05-01-2024
May day – May day!
And a special TINYisPOWEFUL meeting which proved to be of very high quality and fruitful, thanks to Victoria’s ability to synthesize participants’ thinking, often to clarify it, and to keep the conversation interesting. Today particularly, she got us thinking further about … the values and vision, which she presented as mission and purpose. A choice of words which forced us into deeper dialogues than just reciting our catechism. We went into talking about the conditions necessary to accomplish our mission … Apparently, these two smart words were suggested by Morenga, the gentleman one of our funders, the Donnelley foundation, chose to monitor TINYisPOWERFUL’s efforts towards sustainability and whom we are having a Zoom with tomorrow.
05-02-2024
The conditions necessary to accomplish our mission …
Yesterday, Victoria pronounced the word ‘fluid’. That’s all it took for me to ask: fluid as in … beer? She did not pick up! Fluid? Yes, by the fact that TINYisPOWERFUL’s core and its supporting circle vary, change, depending on the project at hand. Gwylène tied this understanding of fluidity to our practice of autonomy. I brought up the necessity to cultivate the conditions of this fluidity. One is autonomy for sure. An other one is, as a matter of routine, the updating of mission and purpose, working on their relevance, their place on the timeline. That is their ‘opportunism’, their adaptability. As opposed to the intentionality we may be tempted to pump them up with.
I clearly have a hard time with the notion of intentionality. In my mind it has to do with voluntarism, possibly dutyful-ness. Notions which I cannot but link to puritanism, effort, merit, in other words all the underlayments of capitalism. Notions. also, which are at the total opposite of transgression, liberation that is.
I believe that TINYisPOWERFUL will survive when it will know WHY it has to survive – mission – which consists in showing HOW liberation is the condition for transformation – purpose.
—–
And, as I am loading my CD player for the studio’s music, I pick up Michael Tippet’s “Ice Break”, an opera from the 80s/90s, inspired by the many terrorist attacks on airports, at the time. In retrospect, I wonder how much such a relevant opera did deepen my consciousness of civil violence at the time. I know, for sure, that its actuality then, did impel me to buy the CD! It works both ways. Here I see relevance as purpose.
—–
An other thing Victoria did well for us, yesterday, when she clarified the difference between project-based grants, which are delivered for the purpose of creating a specific piece of art, described in the grant application, and operations grants, which support the survival of an organization between projects. Because, for TINYisPOWERFUL, a lot of our time is spent accomplishing important theoretical work, educational work as well, for the collective, yes, but also for whoever approaches us for facilitations, Question/Relay sessions, basic presence and representation in/with communities.
This distinction should clarify the meaning of mission and purpose vis-à-vis Morenga.
—–
Our session with Morenga just ended. He is a gentleman!
05-04-2024
Yesterday, for the first time that I can remember since the start of TINYisPOWERFUL, I felt compelled to have a quick and uncompromising answer to an email by a member of the collective!
Happy Friday Creative Peers!
This is a friendly reminder that our weekly Creative Sync is next week: Tuesday, May 7th, @10am. will be virtual. However if you would like to gather in person this can be self organized amongst team members.
How could Rayn take it upon herself to use a language determining that meeting “in person” is fine but will have to be self-organized amongst team members? As if virtual was, now, the default mode of meeting at TINYisPOWERFUL?
I know this is a slip on her part or a misunderstanding on my part. However, I wonder what difference the meeting with Morenga made? It was partly in praise of the collective way we reach in/with communities to promote our values using overwhelmingly “in person” art tools. I also know that the whole purpose of Rayn’s email is to present her work developing a virtual game using a vocabulary which calls for some fluency in game vocabulary … lingo.
I can measure the superior talent of Rayn in the intellectual realm and I believe Gwylène is right: I should offer them the possibility of a ride every time there is a Creative Sync they have a hard time getting to. I may go for the offer! I certainly do not want Rayn to see their forced isolation from the group become a dystopian privilege. I support the idea of protopia they suggest. But virtuality may not be the best art tool to promote protopia.
05-05-2024
In his latest book, ‘Jim Crow – le terrorisme de caste en Amérique’, Loïc Wacquant, who considers W E B Du Bois to be a major pioneer in the field of sociology, goes into the specificities of American segregation.
Can I say that Wacquant’s polar opposite to today’s DEI is Jim Crow’s ESE?
It makes his demonstration more striking!
DEI -> DIVERSITY – EQUITY – INCLUSION
ESE -> EXPLOITATION – SUBORDINATION – EXCLUSION
Then he goes into showing why this CASTE System is unique, as defined by:
– the hierarchization of social groups
– the ‘one drop’ law: one drop of black blood makes you a black person
– endogamy
– the notion of purity (no mixing across castes)
He stresses that Jim Crow segregation is enforced through TERRORISM (arbitrary and random violence to infuse a constant fear of the dominant) of all racialized populations, based on
– stigmatizing and belittling
– economic precariousness
– apartheid in housing, schooling, health, food access, economic status
– denial of equal voting and justice access
For Loïc Wacquant, understanding racial domination today requires that it be articulated with class domination and the mechanisms which perpetuate it.
Therefore, racism and classism must be fought concurrently.
PS – using the word ‘Racism’ to define the Jim Crow system is not correct, Wacquant says. Racism refers to “assigning a social group certain fictional biological differences” (which make it inferior). On the other hand, there is noting fictional about caste. It is a sociological concept stratifying society into clearly separate and distinct groups, following the criteria described above: hierarchization, blood, endogamy, purity
– on day 01-07-2024 of this diary, I noted that an other author used CASTE to describe the American system of segregation. It is Isabel Wilkerson, in her award winning book ‘Caste: the origins of our discontent‘. I quote it along as a source for Ava Duvernay’s movie ‘Origin’.
Link to article:
—–
And now I must report on a very weird situation I am in! As of last Friday, I have been facing three developments involving three black folks I know. In each case I am the antagonist: Rayn and Zoom as the default mode for our meetings – my black neighbor and her damned barking dog – my depressed son-in-law!
This is a test! Quite a test of my sense of equity and access, or DEI or whatever it takes to not be in any way failing in my treatment of these situations! A test, I say!
05-07-2024
After a rather fair night sleep, this morning my mind was actually miles away from TINYisPOWERFUL! It was navigating the high waters of global geo-politics, a usually fruitless territory for me, if hoping for original thinking! However, I was getting somewhere when the dog next door started its raucous. Gwylène attempted to intervene before I get completely out of hand – berserk!
When the barking started, I was about to articulate that presently there is something the so-called radical right and radical left, on the white side of the world, share: a rejection of the role of the State in daily politics. One rejects, however hypocritically, its invasiveness in the name of freedom – that is the right. The other – that would be the left – would love to see more of the State, but only on issues and for causes it supports. Otherwise, it can go!
Easy, too easy, so far!
It gets more interesting – as the dog goes on barking – when I project these remarks onto a global geo-political backdrop! Right, Left and Center, wherever I look, one side of the equation has been either forgotten or ignored, steamrolled, or altogether obliterated: the common citizenry and its agency; ultimately, the role of voters in choosing policies! Not to say that either side omits to give lip service to “the people”, their prime motivator of course! Fact remains: they all push all sorts of agendas but never the people’s agenda!
Still too easy!
… When the dog started barking, I was in an intellectual deep dive, possibly an inspired rumination! I believe it had to do with amplitude, breadth. The breadth of the paradigms politicians swim in, although very few of them are equipped for the exercise. Here, when I say breadth, I also think scale, tiny scale, TINYisPOWERFUL scale, surely my most familiar scale. A daily-ordinary scale. We all are specialists of our own scale and we know, from experience that, when we reach out within our individual territory – whatever its breadth – immediately, irremediably, we encounter ‘others’ who, as they are themselves groping for their own limits, define yours! This is Beckettian but not absurd. It establishes that reality is always populated with ‘others’. So many of them! So many of us.
We are getting somewhere now.
As a matter of fact, I remember that, as the dog started barking, I was also em-barking(?) onto a poetic – more than rational, that is – stance which, if brought to fruition, may well have blossomed into a rich, textured, TINY philosophical statement.
But a dog barked!
Damn this dog, barking at my window …
Could be a song!
I fabulate now, that my tiny philosophical poem would have clearly shown why and how TINYisPOWERFUL needs to be a steady advocate for participatory politics where individual citizens can also enjoy their autonomy with the support of the State.
Damned be this dog and all the creatures who believe they are better than others because they have speech, although they just bark!
05-10-2024
Follow me in a speculative journey which is filling my day with intense joy! I am bundling concepts and thoughts scattered in this Diary and it starts making sense …
It opens with a program on ‘France Culture’, part of the French public radio network, about Emilie Hache and her book, ‘De La Generation’, … The title is very tricky to translate. It does not refer to the X or Z generations but to the act of generating, that is perpetuating the conditions which make life on earth possible. It could possibly translate to ‘Of Generating’. In French, the subtitle says it all: ‘Enquête sur sa disparition et son remplacement par la production’ – ‘An inquiry into its disappearance and its replacement by Production’, where ‘it’ refers to Generating.
Below, the very thorough presentation of the book by its French publisher.
Les sociétés industrielles, extractivistes et productivistes, ne manifestent aucun souci pour la reproduction de leurs conditions d’existence car elles ont oublié que la perpétuation du monde avait besoin d’être accompagnée par celles et ceux qui le composent. Mais cela a-t-il toujours été le cas ? Et quel rôle les rapports de genre ont-ils joué dans cette histoire ? L’autrice explore les manières de concevoir cette perpétuation dans différentes sociétés pré- et non industrielles, en Grèce antique, en Europe médiévale ou encore dans certaines sociétés matrilinéaires contemporaines. On découvre qu’une importance majeure y est accordée aux pratiques (re)génératives, chargées d’assurer le renouvellement de la société tout entière – travail de subsistance, reproduction des générations, liens avec les invisibles, etc.
L’avènement du christianisme et du nouveau rapport au monde qu’il a institué a tout bouleversé. Le souci de la (re)génération du monde a progressivement été remplacé par l’idée d’un monde créé une fois pour toutes, n’ayant plus besoin d’être perpétué au quotidien – la providence infinie se chargeant de tout. Est-il possible de réinventer des pratiques génératives mettant fin à notre illimitisme, de manière non coercitive et égalitaire ? Tel est l’enjeu central de cette enquête, exigeant d’en finir avec le passé que la société industrielle s’est inventé pour justifier sa course en avant effrénée.
Ce livre apporte une contribution majeure à l’écoféminisme, en retrouvant la question de la génération derrière l’identification des femmes et de la nature dans la modernité.
And presently, I am spending my energy building a bridge between the work of Emilie Hache and what I remember of Value-Dissociation, the concept I was so intrigued by three or four years ago. Intrigued enough to write about it in this diary and to produce an article for the Reservoir of TINYisPOWERFUL’s web-app.
I am now able to realize that Roswitha Scholtz (see Diary of 07-2022), one of the authors of Value-Dissociation, was also talking about ‘Generation’, just like Hache is, but from a more conceptual point of view, actually from one of post-marxism. Hache is more of an anthropologist who, as a matter of fact, lists David Graeber as one of her inspirers.
From the publisher’s note above, Hache shows how extractivism and productivism have thoroughly forgotten about the generation and REgeneration of resources, all generous gifts of ‘Mother Earth’, particularly and more specifically the Generation of species, including humans. She clarifies the role of [what I interpret to be] Dissociation has played and still plays in the total contemporary indifference to Generation. Looking into history, Hache shows how antiquity and medieval cultures cared for Generation at all levels, from humans to animals, plants and trees … to spirit(s) as well, and how some presently living matrilineal societies still do. She also traces today’s neglect of the (inter)generational to christianity, which brings with it the messianic notions of an all-providing god and of eternity.
Hache asks: ” Is it possible to reinvent generative practices ending our illimitism in a non-coercive and egalitarian manner? “. Such is the central dilemma at the heart of Hache’s research.
My understanding is that such questions enroll ECOFEMINISM in the struggle against the industrial/colonial/military/extractive model and confront the relevance of Value in the Value-Generation equation.
France-Culture site review ‘Of Generation’, the book by Emilie Hache:
PS: I just purchased the last of David Graeber’s book, which I mentioned in this diary before but never read: the Dawn of Everything, written with David Wengrow.
And pursuing my research further, I read that Hache asks the following question: how is it that the link between violence to women, incest as a tool of war … AND war itself including all the abuses attached to male supremacy, seems universally evident, although the link between the concept of Generation or Care for the Earth, Ecology … AND women is constantly doubted or ridiculed? Her answer makes it obvious: the dominant male culture itself does not allow space for this debate to take place.
This quote from Hache:
TO END THE CULTURE OF RAPE IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PRIORITY
I cannot think of a better phrase to situate what ECOFEMINISM is, and its importance.
05-13-2024
Found an Israeli site in English, which works with the Nation magazine and is quoted by Mediapart today, in a full article on the repression of pro-Palestinian organizing in universities and by intellectuals, in the US as well as in Israel and worldwide. Here it is:
It is so important that folks find trustworthy sources. The more I read about the dangers of AI as a generator of fake news, the more I understand that, as antidote to AI, INTERSECTIONALITY, the concept berated by all the de Santis of America who know its power as a tool to connect, energize and activate transformative thinking, the more obvious it is that it does not belong to the left only. Doesn’t gagging educators on issues of race or supremacy in the name of nation loving and freedom of speech proceed from an intersectional logic? Except that this manipulation of history and justice is an authoritarian tool whereas general factuality is a liberating mind opener.
—–
I may, now, be ready to launch into the writing of a paper about Ecofeminism and tie it to Scholz’s work on Value-Dissociation. I had it all very clear in my head this morning, after a partially sleepless night.
05-14-2024
Getting ready to step into a writing project is like having to exercise the lungs before a run. Breathe in – Breathe out, deep, deeper. Secure a reserve of oxygen to supply the upcoming brainwork. It is a fact that any effort to push our synapses past their routine performance is hugely energy consuming. Just as AI. It takes so much out of … me … that, since most of the conceptualizing, the figuring has had to be done ahead of time, I get into the writing per se in an unfortunate state of dulling fatigue! Luckily, experience has taught me that writing is more than the exercise of applying a finish coat of language on a heap of thoughts. There is the grinding mill of criticism, self-criticism, evaluation … the (re)search for words, phrases, a form, a rhythm … the drafting of an esthetics – the exhilarating part – if l get there! Editing is Art in the making!
I vaguely remember Flaubert’s answer to the question:
– How is the writing of Salambo going?
– Very well, thank you. Only a few sentences left to write and I have all my [phrase] endings.
– Well then!
—–
Now Gwylène tells me that, for the last hour, she was part of a Zoom where, to her great surprise, MONTDRAGON, the Spanish (Basque/Vasca) cooperative which federates hundreds of smaller businesses and organizations animated by the spirit of social participation, solidarity economy, was mentioned.
I venture that it is this spirit TINYisPOWERFUL should inhale, integrate and exsude, propose to potential partners. Although it encompasses all the values we (the collective) live by, from reciprocity to autonomy, to belonging, we seem to be incapable of rising above our state of tinyness. It is our inescapable condition, it seems, instead of our actual best source of growth and power!
During our conversation, Gwylène and I, we came to a point where it became clear that this condition had to do with our refusal to be political. And I vehemently told her that, of course, the terrain is overwhelming. It is a battleground against capitalism itself that we are very directly involved in … Yet none of us, at TINYisPOWERFUL is equipped and ready for this battle. Except Marcus who may find us rather tame and wimpy, as far as activism is concerned. Let us remember however that, to our credit, we understand the difference between dirty politics and the collective politics of social actions.
So, I have a dream: that Marcus build a political wing … NO – NO … that Marcus be the seed of an autonomous political group for which TINYisPOWERFUL would be an artists-run partner. From there, find other directions where to expand similar cooperations, and slowly build a network of activist groups which could – as was envisioned at that Redux meeting with Thetyka – organize together a Community Lab in the near future.
This is how hope can be sustained: together, autonomously, with the same vision that an other world is possible.
—–
Here I can venture into a shortcut to ECOFEMINISM. Simply because I believe that women are ‘naturals’ for … Generation – human, biological generation and ecological (re)generation.
There is a French anthropologist, Emilie Hache, who wrote a book called: Of Generation. Its subtitle says it all: a research about its disappearance and its replacement by Production.
We are at the heart of the issue. Generation and/or Production. This looks like a binary and it would remain one if this very diary was not also telling the thousands of steps, sidesteps, back-steps and hesitations it has taken me to trace a stream between now (04-10-2024) and August 2022: date of my introduction to Roswitha Scholz and her Value-Dissociation article with Robert Kurtz, on Mediapart.
05-16-2024
« Le temps viendra où le désir de dominer, de dicter sa loi, de bâtir son empire, la fierté d’être le plus fort, l’orgueil de détenir la vérité, seront considérés comme un des signes les plus sûrs de la barbarie à l’œuvre dans l’histoire des humanités »
Edouard Glissant et Patrick Chamoiseau.
meaning:
“The time will come when the desire to dominate, to dictate the law, to build an empire, the pride of being the strongest, the vanity of holding the truth, will be the surest signs that barbarism is at work in the history of humanities.”
—–
The essay below is an assemblage of sources, thoughts and texts from the last two or three years of my diary, whose purpose it is to organize and gather, with/for TINYisPOWERFUL, much of the knowledge the collective and myself can muster, in order to articulate vision, values, daily circumstances and art creations. This means updating and contextualizing contents in an effort to remain relevant to place and time.
Here it is:
Production – Value – Dissociation – (re)Generation
At the occasion of one of Macron’s authoritarian flare-ups, Mediapart quotes French Caribbean collaborative thinkers Chamoiseau and Glissant (my translation):
“The time will come when the desire to dominate, to dictate the law, to build an empire, the pride of being the strongest, the vanity of holding the truth, will be the surest signs that barbarism is at work in the history of humanities.”
That was written at least 15 years ago. And this is Spring 2024. Today, I am tempted to replace the word ‘humanities’ of Glissant et Chamoiseau with ‘humanity’… Spring 2024? One of the most globally violent years of the 21st century so far. I don’t remember whether, in 2010, intersectionality and woke were mainstream yet? Today though, we can unabashedly list domination, empire, power and (fake) truth itself, squarely on the side of supremacy and colonialism. Cultural wars at the heart of America’s destiny, and all TINY and POWERFUL artists and art organizations at the frontline of the struggle for equity and access.
——-
Lately, in my search for coherence across this wandering diary, a stream seems to be digging its course. Here are some markers of its direction.
. My latest readings have made me aware of the rise of a South-American literary movement which consistently addresses issues of male supremacy, women’s rights, socio-cultural liberation, ecological justice and does not fear to propose inspired post-colonial visions for the future. I don’t know if this movement has a unifying name but it carries all the attributes of ECOFEMINISM. And I have come to believe that the contemporaneity, the relevance and the overall artistic sensibility of ECOFEMINISM, potentially carry a widened perspective for our imperiled planet.
The names of some writers I refer to are Gabriela Wiener, Cristina Cabezon-Cabrera, Gabriela Morales.
. Last Friday morning, I was listening to a program on ‘France Culture’ (the French Public Radio cultural station): an interview of Emilie Hache, about her new book titled (my translation) ‘Of Generation’. Its subtitle says it all: ‘A research about its disappearance and its replacement by Production’.
In the interview Hache shows how EXTRACTIVISM and PRODUCTIVISM, besides exhausting the planet’s resources, have thoroughly neglected to consider their (RE)GENERATION particularly and more specifically, the Generation of species, including the role of women, their forced submission and male domination in this process. Looking into history, Hache observes how antiquity and pre-medieval cultures were conscious of Generation at all levels, from humans to animals, to vegetal(s), to spirits, including fauns and demi-gods … (my interpretation). She traces today’s ignorance of/indifference to all issues of Generation to monotheistic, messianic, christian religions, in that they believe in the ultimate helping-hand of a lord to save them and the planet … And she asks: how come some (present) matrilinear societies are, on the contrary, so fully aware of care for generation and why is ecofeminism considered a cumbersome epiphenomenon of woke modernity?
The jacket cover of Hache’s book insists “… This book very much contributes to ECOFEMINISM, as it identifies the Generation question beyond that of women and the nature of modernity.”
. This reference by Hache to Generation and Production inevitably brings me back to the work of Roswitha Scholz on the concept of Value-Dissociation. I wrote an essay on the subject for the TINYisPOWERFUL Reservoir in August 2022. Scholz contends that the whole capitalist economy is based on value. The value of things – natural or manufactured, the value of people, slaves and/or women. The value of women, she writes, is predicated on the brutal dissociation between the role of men and that of women. Men produce whatever is deemed necessary to sustain a supply-based economy . Women are left with the domestic tasks. They generate, raise and educate the next waves of docile workers. In this male dominated system, domesticity is undervalued and therefore does not require fair compensation.
Of course, Roswitha is one among many, who show that patriarchy, as a system where males are the self-appointed warrantors of productive labor, is overly exploitative of people, and extractive of the environment. Yet, I particularly appreciate the intersection she reveals between the two rather abstract notions of value and dissociation. Bringing a level of analysis to the debate makes it a particularly dynamic one; she vastly broadens the field of research and cross-referencing. Clearly, then, cleaving the multiple complementarities contained in just these two words exposes the immorality, the corruption of the mind it represents to precisely atomize Woman, Man, everything Nature, animate and inanimate. Including Spirits!
At a time when study after study and personal experience show how the atomization* of human societies is the main source of individual and group violence, of depression and despair, of ‘doomy’ predictions for a future which some call the end, ECOFEMINISM, brings along, with its very subtle political/civic intents, a load of inspiring visions, humor and grinding realism. In the literary realm, over-the-top stories often seem to result in liberating crescendos where, if I remember correctly, water, with all its archetypal symbolisms, takes an inundating importance! And where gender, pronouns and identity surf joyously!
* Atomization: if one of its consequences is doom, in a future some call the end, what other proofs do all the depressed crowds out there need to show that individual and civic responsibility, (re)association, collective intelligence, community and belonging … will carry the destiny of all?
05-18-2024
In the Public Citizen News of March 2024 (vol.4-#2), a short article titled:
Majority of US Chamber’s advocacy supports large corporations
This reminds me of the many times when, whether it was me and Gwylène for Fast&French or Victoria for TINYisPOWERFUL, we were tempted to consider going to ‘the Chamber’ for support or visibility! Very soon I understood it was a sham as far as tiny business is concerned. I have dissuaded Victoria to take the bait a few times as well.
Here is a link to a shorter version of the article I just read in the above referenced issue of Public Citizen News, one of the many RALF NADER’s gifts to the people of America.
05-23-2024
I believe the ‘Bill’s Kitchen Episode’ is over. And in retrospect, I remember that one of the factors that kept me interested in the work – besides my respect for Bill as a musician, the generous presence of Saleha and a fair income for the two of us – was the choice I had made, early on, to use foliage as the decorative motif on the individual cabinets of the kitchen. I kept it discreet for sure – after all, I remain dedicated to minimalism in design! As Mies would say: less is more. Yes, in Bill’s dense and minimal kitchen, a few lilac and ginkgo leaves go a long way! They celebrate nature … as Bill chops parsley or skins a fish and, for sure, at a moment nature needs celebration and generation most. Its spirit is inspiring my spirit. The whole circumstance reminds me of ‘a Tale for Reparations’, formerly ‘a Tale of Charleston’! When I accepted to build the kitchen, I was working on a cornucopia of fish, fruit and vegetables, a celebratory station to nature! This, still today, represents quite a turn. It is a departure from my minimal-constructivist-male esthetics. It had started softening with the Jungle. The work with TINYisPOWERFUL, where all members and affiliates were women – until Marcus came along – confirmed the trend. An awareness of how the socio-political realm cannot ignore women. Although this is no rehabilitation. Women do not need rehabilitation. They need, they demand respect.
Yes, all my latest readings signal a change in sensibility, in intelligence, in priorities.
Will the spirit of nature go the way of the Amazon?
Will it die and kill us all for having killed it?
Cowardice. Not revenge, Bumblebee will buzz
Negligence. Not despair, Harfang will howl
Laziness. Not anger, Cheetah will chirp
Ignorance. Not resentment, crow will crow-crow
05-26-2024
How could I have forgotten to mention that last Friday I received my copy of David Graeber and David Wengrot ‘The Dawn of Everything’ …
… and that, on page One, right under ‘Chapter One’, there is a quote by CARL JUNG!
My heart skipped a beat. Here it is:
“This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are in what the Greeks called Kairos – the right time – for a ‘metamorphosis of the gods’, of the fundamental principles and symbols.”
C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self (1958)
I have decided to make the development above ‘Point 4’ in the paper started last week and presently titled
Production – Value – Dissociation – (re)Generation.
Jung has forced me to dig deeper into the more personal roots of my share of KAIROS.
There is an obvious kinship between Jung’s “metamorphosis of the gods” and
my own, discreet but loaded, reference to “fauns and demi-gods” … I may be over-estimating my own content here but, with Jung, I have been foraging in what he names the (un)conscious for the last 60 years! The ‘fundamental principles and symbols’ he refers to used to inform a lot of my creative work. Although I am not fluent in Jung’s vocabulary anymore, I have kept it buried in the depth of my unconscious! Mostly, with him, I acknowledge and respect the ardor of everyone’s interior life. Some call it the soul. I do too when I am searching for better words!
The Kairos in question, then, is TODAY.
05-29-2024
. Read in the May 28 issue of Heather Cox-Richardson Newsletter:
… today, Melinda French Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced $1 billion in new spending over the next two years “for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including on reproductive rights in the United States.” Only 2% of charitable giving in the U.S. goes to these organizations, she wrote the New York Times, and “[f]or too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women’s rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”
. Read in the May issue of le Monde Diplomatique, the quick review of a book entitled “Femmes des Pyrénées – Une identité perdue et retrouvée” (“Women of the Pyrénées – an identity lost and recovered”). The author, Isaure Gratacos, tells us that until the French Revolution, in that region of South-Eastern France, it was the birthright of the older sibling to lead and administrate the affairs and legacy of the family, whether man or woman. This local, ancestral rule, like others which are still current, established the equality of women and their autonomy. Today’s attempts to challenge patriarchy can only gain from knowing that, “in cultures where women were free, body and mind, they were also man’s equal”, the ‘Diplo’ writes.
All I am doing here is showing how, within a short few days, I have picked up a number of facts which tell me that if there is such a reality as Kairos, it is today.
KAIROS IS TODAY
05-31-2024
The same day Donald Trump is found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business documents, by a jury of American citizens … I can offer a final version of the article I title
PRODUCTION – VALUE – DISSOCIATION – (re)GENERATION
Gwylène would prefer ECOFEMINISM to be the title.
But I am not sure I want to limit this expanding concept, however self explanatory it is. Yet, I may imagine adding it to a list of shining words on the flashing ticker tape of world art, à la Jenny Holzer, along with DESIRABILITY, KAIROS and others. An open list of (re)productive words!
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In ArchDaily, I discover some South American architecture firms which develop vernacular vocabularies of forms and materials for the purpose of making architecture a relevant player in socially-informed housing programs. One firm in particular, Natura Firma, has designed a multi-use community building whose features are very close to those in the housing proposal of the Tale and many others I found later on! This, I believe, is the consequence the whole world experiences of more-than-ever abundant rain falls and high temperatures. Multiple ground floor units under a single oversize roof structure, with a second floor terrace-like common space above, direct access to ground vegetation, and so on. This pushes me to want to go a little further in some added features like an access to the upstairs common, only barely suggested in my project.
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Ever since the Union Pier real estate has been sold, there has been no meeting of the Community Advisory Committee. This is bad news for us all. Natura Firma, for example, advocates for a participatory design process … Charleston is such a colonial city!
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This morning there was a Zoom meeting of TINYisPOWERFUL with Abriel and Marcus, to acknowledge where they were going with her residency project.
From the start it was clear that she was getting into a much less ambitious scheme involving the painting of playground furniture in a Charleston East side park! Although she was showing some awareness of the necessity to give more depth to the project, I lost patience, got turned off and texted Victoria that this looked too much like an Enough Pie non-idea. In that case, I was not interested… However, at one point I intervened and proposed that, at least, along with the painting, the youth – for example – honor their ancestry one way or an other. Or that they make it an inter-generational and inter-racial – mostly inter-racial – project.
That is when I had to leave and go to a dental appointment!
When I came back Gwylène filled me in. We shall see what comes up at the next, newly scheduled, weekly meeting with Abriel and the team.
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As I was coming back from the dentist, Yves Gaudin called from La Réunion, one of France’s Pacific departments, North-East of Madagascar, and which Macron treats the same way he treats New Caledonia: as a colonial territory. Exactly what both islands do not want to be, reject and fight against! Yves was so happy, though, to find himself in a truly mixed-race environment (with a majority of creoles) and lots of wandering refugees from literally everywhere in the world. Of course, on that island also, there is a minority of privileged white folks who rule the place through the brutal authority of the police, reinforced lately with units of the CRS, special intervention forces, there to crush riots and secure the borders! What borders? The coast line? And a genuinely colonial, proverbial Red Line? That virtual partition – between the Haves with their privileges and Have nots with not much – constantly moving at the whim of the Real Estate market, keeping the indigenous people and the migrants in a constant state of insecurity and peril? All for the purpose of making room for hotels and luxury housing, along the beaches for sure and on some cool mountain tops!
Among many other encounters, Yves met two Ethiopian gentlemen to whom he sang a song he had learned in an Ethiopian restaurant in Atlanta,15 or 20 years before! It was at the time of our Atlanta Refugee Services residency with Bobby King. We had invited Yves to give workshops, of course! One night, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant where a singer taught him a lullaby in his language. Yves never forgot it and sang it to the two ecstatic refugees. Nice story? We have so many more with Yves Gaudin, the Traveling Rhapsode. I think that, in this very diary, there is a paragraph about Yves giving the same cultural, emotional jolt to two young Russian adoptees, at Azule, Camille’s place, north of Ashevile NC. They genuinely cried when they heard a poem in Russian that Yves had in reserve for them.
Yves travels a lot. He makes it a point to learn pieces from as many countries and in as many languages as he can. He learns the text by heart and is coached by a native for pronunciation and accent. I promise, it works, every time, and it is beautiful.
I remember many occasions when Gwylène and I described to Yves how we got to working on our big installations with multiple artists, activists, educator, local or not, with groups. We wish he would think about getting together with some or many of his artist friends and put together a hell of a multi-cultural show. He can do it so powerfully. Gwylène and I can testify. And if I were younger, I would travel with him and assist! Because this is what the race-freaked world of Trump needs today, the day he turns, officially, into a criminal … and large cohorts of passport-free in/with community artists rummage the world, stirring up Good Trouble.