The entanglement and constant processual becoming of life and all things. Bayo Akomolafe

Intimacy with the world

• Home is not a stable concept, we are continually engaged in placemaking. Our perception of stability is just an illusion
• We live in a processual, relational universe that is constantly emerging and open ended in its becoming
• To solve the problems humanity is facing at the moment, we need to move beyond modernity and postmodernity, beyond just critiquing - we need something energetically different
• Our work is not to contain this chaotic flow of reality, where everything radically interacts in ways beyond our understanding. Our work is to account for the ways we show up in the world, so that we might meet and engage with other spaces of power
• How the world works, and where it goes, is not entirely up to us. Agency can not be seen as a matter of anthropocentric, human centred approaches. It is not just left to us to save the day, we need a broader understanding of what constitutes reality.
• When we try to solve climate-change, we are still trying to solve it within a instrumentalist, hierarchical, patriarchal paradigm. As if we can in one phallic move fix the issues. This is extremely human framed.
• Another move, is to notice, that we are climate-change - all of us, the whole world.
• There is nothing that is old, that is not new, and there is nothing that is new that is not old.
• It is not that all was fine and dandy in the past…
• Is it even possible to correlate agency and power with skill?
• It is interesting to behold, that the virus that is now upsetting the human world so greatly, that the sum of those covid-viruses that have inflicted havoc on us, would fit into a tea-spoon.
• The invitation is to stay with the trouble and with the smallness, maybe that is all we need
• It is not about not doing anything, it is about disturbing the assumptions in which we frame actions and solutions.
• It seems that when we apply grand solutions to our problems, they mostly seem to create new problems.
• Maybe we need to slow down, we need to dismantle our known ways, and let new ways come to us.
• There is a lot more happening than we are able to detect. There is the molar and the molecular. The molecular is hardly perceivable, but it is happening, it is small but not insignificant in any way.
• In these difficult times, It is a matter of shape shifting, and that doesn’t mean moving towards a harmonious, utopia. Its about opening ourselves to new problems, new critiques, all the different kinds of shadows as well as new ways of potentially being in the world.
• Even when I come to an understanding, that not all that much is up to me, I will still find myself trying to control life and the world.
• 32:00 We are not individuals, we are all part of a larger flow of becomings… we are more spread out than we think we are - and this can be quite liberating
• There is something emancipating about seeing agency as not human based, but ecological…
• Maybe we humans aren’t as exceptional as we tend to think
• This is about us noticing, that we are indebted with the world around us. An invitation to find new coalitions to act within.
• There are cultures that have the capacity to engage with the remarkable complexities and paradoxes of the world.
• The past is part of the thick now…
• It is possible that there is a field of resonance, that feelings are volatile and atmospheric…
• The pandemic can be seen as an opening, as a portal. What we need, is to get lost - not the salvation!
• The difference between home-making and home-coming
• Even place is a practice - it is not a static container

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