\ är′tĭst \
(noun):
1. a person who co-creates and communicates intentional, reflexive experiences with perspective.
2. a person who interacts with and processes the world primarily through aesthetic experiences, i.e. art.
*An entry from A DIY Healing Dictionary of Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Social Being. The dictionary is a work in progress and part of the larger DIY Ph.D. - Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene performance.
inclusivity, care, agency, and growth
Reading that is continually freeing me to (re)negotiate and prefigure a life within the cracks.
\ frē′dəm \
(noun): the capacity to imagine how things might be elsewise, with the flexible support to try, and the hope of possibilities.
(adverb) freeing: the state of imagining possibilities; relieved of the restraints of the singular, opened to the multitudes of potentialities.
(verb) to free: 1. to imagine, illuminate, share, and explore potentialities. 2. to flexibly support, facilitate, or otherwise encourage exploring potentialities.
Often conflated with related concepts of autonomy and agency. Is social as much as personal.
*An entry from A DIY Healing Dictionary of Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Social Being. The dictionary is a work in progress and part of the larger DIY Ph.D. – Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene performance.
Freedom?
What about the freedom to care?
Stretched to the limit,
frayed,
torn apart,
the courage to say no,
no, that is too much!
No, that is not acceptable!
No, that is not what I need.
The courage to say no opens up
the possibility,
the mental space,
the emotional wherewithal
to care.
Will we stand
and fight
for the freedom
to care?
I have struggled most as an artist and parent. Living on a single income, with twice the expenses, limits what I can do and where. I can only travel for research if the boy can come along, and has something to occupy him. The same goes for residencies. Otherwise, I'll be endlessly interrupted. Difficult enough for anyone doing mentally and emotionally complex work; exponentially so as a single parent with learning differences. Because I have a processing disorder (as does the boy), I need to live near where I am working/researching. I need more time, which costs money. And the cost of even occasional childcare is prohibitive, let alone regular care. Travel and compartmentalization is fragmentation, causing sanity, time, and financial problems. Again, exponentially even more so with a learning difference. This is in part why my work rejects the artificial division of life, work, family, and environment. And why my practice is integrated, so I can survive and work. Not just survive, thrive. I know, just by the demographics of people who are parents, and people with disabilities, that I am not the only one.
Yet, my refusal to compartmentalize was precisely the University's problem. And is why their pulling funding for my research after an ultimatum was such a heavy blow. It meant that in order to work I either had to accept no funding, or fragmentation. Which would impede my work, and my well-being. Not to mention cause our little family strife and distress. In essence, a policy that funding recipients "normally" (what is normal?) would be "living within committing distance of the University", whatever that means, created a situation unnecessarily untenable. And for what? Ego. Fear. So they bully, gaslight, commit perjury*; anything and everything with their power as an institution to do the wrong thing.
Because, doing the right thing is hard. Very hard. Institutions are structured to process people and standardize output. With pressure to "produce knowledge". Knowledge is not something that can be "produced". We don't make knowledge. We can't make something that already exists. Much like how Columbus "discovered" "America", to think we can is arrogant and naive. Knowledge is something we reveal, uncover, find, and often relearn. Like how to work and learn inclusively. With a production process as a metaphor, universities are destined to exclude all who can not or will not keep to the production line. Ask any factory worker how that goes. Stick to this metaphor and fail miserably at inclusion and diversity. And the contemporary University does, fail to include all. Contrary to their claims.
But what is the alternative? The forgotten, the unknown, is scary. Restructuring higher education for learning and growth, for care, has not been done. No institution in living memory has, if ever. And would take an enormous mind shift of what learning and education are for, and for whom.
Critically examining every bit of what we do, how, and why is exhausting, and often not in the least bit pretty. Not-so-flattering things come to light, painful awful things that we will need time and hard work to heal. The first step? Listening deeply to the lived experiences of others, accepting that needs truly can and do differ... and that we can and should do all we can to ensure we all have what we need. I know it's daunting. And absolutely impossible in the current knowledge production model. It takes one person, and then another, and then another, and then another to stand up and insist on doing things better. To insist on care, in all aspects of our lives, especially in learning. Because learning can be a source of healing, healing the very trauma that education and universities have perpetrated, mostly unwittingly. Then we reach a tipping point. And that one brave soul, the first follower is the catalyst of the much-needed next phase in social evolution, a sustainable society. Care is the wise path forward, can we all be first followers? Yes. Yes, we can.
*I am wrestling with the question of whether I should post the evidence as part of this performance of being real. Artistically, yes. Ethically, unclear. If the goal is compassion and healing, maybe not. So, stay tuned...
this is not a manifesto. this is life.
A fresh and thought provoking performance at Spilt Milk Gallery in Edinburgh confronting the hidden costs of university for people who aren’t young, male, single, have no learning differences, and no caring responsibilities.
No organization is a monolith. All institutions are made up of individuals, and sustained by collective memories. Memories that are selective, curated, and reinforced with a dominant experience. But there are as many experiences as there are people. My goal is to inspire someone, even if it’s just one person, to take a step back and look critically at what's going on. And most importantly, feel like they can do something. That they should do something. Though it does take time to unlearn what the environment has taught and enforced, it can happen. It just takes one. Then another, and another, and another, and another... and eventually there is a whole group.
Learning how to see, to observe what is right in front of us. Reframing and reforming collective memories. Hopefully to reflect the multitude of experiences that actually exist. And learn choose new ways to be.
Gladwell, M. (2002). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Back Bay Books.
Despret, Vinciane & Meuret, Michel. (2016). "Cosmoecological Sheep and the Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet". Environmental Humanities. 8. 24-36. 10.1215/22011919-3527704.
Recently I was asked Why submit work to the "establishment", to the institutions I protest or disagree with, i.e. "the man"? I think of my work as protesting mindsets and unsustainable practices more than organizations and institutions. As work done more to offer insight and point to unrealized potentialities than to stage open rebellion. Why submit work to organizations and institutions that can't hear, refuse to listen beyond the echo chamber? To people who will dismiss, ignore, or criticize? Precisely because institutions are made up of people, of individuals, not a monolith of existing. I do it for that one person on the inside that can hear, that does listen. The person looking for a new way to be, unsure if it's even possible, if there really could be (an)other way, let alone able to see one.
We know that real, lasting change happens slowly, one spark at a time, one person at a time, until there is a tipping point. And that we rarely see the little by little plodding and slogging through, the slow drips of ah ha! moments, the small bits of courage that lead to the watershed of a tipping point. This is where I work, in that long slog before. This is where that person looking for a way to be is, in the long slog. I am trying to reach them, wherever they are. Because you never know who will see the work, and what might happen because they did. And you never know where they are.
“The anarchist idea of social transformation is one in which spheres of social action are gradually freed of relations of domination, a process which can go on within and alongside the existing structures… as captured in the phrase ‘Building the new society in the shell of the old.’…”
found in “Anarchism in Education Studies”, by Judith Sussa, a chapter in The Anarchist Imagination, Levy & Newman ed., 2017 Routledge, p. 203
The main output of the DIY Ph.D. performance is really the everyday. It's standing up for the small moments of saying no to misapplied power. To help as many people as possible see that there is always (an)other way. And reach them wherever they are… on Instagram, reading art gallery press releases, going to traditional galleries, in artist collectives, on the sidewalk, in funding bodies, going to living history museums, in bathrobes surfing the internet, and yes… reading academic journals. Most will likely shrug, deride, ignore, dismiss, and condescend. But... there will be that one person, someone who recognizes a bit of how they feel in the work. It's for this person I submit the work anyway, in spite of the overwhelming odds. So they might feel a little less lonely; to inspire, and encourage transformation... one heart at a time.
