics for FoAM bxl.
+{{ ::fallowish.jpg?400|}} The first article we worked on (with Time’s Up) was a short piece about our work with [[://future_fabulators/making_things_physical|physical narratives]] for the Journal of Futures Studies. The reviewers had requested that the article should situate our work more explicitly within the academic discipline of Futures Studies, while conforming to the format of the journal. The process reminded me of the rather insular and self-referential nature of contemporary academia, where transdisciplinary theory (or rhetoric) and practice rarely overlap. It also reminded me of one of the main reasons we started FoAM: to have an independent entity that can work WITH institutions (such as universities), rather than each of us being individually employed by them. Seventeen years later, I think this position is perhaps even more relevant than when we started.
+Working as an independent, but well connected transdisciplinary network we can function as a bridge across oft disparate worlds of theory and practice. We can only do that if we exist in the (often lonely and unrecognised) spaces in between. This is nothing new for us, but perhaps we should more clearly (and vocally) articulate this position. Not only is the way we work across various divides beneficial for the people in FoAM, but some aspects of it can be useful for others. Our work with [[:marine_colab/start|Marine CoLABoration]] for example, where we translated our collaborative processes into a programme of workshops for a range of organisations working on marine conservation. While our direct involvement in the programme ended about a year ago, the CGF invited us to write a reflective article about it. We spent several days unravelling FoAM’s interpretation of the "lab approach", using Marine CoLAB as our case study. We wrote the first draft of the article, to be finalised in February.
+Every morning we had a discussion over breakfast to asses our progress, which usually lead to putting the transiencies on hold to meet external deadlines. Combining the transiency with several overlapping experiments, doing work for clients and worrying about various loose ends in Brussels caused tension at times. All of us in the core team felt frustrated and desperate at various points in this fallow-ish year. Even though our reasons and circumstances varied, all the difficulties seem to originate from not having set clear boundaries around our transiency and making inevitable compromises. As the year draws to its end, a paradoxical sense of urgency to hold the space for reflection is increasing. At the same time I feel as if I’m crouching on starting blocks, my (mental) muscles tensing for a sprint. I must be watchful and pace myself as I begin the re-integration phase. I have to keep reminding myself that the next phase is going to be more like a long hike on uneven terrain than a short run with clearly delineated start and finish lines…
+=== Week 48 ===
+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.
+{{::vv-fest.jpg?650 |}}
+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.
+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.
+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…
+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.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/32070393112/}}\\
 ==== December 2016 ====
+=== Week 47 ===
+{{::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.
+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.
+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.
+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.
+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...
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31177510074/}}\\
+=== Week 46 ===
+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.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31208115763/}}\\
+=== Week 45 ===
+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.
+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.
+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.
+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.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31135597824/}}\\
 === Week 43-44 ===
-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 bursts of collaborative experiments (in different places with a range of people) would be interspersed with longer 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.
+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.
 {{ ::img_4930.jpg?350|}}