POSTED ON June 22, 2020 BY admin
PADKOS NO 95
Thanks to all of you who’ve been with us in various ways through this year’s menu of padkos. As 2019 draws to a close, we thought we’d share some thoughts and outputs emerging from our last gathering where we worked with “hope and creativity” as our Holloway focus. Rather than just staying ‘in our heads’ by having a facilitated group discussion as we’ve done through the preceding sessions, we wanted to shift the way in which people processed the material into a more creative space. So we worked with a young artist and print-maker – and good friend of the organisation – Eloff Pretorius, to plan & facilitate a process of collective ‘mark-making’ in response to the readings. Before, a colleague presented a quick summary of key ideas from the readings, we also watched the 2 short animations – “El Empleo – The Employment” and “Life beyond Capitalism”. Then the group’s creative work really got going at a series of three ‘work-stations’ outside – one each for “in”, for “against” and for “beyond”. At each station, there was a big sheet of drawing paper and an array of different mark-making tools, brushes, and paints. With a play-list of rebellious music from around the world playing as background, people worked in three groups moving through each of the work-stations to express their response to being “in – against – & – beyond” the world as it is.
Holloway: we exist “in, against, and beyond” this society
- ‘in’ because it’s here we live, here we must make a living and reproduce ourselves;
- ‘against’ because we know it’s awful and disastrous too;
- ‘beyond’ because all the time we are trying do something else, to create ways of relating to others not according to the logic of money – it can be doing all sorts of things and in a million different ways.
A few of us had done a test-run of the exercise the week before, so we knew that it is a deeply vulnerable, emotive and transformative process. Gathering together afterward with everyone to check in on how it had been, definitely confirmed that! One of the group shared a poem he’d written, prompted by the process. We’ve included both his poem, Active(ist), as well as a photo of the triptych of the resulting powerful visual pieces: ‘in – against – beyond’.
All of the tunes from our rebellious play-list are available here https://www.churchland.org.za/?page_id=3680 where we’ve uploaded them for you to the CLP website – and some rough notes about them are attached with this mailing.
Active(ist)
Bruce Hayns
Spill your paint
Don’t horde it
Don’t let it dry in the tin
Don’t die with those colours within
The more paint there is out here
The easier it is
for others to paint over, so
start with any colour
Start with brown if that’s all you have
The dried surface area allows new paint to flow
Build layer upon layer
Let your colours soak into the tarmac.
Be the base layer
For change.
(About the phenomenon of paint flowing more easily on existing paint.)