Sensibilities 2.8: Changing the pace
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 social practice work of Oakland's People's Kitchen Collective, which creates "political education through art, activism, and food":
From their Solidarity Statement:
"IN THE PEOPLE'S KITCHEN
What we hunger and thirst for is our shared liberation. We will feed one another before feeding into the colonizing and oppressive systems that are at the very core of our globalized world. As a collective that centers the lived experience of Black and brown peoples, we stand at the fire and stir up change, dedicated to eliminating all structures of racism, sexism, imperialism, and classism.
With respect and gratitude, we make our home on Ohlone land. We name and honor the keepers of the environment, all indigenous peoples on the land where we live. At the farm, in the kitchen, at the table, and in the streets, we remember the histories that have led us here. With every breath we take, we remember every breath that was taken.
We believe that walls are for homes for all people, not barriers to restrict liberation and movement. We acknowledge all of the places, seen and unseen, where we hold privilege and leverage it toward the upliftment of our people. In our kitchen, we cook up the flavors of freedom.
The remedies are in our kitchens. We honor the wisdom of our elders and ancestors whose recipes hold the stories of our survival. We look to the Free Breakfast Program from the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. In our kitchen, food has flavor. Our recipes dismantle white supremacy.
The rules at our table are justice, equity, and freedom. We don’t always share the same beliefs, but we must insist that we all have the same commitment to equality, respect, and restorative justice as we build beloved community together. We do not serve you, we are being of service to you as you are being of service to the person sitting next to you.
We deny the blatant inequities of incarceration and the prison industrial complex and call for its abolition. When we say Black Lives Matter we mean BLACK LIVES MATTER. We believe in a free Palestine and fight for an end to zionism and apartheid. The xenophobic tyranny that undocumented, Muslim, and Arab peoples are experiencing has no seat at our table. We embrace all gender identities and sexualities as fluid, sacred, and protected truths. Our collective self determination relies on us gathering together to unapologetically share our stories without fear or retribution. We are here for us.
All Power to the People!"
2 is one architecture professor's ingenious plan for combining cutting-edge technology and centuries-old know-how in a project he calls"cyclopean cannibalism":
From Co.Design:
"In his project Cyclopean Cannibalism, [MIT professor] Clifford updates an ancient building technique, in which laborers would build walls using misshapen stones and rubble taken from demolished buildings–without any mortar to hold them together. [...]
Many ancient walls, which appear in various forms all over the world from Greece to Peru, look cobbled together haphazardly–not a building technique seemingly fit for the modern world. “If a building fell down, they’d look at the rubble and figure out how to reconstitute it to make a new construction,” Clifford says. 'That’s a reason why [the walls] appear so cryptic. They seem random and illogical. But that randomness is a byproduct of a very intelligent way of recycling their previous buildings.'
Clifford has a modern twist to this method: he and his students have built algorithms that can measure the sizes of stones or rubble one might have and then suggest a type of cyclopean wall design that would be able to transform any mound of debris into a wall. Clifford measured the exact geometries of cyclopean walls around the world then modeled how the stones fit together.”
3 is the stunning, brutal, crucial video for Childish Gambino's This is America:
enjoy!
:) devan
