💎❤️💰 Pure love can no longer satisfy me. Pure gold would do just fine. // Chún ài yǐ jīng mǎn zú bù liǎo wǒ le, chún jīn kuò yǐ.

💡 Our mission is not just to meet expectations but to exceed them! At TDS Group, we believe in pushing boundaries, setting new benchmarks, and creating a future full of possibilities. 🚀

I read the definition of "Standard" according to the Merriam Webster, both noun and adjective, and I wonder if we haven't been mixing them in the back of our mind. Something for what we stand for, almost tangible, as a banner. Something established just by a few, the experts, the authority, as a model to follow. Something that many, we, the society agreed on, without even knowing,  as a model to follow. "A structure serving as a base or support." A ruler and scale for measuring relevance, scope, value and quality. Something good, but not enough, to be remarkable. Common. Well-established. Familiar. Definitive. Basic. Law. Norm.

When I think of standards in the context of the Arts & Culture field, a physically uncomfortable feeling grabs my body. Like a long bony hand going up along my spine trying to fix a jacket that doesn't quite fit me, or at best, a clothing tag itching my neck. Why? I suspect I have been mixing those definitions too. And I confess... I did work on being standard to fit in the standards because the standards made me feel standard for not meeting the standards.

Have you been there too? If so... Hear me out, there is nothing standard about you, having you here, floating with me in this liquid reality, like otters, hand in hand, is a reason for celebration with hope and joy.

Cute otters, fierce otters, swimming in the field. Because what are culture and arts if not the water? Our heritage, dreams and the multiplicity of our identities, particles colliding, merging, flowing.

For those who enjoy keeping the gates (or the dams) of culture: Shouldn't it be the base to ensure its fluidity? The unpredictable instability of its interactions? Or in other words, to keep it alive and growing.

We say stop hatred now, once again! And we know that we will need to go upstream if we want to take down that hefty dull flag that is keeping us from the sun, and replace it with a thousand of little colourful banners. Brave, cheeky otters, the past year were talking of allyship, but to endure the friction of the water against the rocks they need accomplices. #welcomeboard

I wrote a poem for today, sorry, I decided not to read it. I don't want to tell you something, with a beginning and an end. Not today. When we regularly hear about the "new normality" as if that branding would ease all misgivings, but "new standards" still spooks as a hairy monster about to jump from the closet. We may be otters today, but who knows tomorrow, we have been an entire animal atlas, folding and cutting ourselves to fit standards that were designed to leave some part of us always out, the tail, a leg...

As far as our standards will continue failing in welcome us all and creating gaps of in-betweenness where art and culture workers feel they don't belong, we will be supporting a production of art and culture that makes others feel unfit.