Ricocheting our attention lasers off of emotional objects
Images you can feel with your guts, growth you can see with your ears, a care network in process
[For the audio description of the last image, scroll to the bottom]
In 2020, The Hologram book (you can read it for free at the link) came out. We had the best online book launch, organized in partnership with Pluto Press and Eyebeam. Tina Zavitsanos and I (Cassie) reflected on our shared attention around holograms, debt, and care and my (then) recently published pamphlet, The Hologram: Peer to Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, included in the Vagabonds series, edited by Max Haiven.
Tina and I talked about how “In an era when capitalism leaves so many to suffer and to die, with neoliberal ‘self-care’ offering little more than a bandaid, how can we take health and care back into our hands?” This book launch was a place for that conversation between Tina and I, who have been ricocheting our lasers of attention off of similar emotional objects in different places, for decades. And to conclude we had a question and answer session moderated by Ruth Catlow from Furtherfield.
Today, it feels like we need more options for distributing care and attention than ever. Rent goes up as the emergencies get worse. We feel sick and we don't know why, and we can't remember everyone else around us is in the spaceship with us with the same headache and related fears. Is it ok to ask for help when so many big problems feel so big and we have been taught that we are bad, guilty losers?
If we want to be brave, to commit to doing the work that the world requests of us, we need to develop the ability to feel like part of the world, starting with being part of a community we can trust, who we feel like we can give and get support from. Nobody knows this better than everyone who has ever needed to ask for help because they didn't have what they needed. Is this you? If not, hopefully one day this will be you. What would it feel like to reveal a need, and have it be met, without money and without a sense of owing? What if you felt like a part of a community, and with every cut, the energy for care multiplied? I don't even think it is far fetched, it is gonna happen.
The video of the event is available here on youtube.
We are posting it now for a few reasons. First, because Tina wrote the best image descriptions for the 3 slides Cassie used to talk about the book. You can see those below or hear us read them in the event.
Second, because the event was such a good example of accessibility, depth, comedy and experimentation. I learned so much from working with Tina to achieve accessibility, and by working with Candace Davider, an American Sign Lanugage Interpreter who signed with the song list made by me and Tina in a way we could all feel.
It's interesting to reflect on this event, when the practice felt a bit more like conceptual art than a useful project. It took two more years to become something that really felt useful by lots of different people.
[An apparently old etching hosts at its center a figure in head scarf and robe holding a giant triangle that appears translucent and covers the face and body of one of their companions whilst their other companion is seated in long skirt and head wrap with a shield. The three are gathered under a thatched form or tree with branches and leaves above in a canopy. In the background are fields and shelter, some reeds and a rising or setting luminary; in the foreground is a pond with two close swans whose necks almost make the shape of a heart. In the corners of the image are four small stamps that host an insect in a web, a winged insect on a branch, a snake in grass, and a caterpillar on a leaf respectively. The vibe is very “we have always had this. it was given us, by us, for us. we are each other’s means without ends.”]
[On the right, a hand drawn circle links by three separate continuous lines to three smaller circles which themselves then each link by three distinct dotted lines to three more small circles. On the left, a hyperbolic drawing is juxtaposed with what appears to be the whole drawing on the right repeated in the same structuring pattern to the edges of a globe form. The mood is structured but playful. Serving Mandelbrot realness like carnival sand art spirograph meets the fractals at the heart of the village, sci fi but still justified and ancient. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? I mean if we must live in a simulation can we at least make it this cute?]
[A translucent opalescent prism sits alongside a hand drawn diagram of a triangle. Each of the triangle’s points are separately labeled: “INTROSPECTION, COOPERATION, ORGANIZATION.” The prism shimmers in graded defractions of light and the paper diagram has the feel of having been made quickly and held in one’s hands. The background of this slide is a washed out smooth pink and yellow gradient that gives chill vibes with purpose. The mood is subdued self love meets rose quartz swatch watch. Something is going to happen; there’s a plan and some kinda convergence of energy, or you know---things are really coming to a point.]