Dear Diary,
How wonderful to be able to do a residency without carbon emission! Without my little kids missing their mother! Without intruding the precious lab space, but instead only working in my own iglu, cultivating existing tools. Without forcing people who do not enjoy speaking English to do so. The residency was a big experiment. Many questions emerged around the situation of being displaced but collaborating. By having the same intention yet different standpoints. In this sense it was more than delightful to join the online unconference and meet Radiona's allies and friends around Europe.
Struggling to do my own art work, research, activism and feminist hackerspace I often forget, that this is actually something we should talk about internationally, communicate about shared needs and values, experiences and positions more. In these times when people are already fed up with lockdown, natural disaster and all these microscopic emergency situations popping up, the residency reminded me of the initial idea of DIY culture, which in my eyes was to overcome individual struggles and frustrations by teaming up into peer to peer groups.
During this residency I did a lot of writing and sketches. I won't share them here, because they are not yet in the right condition for that, but the enthusiasm spread through the unconference definitely helped me to focus more on output, than sucking up bad or fake news.
While planning the future was in the old days (before COVID) one of my favorite day dreaming genres, being really present is something I dream about today. Being present is getting difficult, when I need to suppress my need to plan the future and so many other worries. Only by conversations with others - this kind of self-crafting that Judith Butler wrote about, I get back into the present moment: my diffracted mind and soul can again agree on a specific common location in the world, namely to inhabit my body. This way the here and now can eventually become the departure point for artistic expeditions from iglu to world.
Thank you so much for this opportunity and for your openness towards this new approach to residencies.
Stefanie Wuschitz