#commoning

Taking Action for Earthly Survival Pt. 1:

Forno Vagabondo

Dear fellow (more-than-)humans,

do you remember this Beyond Crisis Conference we talked about in our last episode? We met this incredible (more-than-)human called Flora. They - Flora and her microbes - took action and gave birth to a community oven that is set to travel through Italian villages and bring together people of all kinds. For us, this is one of these fundamental projects to bring about the transformation our society so desperately needs. In order to emancipate ourselves from the industrial food system that is destroying our health and that of our fellow living beings we need to bake bread together. It is through this seemingly mundane process that we learn how to live together in a mutual aid relationship with fellow living beings (e.g. microbes). We also need to bake bread together in order to re-connect with local (more-than-)human knowledge, as it is through this process that we re-democratize our communal living together.

And yes: Baking bread takes quite a time. It shatters our rigid timetables of productiveness that are solely feeding dead capital rather than living communities. It hands back time to exchange ideas and to discuss and shape our common futures. Transformational ideas like degrowth or commons not only need time but also an oven to take shape and gain energy. Ultimately, this oven needs to be a vagabond. It needs to travel without restrictions. This is what the Forno Vagabondo is about. It is not only baking breads but also futures of (more-than-)human commoning. 

Most of the heroic ancient and contemporary stories told in Western culture are “about all the sticks spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained”, as famous science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin reminds us. 

Instead of telling another of these phallic stories, we want to open up the dancefloor as a carrier bag. A carrier bag for stories of transformational futures. This music video is the beginning of a journey. From the Forno Vagabondo in Italy we set out to other transformational projects. We want to weave their stories of transformation all over Europe into a giant basket. A basket which we can live off in the future.

“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again--if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.”

Let’s follow Ursula K. Le Guin once again and be (more-than-)human. Let’s put the bread in the oven together. Let it rise. Take it out. Put it in the basket that is our carrier bag. Repeat from dancefloor to dancefloor.

30/01/20-Walk in the New Forest with the seasonal assistant rangers around Kings Hat, Goldfinch before leaving and Eyeworth Pond later on in the day  

So today I had the day off as I had been invited on a walk with the seasonal assistant rangers around the Kings Hat area as a result of a micro photography competition I had entered last year with the national park authority. It was a walk around an area influenced and managed by the Higher Stewardship scheme and the walk aimed to show us around an area of the national park and explain how the area is managed and the importance of the area. 

I had an amazing time on this walk the rain did not make me enjoy it any less at all and added to quite a cosy and atmospheric feel as we walked around some varied, beautiful and iconic New Forest habitat. I took the first three pictures in this photoset of views on the walk. The rangers Erika and Rhianne were fantastic they were so friendly and accommodating to do the walk and really have so much varied between them and in depth knowledge about the area we were in and the wildlife of it and shill. I felt very lucky to spend some time with them and some other like minded people within the group and that we have people this passionate looking out for this incredibly special and precious national park.

Within the walk we did as I said and the photos show pass through varied habitat in the woods and heathland and we covered topics such as felling, burning, grazing, commoning and the processes within it and how they all contribute into making the forest into the beautiful, biodiverse and important place it is today. It was very interesting to be walking into a pound area where the free roaming ponies are put during round ups and fascinating to hear about the unique wildlife of ponds such as the amazing tadpole shrimp which the New Forest is one of only two places in the UK they are found. This just underlined the forest’s status as this haven for special wildlife and I learnt how having livestock on the forest is so crucial for that. There was also some great information about the heritage in the New Forest. 

It really was a magical time today I felt in my element doing this really and felt so warmly embraced by it all. It’s important for me to do things like this to help my limited social skills etc. and I just felt so relaxed and had so much fun. It was also amazing to hear one of my favourite birds the Buzzard calling a lot on one part of the walk as well Song Thrush too early on and I also saw some birds along the way; Blackbird, Redwing, Robin, Blue Tit and Goldfinch. It was great to see two lovely and well coloured Kestrels close by on wires too a little way into our journey home when we were driving away. 

I took the fourth picture in this photoset of a Goldfinch in the garden before we left for the Kings Hat walk this morning as I enjoyed a more relaxed morning of a day off work this bird looked very bright on a rainy morning I thought. After the walk we came home very briefly then came straight back out to the New Forest to Eyeworth Pond for a trip with the dogs as it dried up a little. I took the rest of the pictures in this photoset there, a look over the pond, two donkeys that came very close a classic New Forest grazing animals that we’d discussed on the guided walk earlier and four more I thought atmospheric landscapes on the walk at Eyeworth Pond. What a great day and great way to end an amazing opening month of 2020 for me with so many adventures. 

Wildlife Sightings Summary today at Eyeworth Pond: Carrion Crow, Woodpigeon, Long-tailed Tit, Blue Tit, Marsh Tit, Dunnock, Chaffinch, Blackbird, Redwing, Goldcrest, Moorhen, Mallard and Grey Squirrel. 

🏢office action🏢

Caroline Woolard, Ofcice = Action (Ceiling Tile Megaphone), paper, 23-7/8 x 23-7/8 x 3 inches, 2022. carolinewoolard.com/project/ceiling-tile-megaphone/

For curated and produced by the Curatorial Collective for Public Art and SUPERMARKT Berlin

° This disruptive object uses the international measurement standard and capitalist staple structure of the office ceiling tile. The paper form and open source CAD file is an offer to anyone wishing to interrupt banal bureaucratic routines.

° "What excites me is the possibility that an object can produce a shared meaning within the context of a gathering." Woolard

° Light, easily constructed and portable this megaphone reminds us that we have a voice, that playful interruption is still interruption, and even if this isn't appropriate, what might be?

Contesting Care: 30th June -1st July - Duke University

Few topics at present can be more pressing than care. Even before the current pandemic, a global care crisis had been identified by The International Labour Organization (ILO), which indicated that by 2030, the number of people needing care will reach 2.3 billion (Addati et al. 2018). 

The School of Mutation – Raising Care

In these times of pandemics many aspects of what we understand as “care” have emerged to be in the centre of the public agenda. The confinements at home in many places (for those who have one), have put the focus in the daily activities needed to sustain life. To feed, to clean, to give affection and emotional support, to listen, to accompany in life and in death… have become the central activities to keep our beloveds, our selves, and others safe and healthy through the physical distance and individual isolation, the virus came with.

The Journal of International Women’s Studies is an on-line, open-access, peer reviewed feminist journal that provides a forum for scholars, activists, and students to explore the relationships among theories of gender and sexuality and various forms of organizing and critical practice.