#fkrg

(Image thanks to Cynthia Florek ♥)

Moving into 2020, we're currently in a period of transition. Our sessions will no longer be located at UTP Blacktown satellite office, and a couple of our core members have parted (we wish them on fruitful journeys and always welcome them back!). Cynthia, Xiaoran and Tabitha will continue with FKRG — just waiting to see in what shape and form. So much gratitude to everyone who helped us create space for killing (&feeling) joy last year, thank you 🌱

We also have many copies of our zine that we can mail out to anyone who would like one! The form is here. Excited to share one of our big projects from last year with you all.

This month we gathered to experience some rejuvenation and renewal, exploring what brings us comfort in times of shifts and unknowns.

(Image provided by Cynthia Florek ♥)

In our everyday lives, it can be difficult to take some time out and focus on our own needs and desires. We encouraged everyone present to take that time for themselves during the session, surrounded by people and supplied with warming soup and chai.

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Readings/listenings from the session

adrienne maree brown - ‘radical gratitude spell’ from Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

Healing Justice podcast - 40 Practice: The Perfect Nap with Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry

Other readings and resources

Being Lazy and Slowing Down

Healing Justice - 40 Rest as Reparations with Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry

Izzie Ramirez - Doing Nothing is a Radical Idea for Marginalised People

Rajni Shah - Lying Fallow

Threads of Solidarity: WOC Against Racism - Giving from an empty cup/how not to die

Music and sounds

Akala - Time to Relax

Can’t Help Falling In Love on a Kalimba

Mary Lattimore - At the Dam

Rain Sound and Rainforest Animals Sound - Relaxing Sleep

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In keeping with this theme, FKRG will be taking a break during August, to restore, renew, and plan for the rest of the year. We will be back with another session in September 🍃

This month’s session focused on WORK, in honour of International Workers’ Day (May 1). 

(Image provided by Cynthia Florek ♥)

We discussed the following questions: Why do we have to work? What are the impacts of others’ work on you? How do you work for and towards change and what is the toll it has? Why is being in a constant state of work equated to success? Does the work really stop at the time your shift ends? How hard is it for the feminist killjoy in the working class? Do you have to be actively chasing toward a goal to be afforded the same level of respect?  How can people be active when they don’t have a choice but to work to survive?

The labour of: love, change, relationships, feeling, the world, listening, understanding, and everything else. What is the work of the feminist killjoy?

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Reading

Selma James - Sex, Race and Class

Other readings and resources

Andy Beckett - Post-work: the radical idea of a world without jobs

Being Lazy and Slowing Down

Chanté Joseph - Puma and the gross fetishisation of working-class struggle

Class Struggle & Mental Health: Live to Fight Another Day

Dom Chatterjee - Fighting Burnout, Rest Debt, and Work as a False Path to Self-Worth

Eliana Buenrostro - Post-Non-Profit Survival: How Unemployment Benefits Improved My Mental Health

Esmé Weijun Wang - I'm Chronically Ill and Afraid of Being Lazy

Georgia Mae Cappocchi-Hunter - Why we need to foster the female Aboriginal leaders of tomorrow

Joel N Jenkins - Reconsidering To-Do Lists: The Deceptive Appeal of Productivity

Juhee Kwon - We are not machines

Kahra Wayland-Larty - Bolshy, sassy, intimidating: words used to deny WOC their voice in the workplace

Larissa Behrendt - Women’s Work: The Inclusion of the Voice of Aboriginal Women

Leah Cowan - Solidarity with Uber drivers whose labour lines the pockets of investors

Mayisha Begum - Garment workers in the Global South are leading a revolution

Mayisha Begum - International Worker’s Day marks six years of struggle by garment workers in Bangladesh

Stephanie Gilbert - ‘Never forgotten’: Pearl Gibbs (Gambanyi)

Timeline of Significant Moments in the Indigenous Struggle in south east Australia

The following links are for articles behind institutional paywalls - please email us at [email protected] if you would like access to them.

Jackie Huggins - “Firing on in the mind”: Aboriginal women domestic servants in the inter-war years

Jackie Huggins - White Aprons, Black Hands: Aboriginal Women Domestic Servants in Queensland

John Host and Jill Milroy - Towards an Aboriginal labour history

Riyad A. Shahjahan - Being ‘Lazy’ and Slowing Down: Toward decolonizing time, our body, and pedagogy

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Take care Feminist Killjoys! 

This month we took time to explore what being with others can be, and the intricacies of collectively caring for each other. 

We asked: when the pressure to respond or participate in group settings is removed, how can our connections with others evolve, strengthen and/or transform? And, what happens when we are given the space to simply exist in a social context?

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Reading

Sara Ahmed - Making Strangers

Other materials

Abeni Jones - Beyond Self-Care Bubble Baths: A Vision for Community Care

Björk - The Gate

Caleb Luna - Romantic Love is Killing Us: Who Takes Care of Us When We Are Single?

Healing Justice podcast, particularly 37 Relational Somatics with Lucien Demaris of Relational Uprising and 37 Practice: Somatic Check-In (Feeling the Pulse) with Lucien Demaris of Relational Uprising

Feel free to reblog with any other materials you’ve found that relate to this topic - we’d love to read/watch/listen to/engage with them! 

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Love to all the feminist killjoys <3 

This month our feminist killjoys enjoyed some time travel, as we attempted to stop the clock and suspend time by being present in space together. 

(Image thanks to Cynthia Florek ♥)

This month we've been thinking about: the wibbly wobbly timey wimey nature of time, breakdowns/breakthroughs, Sara Ahmed asking "can we give ourselves a break?", emotions as feelings in motion/movement, not existing, feeling alive!, Indigenous futurisms, Afrofuturism, the end of capitalism, spontaneity as a suspension of time/responsibility, being led by our bodies. 

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Readings/listenings from the session

Kristin Neff’s Guided Self Compassion Meditations (specifically the Self Compassion/Loving Kindness meditation)

Skawennati - Imagining the next seven generations

Tracy K. Smith - Us & Co (from Life on Mars)

A time travel playlist for movement (of bodies, of emotions)

Other readings

adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha (eds.) - Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories for Social Justice Movements

Ambelin Kwaymullina - Reflecting on Indigenous Worlds, Indigenous Futurisms and Artificial Intelligence

Gabrielle Bellot - Octavia Butler: The Brutalities of the Past Are All Around This

Grace Dillon (ed.) - Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction

Kodwo Eshun - Further Considerations on Afrofuturism

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson - Akiden Boreal (from This Accident of Being Lost)

Mary Oliver - In Blackwater Woods

Octavia Butler - Kindred 

Sara Ahmed - Feminism and Fragility

Videos, songs and recordings

a world of our own playlist by Ellen 

clipping. - Splendor & Misery

Indigenous Futurisms mixtape by RPMfm

Jamila Woods - HEAVN

Jordan Cocker - Indigenous Futurisms: Cultures of Radical Love

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson - How to Steal a Canoe 

Rhayne Fountain - parallel universes voice memo 

Skawennati - She Falls For Ages and TimeTraveller™ 

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The theme of September’s session was - AWAKE ARRIVE -

(Image thanks to Cynthia Florek ♥)

Spring has sprung. Pollen is in the air. Together we rung in the new season, moved with flow through changes, and explored arrival and awakening.

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Reading from the session

Sara Ahmed - Feminist Consciousness

Other readings

Audre Lorde - Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Joanna Macy and Molly Brown - 12 principles from THE WORK THAT RECONNECTS

Wendy Cope - The Orange

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Sorry that our posts have been a little delayed - life’s many challenges have been slowing us down lately. We hope these readings are of interest to you whenever you see them :-)