Assemblage - Tumblr Posts
The living and the dead
David Lan-Guns and Rain: Guerrillas & Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe.
In Zimbabwe the Struggle for Zimbabwe(1966-80), hundreds of thousands of peasants provided the guerrillas with practical help and support.
But they went a good deal further. Throughout the country scores of spirit mediums, the religious leaders of the Shona, gave active support to resistance. With their participation, the scale of the war expanded into an astonishing act of collaboration between ancestors and their descendants, the past and the present, the living and the dead.
Making Kin: An Interview with Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway has a Ph.D. in biology and described a philosopher, feminist theorist and etc. Her first notable work is 1985 “A Cyborg Manifesto”. She has waded into the lively debates surrounding the Anthropocene.
She argues that in the Anthropocene we require a new ethic and understanding of the human and its position; we must stop putting us beyond other species and realize that “no species, not even our own arrogant one pretending to be good individuals in so-called modern Western scripts, acts alone; assemblages of organic species and of abiotic actors make history, the evolutionary kind and the other kinds too.” (Haraway, Donna: “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantatonocene, Chthulucene:Make Kin” Environmental Humanities vol. 6, 2015, s.159-165)
Recent her slogan is “make kin, not babies.” This slogan means that we need to strive for the collective existence of living and non-living entities to replenish the vitality of the planet.
She answered the question about “Making kin” in the article, “Making Kin: An Interview with Donna Haraway”.
You’ve written about the notion of “making kin.” What does kinship mean to you?
Making kin seems to me the thing that we most need to be doing in a world that rips us apart from each other, in a world that has already more than seven and a half billion human beings with very unequal and unjust patterns of suffering and well-being. By kin, I mean those who have an enduring mutual, obligatory, non-optional, you-can’t-just-cast-that-away-when-it-gets-inconvenient, enduring relatedness that carries consequences. I have a cousin, the cousin has me; I have a dog, a dog has me.
I first started using the word “kin” when I was in college in a Shakespeare class because I realized that Shakespeare punned with “kin” and “kind.” Etymologically they’re very closely related. To be kind is to be kin, but kin is not kind. Kin is often quite the opposite of kind. It’s not necessarily to be biologically related but in some consequential way to belong in the same category with each other in such a way that has consequences. If I am kin with the human and more-than-human beings of the Monterey Bay area, then I have accountabilities and obligations and pleasures that are different than if I cared about another place. Nobody can be kin to everything, but our kin networks can be full of attachment sites. I feel like the need for the care across generations is urgent, and it cannot be just a humanist affair.
You may not always be able to solve the problem yourself. "Human", on the other hand, is a category that is too big for people to actually live. When a person have empathy with other, when she take care of other’s problem, certain kind of relationship or commonality is necessary to put oneself “in hers shoes” in many cases.
Haraway's’ suggestion, "making kin", is to make the relationship and to go beyond the limitation of birth and species.
A piece which my mother unknowingly collaborated on.
Fire Hazard, 2009-13. Shitton of antique electrical components, lamps, appliances, a 78 of the Blue Danube Waltz, and my big old comfy chair
InspectedJust found this old project on my long dead deviantart. I think I might like the composition of the photo more than the project
Covid ka (after Judith Scott)
30cm
Bricolage - wool, wire, fabric, coffee pods, shells sand, plastic, paper, glass
Small pink
15cm
Bricolage: wooden dowel, coin, carved soap, synthetic flower, plastic gem
Small head
6cm x 6cm x 17cm
Cardboard, golf ball, plastic gems
Hi all
I'm showing some of my my small sculptures and a collage in this group exhibition in Peckham next week.
Do come if you're around.
I'll be at the private view on Thursday 28 September from 5:30 - 8:30pm.
And invigilating on Fri 29 Sept from 12 - 6pm.
Otherwise it's open 12- 6pm Wed - Sat next week.
Hope to see you there.
@spacesmarksthings