The everyday,
with intention,
allowing for multiple potentialities,
understanding the realized potentiality is not the only one that could have been,
that could be,
that is;
striving to communicate that,
in the everyday,
with the everyday.
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.
And yet, there might be hope...
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...
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.
References
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.
Neurodiversity and process
I process life and information slowly and deeply (processing disorder).
Numbers and time are meaningless to me (dyscalculia).
I have routines and am hyper-organized to overcome the difficulty of keeping on top of the day-to-day. Because I have no sense of time. And because doing more than one thing at a time, dealing with more than one input at a time, is like turning a fire hose on me. So I use pattern thinking to predict what will happen so that I don’t get overwhelmed, to keep on track. And I do one thing at a time, one thing very very well at a time. My brain is beautifully messy. Adding to that a mess on the outside just sends me into overload. And me in overload, is. not. pretty. Hot desking, open office plans, ARGH!
I consume massive amounts of disparate information, that takes me several passes and iterations to fully absorb, to understand how the pieces fit together. I need to understand the whole to be able to understand the pieces, to then turn information into actionable insights. Sadly much education and research is structured around understanding specific pieces rather than connecting and understanding them in the context of the larger whole. The time it takes me means that we'll be having long-running conversations. Because I've been mulling over and processing what was said the entire time in between. I'm still in a conversation with a friend about the value of vocals in music from 15 years ago.
Going deep, processing slowly, means that context switching is not seamless. Transitions take me time. Sometimes, ok often, they are not fun. For anyone. I will miss information, what was said, and... getting pulled out of my mental flow is like being blindsided by a Mack Truck. A shock to the system and not pretty. With a bit of warning, I can swerve.
Being put on the spot is one of my worst nightmares. Unless I’ve had time, and several passes within iterations, to absorb all the information I need… and am currently in the mental zone of whatever topic want me to speak eloquently on…. I’m going to panic. And fail. I have very little working memory and often say the wrong words out loud when the right ones are in my brain all along. The words “she said it was a breeze” might come out of my mouth when in my head it was "she said it was torture". In writing, words get left out and typos are made. And I won't catch them until the 3rd or 4th -ish re-reading. Autocorrect actually makes this worse.
When the world moves at a pace closer to life’s natural rhythms (I grew up on a farm), when the expectations of perfection and high productivity for ever-increasing profit’s sake are not at the insane levels they are now, when life is more organic and less mechanical, I do fine. I can and do learn deep and complex concepts, take in information and connect them into deep insights. I sort through ideas, organize them and plan out what I’ll say. I’ll correct the mistakes in type with time to decompress mentally in between re-readings. Time in between to mentally decompress -to work with my hands- is as essential as planning, prep, and iterations. Processing data tactilely also helps each iteration be better than the last.
Understanding and accepting that, and how I approach questions and problems, becomes much clearer. Make no mistake, I am capable, sharp, and quick-witted. It's taken me my whole life to realize this and be able to say out loud. It still feels weird to say to others. So many years of feeling average, incapable, or not terribly quick. Thankfully I've realized that my processing disorder is "normal", not a dis-order at all, and is a lens that has led me to researching lived expereinces.
I love exploratory research, especially when it reframes how we think about – everything. How does that look, what does that feel like, why? It’s open-ended – following observations to questions, and questions to observations, absorbing context and meaning in the experiential data along the way. Taking apart specific linear bits within a process, turning them about to analyze and connect back to the whole. The process is neither linear nor predictive. That’s the point. And the beauty. Not only does it mirror my own neurology, it’s how life actually is.
And reflecting life as it actually is lived, is the goal of research, no?
