The panorama is as solid as geological grey rock formations, successions of rock layers, ridges of broken, pushed coral and cream-limestone-rock, large enough to embrace the sky, to turn our human selves into inconsequential specs, moving upon their edges that change ever so slightly, as we span their 360 range.
The white rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo is pitched back, stage right, by use of an inverted megaphone.
As part of the cohort of the 2021 Cooper Hewitt Museum Transformation Lab, meetings with museum professionals who had drafted the manifesto the year prior and upon which we were workshopping our own transformational projects, I eagerly asked for a meeting with Dr. Lauren Vargas. I talked about the Inner Selfie project as it was developing, and also the larger questions I had about academic research of museum led communities of practice and / or interest within a hybrid model. In our mentoring call, we spoke about how hybrid museum spaces might work toward meaningful social impact…. about how they are not; that is,
that they are yet existent/crashing against the shores.
She asks aloud, “What does the whole self, look like, in governance, inclusivity, safe space, collaboration, community growth?”
I describe my panoramic photos; the fractured online bodies narrated by Legacy Russell; the immersive paintings of Trevor Jones; the citations of Katherine McKittrick: immersed, broken bodies.
She says I am talking about fractal narratives, kaleidoscopes, to think of them as kaleidoscopic communities.
…she posits, “How can you build a world and space to hold multiple narratives and how can you plan influence…?” (Paraphrased from online 1:1 meeting, November 29, 2021 9:00 am – 9:40 am EST).
For Legacy Russell, planning influence may be a manifesto to halt deeply seeded binary difference:
“The relinquishing of power as reparation for harms done will never happen voluntarily, or meet our terms – so why waste ourselves in waiting for it? By breaking it all, we pave the way for the kaleidoscopic future that we want.” New par: “What glitch feminism is proposing instead is this: We will embody the ecstatic and catastrophic error. If this is a spatial battle, let us become anarchitecture. New par: “we will be not “single beings” but be every single being and every single avatar, expanding to a rageful full range that makes this gendered engine screech to a halt” (2020, p.152).
The inverted megaphone pushes the sound over the walls and banks and paved ground, dams and alleyways; making eddies, lovely eddies.
Aug 14, 2022
glitch25, nov 19, 2021