ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 11 Liquid solidarities : the magnetics of Grief, Erosion & Courage (July 2nd-12th 2024)
Submitted by PAF on Mon, 2024-03-04 12:02
all bodies possible ~ all bodies welcome
Once a year we live together. In times characterised by profound and far-reaching forms of grief and disconnection—times of genocides and ecocides, extractivism, exploitation, chronic psychological and physical burn-outs and a lot of other normalised crises— we want to look at how to organise in solidarity without burning our energies in (proxy-)wars, unprocessed feelings, desensitisation, and loss of spirit.
We might describe ours as a time of erosion. When we think of erosion, we often centre the solid form that is eroded away by a liquid—the erosion of coasts, rock, soil. The solid is what attracts our attention; the solid is magnetic. But what happens when the polarity shifts and the liquid becomes the protagonist of the story? Liquid as magnetic. The cycles of rain carving a river, the purification heralded by a flood, the oceans that contain lost archives. Here is a different story about erosion: One evening in summer 1982, the poets Muin Bseiso and Mahmoud Darwish wrote a poem together; the historian Esmat Elhalaby translates one verse from their collective voice as “our history is rain, eroding stone.” Resistance, the poets suggest, is a slow, long, and collaborative process: single droplets that, through collective work, produce social change. Quoting Bseiso and Darwish forty-some years later, we can see both the slowness of social change and its impact. During the annual cycle of E&O, who is our “we”? Which histories are “ours”? And which figurations can we use to metabolise and catalyse a resistance that echoes and expands on ongoing histories?*
Despite our grief and disconnection, collective practices have the capacity to draw us towards solidarity. At LIQUID SOLIDARITIES, we invite you to take part in a collective phase change back and forth between liquid/collective and solid/individual states, between water and rock. Rather than forwarding a single ideological perspective, E&O invites play between that which attracts and repels, that which exhausts and replenishes. Past practices have taken up experimentation with promiscuous modes of togetherness remixing different ontologies and epistemologies, disciplines and rhythms, modes of knowing, living and being through an ever changing body of collective study. This has woven a web of arteries, patterns and relationships that are echoed on multiple layers and levels and reflected by the times, bodies and spaces we live with. LIQUID SOLIDARITIES seeks to pool and redistribute the knowledges, conversations and practices that resonate with the slowness of change and the erotics of grief alongside endless cycles of flow, growth and collapse.
Over the past decade, reproductive and emotional labour have been the lifeblood and heartbeat of E&O. As the event’s organisation moves this year toward a collective form, we invite participants to remain intentional about the balance of that labour—turning it into a sustainable and porous site. This means that we collectively take responsibility for the ecosystem of E&O, which is embedded in the larger ecosystem of PAF, which is embedded into the larger ecosystem of the village, and so forth. As this relationship is fragile we will formalise rotating roles during the event taking responsibility for noise, general cleaning and care outside the already collectivised cooking, shopping and cleaning centred around the kitchen.
If labour has been the lifeblood of E&O, pleasure, play, and curiosity have been the currents running through its nervous system, its myofascial networks and its fascia. Curiosity is a fundamentally different state than fight-flight-freeze-fawn, but its possibility requires collective participation in practices of co-regulation.
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In loving memory of Xenia Taniko Dwertmann
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Your presence at E&O 11 - LIQUID SOLIDARITIES:
a practice in curiosity & solidarity
all bodies possible ~ all bodies welcome
In the spirit of solidarity and curiosity, we invite participants—new and old—to engage in a brief practice of somatic and interpersonal attunement.
To begin, consider the phrase “all bodies welcome” and pose to yourself the following questions:
How does it feel to read the phrase “all bodies welcome”? What is your narrative of “all bodies”? What forms of oppression does “all bodies” expose? What forms of grief does the inclusion of all bodies activate? Without the invitation to “all bodies,” who might otherwise be excluded or decentered?
If your body is often excluded from the usual narrative of bodies, how would it feel to rewrite that narrative as your own? What might you need from a collective in order for your own body to feel welcome—emotionally, energetically, and practically?
If your body is often included in the usual narrative, how would it feel to listen to a different one? How might you participate in a space where belonging extends beyond the boundaries of your own body, of bodies like your body? How might listening become a mode of resisting oppression?
When a space is not safe for “all bodies,” what forms of presence and what practices might make it safer for you and for others?
To close, imagine the boundary between your body and the collective body becoming more porous, then less porous, then finding an equilibrium.
This score shows that the potential of “all bodies are possible and welcome” relies on a continuous practice in flow that we can continue to explore collectively.
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Your contribution to E&O 11 - LIQUID SOLIDARITIES
As always E&O is a platform for collective study and for sharing your practices and proposals. You are invited to share your projects, research, games, (activist, artistic, erotic) practices, strategies and fantasies (seeds or in progress). Please email these to daniela.bershan@gmail.com and tof@contrepied.de so we can weave them into the program.
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PRACTICAL INFO
ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 11 - LIQUID SOLIDARITIES will take place 2–12 July 2024 at Performing Arts Forum in St Erme, France.
As one of our intimacy practices, we ask participants to commit for the full 10 days of studying and being together. The 10-day meeting costs 380€–500€ per person, to be calculated using a sliding scale. This cost includes accommodation, membership, food, and materials. Please see details below.
PAF/E&O asks all event participants to consider the least environmentally harmful means of transport available in coming here. Thank you for your consideration.
Accommodation & Membership
Following the practice of E&O, PAF has implemented a sliding scale payment system as part of a more extensive effort of making PAF more accessible. We encourage you to pay as much as you can so that we can continue to address structural asymmetries among E&Oers as well as amongst other PAF users:
18€ per night is the basic fee; combined with the volunteer efforts of all PAF users, it has enabled PAF, as a project, to stay afloat for the last few years. You can keep paying 18 euro per night if your financial situation is fragile and a higher nightly price would prevent you from coming to PAF.
20€ per night is the advised base price.
22–25€ or more per night if you have stable income, institutional funding, property or family wealth.
You are of course always invited to pay more if you can.
PAF / E&O will not ask you about your financial situation, you will evaluate the price you pay by yourself.
In addition to the nightly fee is a 20€ annual membership fee.
Accessibility
PAF is in a process of improving overall accessibility. In terms of mobility, kitchens, workspaces, and a couple of bedrooms with bathrooms are available on the ground floor; we can provide pictures and measurements if needed. With any access needs and questions around accessibility of the event and the building, please be in touch here
Food & Materials
15€ per day covers three meals prepared in our exquisite kitchen. There will be an excellent team of cooks who will need help from all of us.
There is also a material cost of 30 € p/P for the entire meeting.
Payment, Mutual Aid & Grants
We can only accept payments in cash (or French chèques), so bring it along. There is an ATM in the village.
All contributions above 18€ per night will go to The Mattress Fund that helps PAF to host users who are precarized by neoliberal regimes of racial colonial capitalism and heteropatriarchy.
If you would like to come and you don't have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will try to make it possible for you. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
If you are able to apply for a grant we are happy to help with invitation letters. Also, in keeping the intention above, we would appreciate it very much if you could apply for more than needed for your single participation (according to the kind of application you are able to submit) to help others in different financial conditions to also participate (suggested: 450–500€ per person).
In summary, the total cost for the 10-day meeting varies from 380–500€ per person. Paying more than 500€ is of course possible.
Booking
To make a reservation, write to contactpaf@gmail.com.
You are also welcome to mention whether you identify as BIPOC and/or Trans when writing in so that we can do our best to prioritise your booking.
E&O and PAF get quickly full these days, book early, and let us know who you want to share a room with.
For parents and primary caregivers who consider coming with their children please email to ktrn.jburch@gmail.com so we can send you some additional info.
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For any other questions/doubts/ideas/proposals, please email us.
We are excited to see you soon.
With love,
the collective organising team of E&O 11
*We write this as Pluto enters the air sign Aquarius. Aquarius is air's most concentric movement and air relates, communicates. What is a plutonic relationship? Maybe a bond exposing raw non-duality, both solid and liquid, a bond embodied in boundaries? Pluto transforms, which means it’s both creative and destructive. This transit reminds of the generative nature of refusal and abolition. Refusal: "rejection of the status quo as livable, and the creation of possibilities in the face of negation" (Tina Campt). Abolition: "a dream toward futurity vested in insurgent, counter-Civilizational histories — genealogies of collective genius that perform liberation under conditions of duress" (Dylan Rodriguez).
