This video was commissioned by Document Journal for their Artist in Isolation Series.
My work is propositional, to imagine other realms or other ways of being in the world. The COVID-19 crisis is a terrifying situation that is laying bare the inequality in the world and showing us how capitalism is fraying at the seams. This piece is an attempt to make sense of what is happening around us, to see what portals exist in this time of potential radical change.
This piece comes out of a long term research project on Donna Haraway’s writing on tentacular thinking; her work is poetic activism and perfect reading during a pandemic. This piece brings together different strands of my research in a sort of visual essay/conversation. Since my self isolation began a couple of weeks ago I can’t count how many Zoom meetings I have been on so I decided to use a recording of one of them in the piece. Video conferencing has become our new way of communicating and being intimate with one another.
To think tentacularly is to think collectively, collaboratively. We are forging tentacular networks that never existed within our communities: Mutual Aide becomes Making Kin and vis versa. Contemporary life is suspended in ways we thought impossible. So what impossibilities can we think up?
what other impossibles can become possible?
As Donna would say.
Think we must.