The collective.aporia Manifesto

manifesto

I. collective.aporia is living organism that grows through discovering and questioning edges: edges of self, creative praxis, and how we navigate as artists in the world. We are an internationally inclusive community, created to celebrate, nurture, sustain, and (de)construct all ideas, theories, and/or manifestations of art, society, creation, inspiration, education, and social justice work to imagine and implement necessary and positive action towards a radically peaceful planet.

II. collective.aporia is a gathering, commune, sanctuary, school, and conjuring. collective.aporia asks us to speak and to listen. We expect members of the community to examine, explore, and respect their location and the locations of others: socially, politically, creatively, spiritually, culturally, geographically, and otherwise.

III. Aporia means “An irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory.” collective.aporia is a space for artists, researchers, teachers, activists, and thinkers of all skill levels and backgrounds to submerse themselves in this space of disjunction to imagine new alternatives for change/art. Our logo symbol, the unclosed delta, represents this openness to change, even when resolve is impossible.

IV. collective.aporia is first and foremost a radically inclusive community, accepting and welcoming people from all races, ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, sexualities, genders, religious affiliations, spiritual beliefs, abilities, ages, classes, and citizenship statuses. We work to turn the mic up for voices from these marginalized populations. We will never tolerate any type of hate speech, racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, bigotry, ableism, xenophobia, transphobia, or any other bullshit that harms others, sustains dominant social oppression, or in any way upholds or spreads the disease of kyriarchal tyranny.

V. collective.aporia is a place for ally- and accomplice-ship. collective.aporia understands that these relationships need constant learning and listening, and is always ready to put in the work that this responsibility requires.

VI. collective.aporia is a space for radical self-care. collective.aporia is a space for radical communal care. collective.aporia is always available to research and share information and resources for support, both at physical and online events.

VII. collective.aporia is not always a space for comfort. collective.aporia asks us to question our identities and our world, which can be very unsettling and deeply upsetting. We believe this ripping open, ripping down, rebuilding, and re-envisioning is not only necessary to creating a conscious community, but integral for the survival of our planet.

VIII. collective.aporia is a place for learning, and is deeply steeped in feminist and critical pedagogical values; these values focus on horizontal distribution of authority, critically questioning societal constructions and institutions (including collective.aporia itself), and equity in curriculum/ facilitation of learning environments. Because of this, we work to negotiate roles of authority so that the power is situated with the community itself. We hope the community will collaborate with us to make spaces of constant and consistent education, questioning, and creating. We will always accommodate learners of different abilities in all creative spaces.

IX. collective.aporia is greatly inspired by art therapist Stephen K. Levine’s ideas of “irreality” and “the change agent.” He writes in his essay, “Art Opens to the World: Expressive Arts and Social Action”:

By showing itself in the mode of existing-as-being-seen, art indicates its quality of irreality, its ability to create an alternative world of the imaginations…This quality of irreality does not make it any less effective; on the contrary, the limitation from realistic constraints means that the work can affect us on an even deeper level than the actual event that it depicts….We could say that poiesis implies the capacity to respond to the world in which we find ourselves. We suffer, both individually and collectively, when we find ourselves unable to respond, when this capacity for poietic action is restricted and we experience ourselves as being in a helpless situation….The work of the change agent in the field of expressive arts, then, is to restore the capacity for poiesis that the individual or community has lost, and to help them expand the range of play within which they can act. (24-27)

X. collective.aporia keeps these ideas at the forefront of their organization, and strives to nurture spaces where members can rediscover the capacity for poiesis; we hope that by finding new (communal) ways of response through art and collaboration, that an alternative world is imagined and implemented.

XI. collective.aporia believes that this can only happen in interdisciplinary and experimental spaces, those that stretch, break, or even burn constraints around craft, genre, medium, hierarchy, and/or institutional training.