about
practice and person
How else can we be?
I am interested in how we are rather than who. Asking how emphasizes the malleability of “human nature” and the interconnectedness of (human) ecology. Asking how is acknowledging the interdependence across time and space that exists whether we like it or not. And is acknowledging our own agency to choose how to be; consciously and reflectively, individually and together. Will we coexist as parts of a whole? Or self-destruct by fragmenting?
As an extradisciplinary researcher and practitioner, I share serialized stories of lived experience across mediums and platforms. Working this way helps me challenge myths that fragment humanity, subverts marginalization and feelings of powerlessness in lived experiences, and aims to instigate growth experiences. Each story is an opportunity to learn, understand, and reclaim our place in this interconnected whole; a beginning step toward wisdom, personal and social.
Driving my work is a desire to prompt more of us to ask, What wisdom might we gain from living within interactions, rather than struggling to separate? Will we worry less about who to be and instead choose how to be? And ultimately, How do we want to be, individually and together? Will we choose care and wisdom?
About Kara
Kara Thorndike is interested in how we choose to be, and why. She seeks wisdom in understanding the context of experiences that shape how we are. Living in participant observation, Kara’s practice reflects her lived experiences. She rejects that life, work, family, and environment are separate and/or static. Raw, blunt, and gut-level, her work strives to voice experiences, realized and otherwise… and ultimately reveal multiple possibilities of how things can be.
As a polymath, Kara holds space for life as it actually is; antidisciplinary and intertwingled. Kara has studied social systems, distinctions between private/public, and inclusion/exclusion while earning a MA in Sociology and a practice-centered MFA in Art and Humanities. Her experiences working in education, social service, design, and art have been a journey to piece together the fragments of thriving in spite of, and within the cracks of dehumanizing social systems.
Currently, Kara is based in Scotland. She travels about the UK, and escapes to Ireland, France, and Budapest (for Tölcsibe and warmth!) as often as possible with her young son in tow. Photographing life experiences is sometimes a shared hobby and collaborative work; sometimes… not so much.
