History and archives are both heavy and light
Re-entry to the daily rhythms after some time away. What we planned for: a warm-weather holiday, family milestones and celebrations. Instead: not quite that. The weather was warm, 70s, sun. Pleasures to be had, poolside. But the rest is for another time.
Last night, I hosted a panel on community-engaged art, social practices, with three of my all-time favorite artists and humans: Mathias Svalina, Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez, and Becci Davis. They were brilliant, as expected and while they spoke, I tried to write down everything they said. A quick list:
Mathias spoke of Dream Delivery Service and how it evolved from making use of what was at hand. He spoke of how the practice arose from a set of needs — to be writing all the time, needing time alone, being poor. How the practice becomes a way of living, a way of being in the world, evolving into questions of the myths that cities tell about themselves, ways to comment on public spaces, ways to hold the reader in mind, in a particular kind of intimate collaboration.
I was struck too by Ben's observations about how their practice has become more about the actions they take, their organizing, their activism. The way the action group becomes its own kind of creative community, a kind of deep caretaking on the plane of the political. Commenting on a performance in which a parachute has been assembled from newspaper stories that mention Colombia, "History and archives are both heavy and light things."
Becci's overview of recent work highlighted the importance of place in making, the ways the places we inhabit give us structures to engage with, through question and dialogue. She creates environments, sensory experiences for audiences to be in and with, which compel us to see these places — public parks, public monuments, sites of myth — in ways that destabilize historical narratives. "The brief and digestible thing is always false."
The conversations made me think about how early in our practices, there is a tendency to think that our "art" is over there, and our lives get in the way of it. And how gradually, over years, we come to understand how permeable those boundaries are. How our creative practices are how we show up in the world, how we find belonging in our environments. How relational and dynamic these practices are and can be. How what we do arises from who we are, what we need, what we love. How much we hold others in mind.
