Sensibilities 2.5: Moment(s), movement(s)
Welcome back to Sensibilities! Here's some of the far-ranging resources, ideas, and inspirations that have been bouncing around in our heads this month, in the hopes that they pique your interest, jumpstart your creativity, or simply add a little intrigue to your day. Happy exploring!
1 is the Interference Archive, a Brooklyn organization dedicated to "exploring the relationship between cultural production and social movements":
From their mission statement:
"The archive contains many kinds of objects that are created as part of social movements by the participants themselves: posters, flyers, publications, photographs, books, T-shirts and buttons, moving images, audio recordings, and other materials.
Through our programming, we use this cultural ephemera to animate histories of people mobilizing for social transformation. We consider the use of our collection to be a way of preserving and honoring histories and material culture that is often marginalized in mainstream institutions.
As an all-volunteer organization, all members of our community are welcome and encouraged to shape our collection and programming; we are a space for all volunteers to learn from each other and develop new skills. We work in collaboration with like-minded projects, and encourage critical as well as creative engagement with our own histories and current struggles.
As an archive from below, we are a collectively run space that is people powered, with open stacks and accessibility for all. We are supported by the community that believes in what we’re doing."
(image from their exhibition, "Resistance Across Time")
2 is the ingenuity of California's Department of Fish & Wildlife in using tilapia skin and corn husks to help heal bears wounded in last December's wildfires:
"So far, the fish skins seem to be the most helpful form of treatment for the bears, vets said.
'We made little spring rolls with their feet,' Peyton said.
The California vets stitched the fish skins to the animals’ burned paws, then wrapped the treated feet with bandages of rice paper and corn husks.
Animals often eat ordinary cloth bandages, which can block their intestines. This was the case with the 5-month-old mountain lion, who kept eating his fish-skin and corn-husk bandages.
Peyton recalls the improvement she’s seen with the treatment. She said one of the bears at first laid down continuously to spare her burned paws, not wanting to stand or walk at all.
'After the first time we put the bandages on, she woke up, she stood up' and showed interest in her surroundings, she said."