A few days ago, my mind was trying to split the worriedness in three - like that's even possible, - about my loved ones and 'other' bodies I care for in places that I'd call home(s); Lima, Bethlehem, and Oslo. Without a real chance to escape, I then involuntarily embarked on a metahuman-like wander, a close encounter with extranormal ideas in a time of intense psychological distress for me. All of it produced in my 8m2 overpriced tiny room in the center of Oslo (it is impressive how many thoughts you can fit in such a small place).

After sparring with my own thoughts around and about the scope of the neoliberal virus that has conquered almost every single aspect of my humanity, I stumbled upon the writing of two like-minded in the field of space; architect Rem Koolhaas and dancer Raja Feather Kelly. With an inherently diverse approach to words, both explore and envision a need to reimagine public spaces and our social relationships. While Koolhaas harvests thoughts on the importance to look at less rationalized public spaces, those away from the metropolis, the ‘neglected’ countryside, Feather Kelly, on the other hand, boldly puts forward thoughtful questions on mutual care, "What do you need? Who's got your back? And, What's next?".

Both triggered something in me...I feel like very few things make me truly think nowadays, but these two did. And here is a grasp of some of my own ideas I find worth sharing:

RADICAL TRUST! to create social chains we need to strengthen the spirit of public conversations, to constantly actualize solidarity and mutual care, to implement sense-based methods, modes of non-hierarchical and creative education, and participatory action. To set emphasis on developing future-oriented questions while we struggle to do our job in the present. This is what I’d like to see not only in Europe but beyond, trust.

I believe there is great power in cultural transmission, in sharing and unloading new creative approaches and experiences with different communities and people who form, every day, our social public sphere. For a few months, I've been flirting with the idea to bring forward experimental mediation processes that would allow us, together, to “create dangerously”; meaning tackling inflexible institutional structures, thinking art and politics from a communal perspective, and fostering multivocal work platforms as collective open sources. To transform old realities in order to self-imagined new ones.

I can't but contribute, by insisting, insisting on shaping a body of work that operates as an informal and intimate invitation to a possible event — it is not so much a performance, talk or intervention as an assembly of the people. By co-producing sites of experimentation, we can explore new ways of shaping an event collectively and to come up with innovative ways to 'curate' human gatherings. To also co-produce our identities, but most importantly to make its process public and accessible, to mediate and be mediated. A collective promotion of different kinds of communities and living arrangements, and the elaboration of a repertoire of collective life practices of multidirectional care.

I see this group incredibly rich and versatile, Spaces for Solidarity, holding the promising potential to help each other, but most importantly, we seem to be equipped with 'paranormal' abilities, unorthodox skills to foster cultural life within different communities and society as a whole. For that, we need to wonder about intergenerational learning and exchange, freedom of thought, and civic-creative-agency involvement.

Let's build a collective project for sustaining cultural identities! to work towards the displacement of social conventions and to challenge normativity. I’d like to see us all doing more metahuman-like wanders through public spaces in Europe.

 

 

*Illustration by Miranda OG