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I. collective.aporia operates as a nonprofit organization, and is living organism that grows through the experience of discovering and questioning edges: edges of self, creative praxis, and how we navigate as artists in the world. It is 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 in order 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. It expects 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 to submerse themselves in this space of disjunction in order to imagine and discover new alternatives for change/art. IV. collective.aporia is first and foremost a fundamentally inclusive community, accepting and welcoming people from all races, ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, sexualities, genders, religious affiliations, spiritual beliefs, abilities, ages, classes, and citizenship statuses, and works to turn the mic up for marginalized voices from these 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-ship. collective.aporia understands that ally-ship is a constant learning process, and is always ready to put in the work that this responsibility requires. VI. collective.aporia will meet twice a year in diverse locations globally and culturally. These meetings will be themed on current events and work occurring in that particular community. The international teachers, speakers, panelists, and community members will engage, challenge, and expand this theme, culminating in individual and collective artistic works. During the rest of the year, collective.aporia is an online community and publisher, focusing on collecting voices from diverse global communities in order to offer members accessible, educational, creative, and motivational workshops, lectures, publications, and classes. VII. collective.aporia is a space for radical self-care. collective.aporia is a space for radical communal care. collective.aporia provides information and resources for mental and physical health at all gatherings. collective.aporia will always provides information and resources for support and self-care, both at the meetings and on the online platform. VIII. 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. IX. 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 in order to make spaces of constant and consistent education, questioning, and creating. We will always accommodate learners of different abilities in all creative spaces. X. 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) XI. 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. XII. 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. 
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© 2019-2020 collective.aporia
