Differences

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

--- transiency_maja_kuzmanovic [2017-01-01 05:17] – maja
+++ transiency_maja_kuzmanovic [2017-01-10 09:18] – maja
@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 This page is the informal log of my transiency process, in reverse chronological order.
+==== January 2017 ====
+=== Week 48 ===
+In the first hours of 2017 I glimpsed 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 botanic gardens, together with the abundance of the South Melbourne market seem to hold a lot of promise… I’ve been sceptical 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 ====
@@ Line 9: / Line 28: @@
 === Week 47 ===
-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 suffering from 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… 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. A good practice for me for work situations to avoid feeling "peopled out".
+{{::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.
+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.
@@ Line 44: / Line 63: @@
 === 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|}}