Engaged dis-identifications, NOTES#2: testing antidotes to indifference

1. Po-ethic inquiry: dis-immunizations

Embracing Thorns

Acknowledge the constructs in which I find myself in.
Tune in to a wider metabolism.
Accept our shared ability to both hurt and heal.
Open my body to embrace the thorns, and the softness beneath them.
Welcome the contradictions, paradoxes, pains and pleasures of this process.
Find strength in and through our shared vulnerability.

2. Stretching spaces:

“making room for that which we can’t yet know and can’t wait for any longer” (Dr. Jasmine Syedullah – Radical Dharma: Talking race, love and liberation)

• How to support the process of others even though I do not understand / cannot understand?
• Can we engage with issues we don’t feel directly affected by?
• If the opposite of love is indifference, how to love where there could be indifference?
• What is the relationship between radical intimacies and social justice?
• How to surrender pre-determined outcomes and be comfortable with the discomfort of witnessing and experiencing affectabilities?

3. Nuancing affectabilities

The pains & pleasures of discomfort…

“Discomfort is where liberation really emerges from, just like the Buddhist lotus that emerges from the mud. We need to emerge from our confusion through strategies of awareness. You can’t emerge from something you haven’t owned and recognized. (Lama Rod Owens – Radical Dharma: Talking race, love and liberation)

“The misunderstanding is that refuge means somehow being protected from our discomfort. Refuge is actually about being protected from all of the things that are hindering our ability to see our discomfort and to be able to actually come in contact with it.” (Rev. angel Kyodo williams – Radical Dharma: Talking race, love and liberation)

4. Incubating performative practices

“Walk towards each other. As you stand in front of each other think of a fear that arises in you when you enter into a relationship. Pause. Look into each other’s eyes and voice this fear to one another. Together descend towards the floor. Negotiate (without words) how to lie down together, one on top of the other. Embrace and roll together, protecting yourself and the other in this journey. Generously allow the group to witness this moment of care, risk and vulnerability. Observe your responses to it.”

Photo gallery:

Dis-immunization practices facilitated by Dani d’Emilia & Fernanda Eugenio (AND_lab, Research Centre for Art-Thinking & Politics of Togetherness) at Roundabout.lx (Lisbon). Images: Valentina Vargas

Engaged dis-identifications is an artistic-pedagogic collaboration between Dani d’Emilia and Vanessa Andreotti that explores the workings of non-notional possibilities of co-existence through performative practices. It attempts to translate post-representational modes of engagement into embodied experiments that reconfigure the connections between reason, affect and relationality.