confinement Creative Practice Intersectionality Life PhD storytelling Visual Writing

Inner life: centering + decentering

My inner life experience of both centering and decentering power… also noting outer world references in orbit.
Pencil drawing on paper, then colour inverted in Photoshop (July 2020).

Pushing myself to write more whilst the moment is here, but writing honestly and meaningfully requires getting through a lot of barriers and it feels like there is a lot of inner resistance right now. Resistance or just tiredness..? So hard to say… but at this stage, just trying to keep things moving, putting one word in front of another. Following on from my last post about Decentering Power, I wanted to share this drawing of my own experience of decentering dynamics (particularly given my recent experience of double caring during lockdown). With the outer world references in orbit.

… Inner life: centering + decentering
Barcelona Creative Practice Film/Video Intersectionality Life PhD storytelling Visual Writing

Decentering Power, Whiteness, Knowledge, Ableism, Class, Gender, ETC.

Based on Baran’s visualisation of Decentralized, Distributed and Centralized networks (1964, p. 2)

I’m doing some research and creative thinking about how we reconfigure power, for real. In a way that really transforms lives, experiences and relationships. Using visual and sensory devices to keep with the material experience and achievement of change. One strategy is to think through the sticky points and divergences between two transformative projects challenging the centre and the centralised: the Tecnopolitica body of work; and a set of decentering power projects with a strong focus on decentering knowledge and whiteness.

… Decentering Power, Whiteness, Knowledge, Ableism, Class, Gender, ETC.
Film/Video Intersectionality Life PhD storytelling Writing

Donna Haraway’s Vision

from Haraway’s 1998 article ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’

Donna Haraway’s treatment of ‘Vision’ in her 1988 Situated Knowledge text is extremely helpful for my work, as it explores Vision in a political and epistemological context, giving a switched on academic framing to my use of (audo)visual research techniques. Haraway uses Vision as a metaphor to unpack ways of seeing, knowing and positioning.

She criticises the all-seeing Eye of the God-trick (the conquering gaze from nowhere that represents and marks bodies, while itself remaining unrepresented and unseen).

She advocates for embodied situated Vision that recognises and deconstructs it’s own positionality, specificity, difference, technologies and prosthetics for seeing; in the process making itself accountable, responsible, answerable.

She problematises ‘Seeing from Below’ and the vantage points of the subjugated:

… Donna Haraway’s Vision
PhD Barcelona Sound Film/Video Collective Intelligence storytelling

Storytelling Research #2 :: ‘It’s Alive!’ // ‘¡Está Viva!’

Source: https://flashbak.com/eeygaah-and-other-vintage-comic-book-screams-of-terror-384820/


As the old comic book exclamation goes… ‘It’s Alive…!’ And the aliveness of the Decidim community in Barcelona made itself known loud and clear during my fieldwork experience. ‘It’s Alive!’ is now the first of the storytelling devices I am using to both analyse and share the research. It started with ‘the sound of the hive’ [of the Decidim office] ringing in my ears after leaving Barcelona, and it’s still going. This sense of aliveness is now guiding me through an exploration of how collective intelligence works in Decidim.Barcelona and related tecnopolitical networks.

… Storytelling Research #2 :: ‘It’s Alive!’ // ‘¡Está Viva!’
confinement

Confinement Day 40 :: the ants have moved in

There’s a kind of madness in the deluge submerging home life. Everything is moved around as we try and sort a sleeping space for my dad and that’s stuck on hold as the blimmin Argos bed seems defective and assembly is taking days. We are sleeping on makeshift mattresses on the living room floor. Bags of food and stuff from the outside build up as they decontaminate and I work my way through washing them safely. I wake up everyday to the noisy crackle of dad listening to his old school radio and fiddling around the radio spectrum. Huge chunks of the rest of the day are filled with noisy crash-bang of little one’s cartoons – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie seems to get played at least once a day. However, what was initially a cause of frustration at the beginning of isolation has now become oddly comforting: ants have found a way into our flat and seem to find it comfortable here. The ants have moved in.

… Confinement Day 40 :: the ants have moved in
Collective Intelligence confinement

Confinement Day 38 :: my practice

Honestly, writing about ‘my practice’ at this time doesn’t come easily. It feels out of place and so far away, almost unimaginable, when I’m up to my neck in hands-on caring, domestic logistics and working out how to pay the bills/rent over the coming months. Like who am I kidding that there is anything more important than the wellbeing of my nearest and dearest, and keeping house and home together. It’s wierd, like there is actually a part of me pushing ‘my practice’ away. OK, I’m pushing through and promising myself to get somewhere today in this post.

… Confinement Day 38 :: my practice
confinement

Confinement Day 35 :: Clue… it looks like yesterday

Wow, ok haven’t written for 19 days. The truth is that many days I thought about writing, but also thought it would be too boring as everyday looks very similar. And inevitably a long chunk of the blog would start the same – oh god so much washing up, cleaning, childcare…. can I even remember what my practice is, my work, what I actually would like to do with my time, my writing if I have 5 minutes? And dear reader, I wouldn’t want to bore you so you never came back again? 🙂