Collaborations through and with the niche
Initially I moved to this place as a withdrawal from social and collaborative practices. After 30 years of living and working collectively, living on temporary terms and often working with public space I had run into a dead end of sorts. But gradually a new kind of joint work has emerged from here. A way to connect with others through our conection to place. This place has given me the possibility to tune to others, supported by the surrounding frequencies generated by living systems. By joining the rythms (mimicing) of the place better practices have emerged.
whole body intelligence
In the short story “Binoojiinh Makes a Lovely Discovery” Page 145 – 149 in the book “As we have always done”, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson retells a maple syrup origin myt. This meeting between a girl, a squirrel is a good example of such calibration. She describes how a young Nishnaabeg girl discovers maple sap while immersed in her environment and interacting with it. She notices and observes a squirrel nibbling and sucking a tree. From curiosity the girl mimics the squirrel and tastes the tree. Betasamosake continues to describe all the knowledges, theories and technologies that follows from this curious exploration. She emphasises self-led learning, driven by both her own curiosity and her own personal desire to learn: “Coming to know in this way is the pursuit of whole body intelligence practiced in the context of freedom, and when realized collectively it generates generations of loving, creative, innovative, self-determining, inter-dependent and self-regulating community minded individuals. It creates communities of individuals with the capacity to uphold and move forward our political traditions and systems of governance.”
palimpsests
In the 1960s, the ethnographer Fernand Deligny founded a network in the countryside of southern France for autistic children. The location was remote, and the housing was simple, with only the bare necessities. The purpose of the place was to try to understand the existence of nonverbal autistic individuals. By using maps of the shared spaces and marking how the children and their neurotypical caretakers moved through them, it became possible to begin discerning patterns and overlaps. These patterns seemed to sketch out a shared space, where the two previously separate worlds gradually began to approach each other. The simply and open-endedly shaped living environment appeared to allow for a kind of flexibility, a wiggle room, where small variations could give rise to overlaps. In these overlaps (palimpsests), a coming-together could occur.
Collective niche construction
People who rely on external objects and environments for their thinking and sense of self, also rely on it to build relation to other people. They come to share mind space with others through collective niche construction. Taking turns with objects, sharing sensorimotor patterns of sensing and responding in ways that leave marks in the physical world, connects the externalized self with others. This place has given me a foundation for connecting this externalized self with others.
Debora Elgeholm, Marigold fibrous roots
Maja Fjällbäck, Flaskpost
Tofiq Pasha, Marigold pollen
Wajdan Khan Khattak, Bees hum
Nedine Kachornamsong, Soilworks
Joffe Rydberg, sensory worldbuilding course + Romtopf
Sofie Norstedt, Brudslöja
Group play compositions
Daily routine compositions
Joint cycles (composting, hair-birdnests)
Lecturing with blueberries
