“A mushroom is a toxin-transformer, a dandelion is a community of healers waiting to spread…” (9)
- Q: In your view, what is the function of humans in the universe?
I like this question, and it stumps me. My first instinct is to respond that humans have no function, that nothing has a function. But then when I consider the quote preceding the question, I can see that everything has a function to itself and its own system—meaning is for oneself/itself/ourself/collective self, it boomerangs back to us but without ever flying away from us in the first place.
Q: Without overthinking it: which of these elements brown describes most immediately feels evident as part of your creative work, and how? Or, if none of them do, which feels like one you might intentionally integrate, and why?
Element: creating more possibilities
Nature of Element: how we move towards life
Why: The documentary and video work I’ve done tries to lead into a space of open imagination. It aims to thwart expectations and conventions in order to provide opportunity for something else to emerge.
Also…
Element: fractal
Nature of Element: the relationship between small and large
Often I am trying to break down how things come to be, and how things could come to be different by aligning those preliminary steps with our values. I am reminded of this passage from earlier in Emergent Strategy:
“…and yet we all seem to be oriented towards facilitation, consensus, and mediation
work. In our lifetimes, being multiracial has become more common, but navigating other peoples’
regressive, fearful, or exoticizing ideas about our identities is one of the ways each member of
my immediate family grew this skill set of being able to see what’s between, what connects the
things that seem separate, the ever-present whole.”
I think fractal thinking helps me feel a more thorough understanding of the whole, of complex systems. Visualizing the details is how I orient myself.
- Any initial questions or curiosities you have about your assigned topic
- I am curious about how I can learn about, digest, and translate the concept of human migrations, a topic we encounter often in the context of news about refugee crises around the world, in a way that feels like a growth encounter for myself as an artist and a learner.
- Reflections on how the reading impacted your research, if at all
- The reading makes me wonder about the migration patterns of different species, the complex systems of migration that could serve to teach humans about how we manage our own movements and involuntary driftings.
- How might your topic relate to ‘play’? Or how might you ‘play’ with your topic?
- Floating feels playful in that it connotes ease to me. It reminds me of the lazy river at a waterpark. Floating requires letting go of resistance, letting natural forces, or perhaps forces that are not so natural, move your whole being or groups of beings or entities through space and/or time. Perhaps I could let ideas for my project float in and out of me and practice this sort of nonresistance to natural processes and external forces. I can let myself float through the making process, open myself and be receptive to what floats my way without trying to mold and manage so much.
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