collaboration of the universe ☁️
staying in collaboration with blobs, shapes, colours, fields and beautiful Ariel Bader-Shamai who always helps bring permanence to my lofty fields ideas
Hello sweet beings, how have you been practising collaboration? During an Okay Hang in June Artist In Residence Stacey Sproule asked us "what are we in collaboration with" and it has been stuck in my head since.
We are in collaboration with everything, always, and the frenetic feelings of summer make be feel collaboratively overwhelmed. My senses are too high. I have several books inside my brain about how capitalism has ruined summer for us all, but maybe that is not this email. Summer rolls up and all I want to do is lay in a field (more than usual). I want time to turn inwards but logging off or drawing a line around myself feels 1. frivolous 2. priveldgey 3. not smart. But I know those things are capitalism only and maybe a bit of shame and know I am committed to fields and in collaboration with feelings and not in service of capitalism. And privilege isn't necessarily a bad thing if I/we are using it to dismantle systems.
I draw a line around myself to move a bit slower. I keep the avocados skins and seeds to dye and regrow new plants, I spend time pulling the bits of plants I feel are just about to go to cook into dinner. I cancel meetings and take dance classes in the park and reschedule zoom calls in favour of going outside. Maybe it is my strong dislike of the binary and adherence to a code but it doesn't feel "slow". It feels like the most sustainable pace for me, anything faster would throw my equilibrium off, knock me off centre.
So I draw a line around what I actually need to survive. I am in collaboration with boundaries. They are not firm lines in the sand but instead move and shift with the tide and the seasons. Summers freneticness I know will bring a new seasons of feelings so I stay in collaboration with them, instead of against them.
stuff I've made in collaboration or to collaborate with you on
many blessings for collaboration in all its forms!!
I love you
xx
phoebe
p.s
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