An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
Social Engagement
The Socially Engaged works build community, both in strength and in scope, often finding ways to extend realms of inclusion beyond what is obvious or embraced: whether this is through highlighting connections to location, to geography, or to other inhabitants, both human and more-than. This work stems from a consideration of both individual health[1], and the health of the commons[2]. Recent works explore these values in two directions: one is through the human sphere, the other is through attentiveness to the more than human community.
[1] Following D.W. Winnicott’s definition of a healthy psyche as the ability to navigate difference, and as being expressed through an ability to engage genuinely and creatively with others.
[2] Following Hannah Arendt’s definition of the commons as the shared zone of investment that comes into existence through interaction across difference.
Attending to Each Other: Engagement Between People
These works respond to contemporary issues in global politics, exploring how these impact and are influenced by the human social structures that they implicate. Coming from North America, and aware of how much influence the United States has (and how loudly they speak) on the international stage, recent works in this area focus on responding to sociological messaging in Canada and the USA. Their approach pointedly builds alternatives by enacting them together with the public. This is a form of experiential knowledge-building, not intended to dictate alternatives but rather to explore them as viable, thereby strengthening alternate, lateral approaches to inclusion.
These works are ongoing inquiries, and are re-framings of similar questions: what does a healthy public look like? What is community? How can we build systems of relation that support inclusion across difference, especially of world view? Is it possible to have an inclusive public and also navigate the complexity and confusion brought by the presence of extremist and/or hateful positionings? What role do play and the unproductive productivity of “hanging out” have in imagining alternate futures?
Chronologically listed, these works are :
Wiz Dizzler (2017)
A web comic responding to trolling and the rise of the alt-right using the symbol of the green frog (a now popular marker of far-right political leanings, stemming from a rebranding of the gentle stoner pepe the frog).
Everything We Knew About It (2017)
An intervention and publication exploring hierarchies of knowing, and the power of recreating non-linear narratives together, working with largely minority populations within the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York.
Lost Remote (2020)
An online variety show exploring ways to use the medium of digital presentation to create the kind of invested, inclusive public that the practice so strongly builds in the domain of the geographically proximate.
Attending to the Other Others: Engagement Extending Beyond the Human
The works' considerations of good relation extend not only to the interactions they instigate and navigate between humans, but also to interactions between the self and all others. This includes:
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other life forms (plants, animals, fungi...)
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inanimate forms (rocks, household objects, stars…)
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abstractions and ideas (time, the internet, value/worth, language, bioregions…)
These works are palpably informed by the ethics and thinking of my Social Engagement practice, but extend equally towards a part of my methodology which can be described as contemplative.