In Our Own Spaces #5: "Bring A Work In Progress"
Intentions for a community hosted artist salon series
The following writing was created for and spoken at the fifth edition of the community-lead and hosted artist salon series “In Our Own Spaces” on February 25th, 2024. My partner and I founded this salon series as a space for communal gathering, radical conversation, and redefining uses of art in our current society.
The day after Valentine's day, I got an unexpected message from someone I’ve been reconnecting with. It was the spark of an opportunity that, if I pursue and everything works out, would completely change my life.
This is something I’ve been working really hard to do— change my life. My general approach is to come up with a lot of big, multi-step plans to take me from here to point B and start slowly chipping away, often with many plots moving at the same time. I’m addicted to control, so I love to plan and strategize and organize my life, with a mountain of notes and task lists to guide me. I have a road map and I can see the finish line and every step along the way. Or so I like to tell myself.
So there I am, on my merry way, chipping away at my 50-point-plan, and something unexpected comes up to throw everything completely off course. I used to really reject these unexpected plot twists— they bring up a lot of conflicting emotions— like excitement, and supreme terror. When I got that text I immediately just started laughing, like, “thank you!” and also, are you “fucking kidding me?” And then I broke down in tears because the surprise and confusion and grief and excitement was all just too much to hold. The unknown, the unimaginable, has the power to be the most exciting, and that in itself is terrifying.
What I know is safe. That’s how we lie to ourselves, by claiming that if we stick to the plan, everything will end up the way we expect. Even if that were true, which it’s really not, isn’t living life that way a little… boring? I’m not rejecting these organizational planning skills that have served me incredibly well. I’m just asking them, politely, to chill the fuck out every once in a while. Living life by a roadmap is living with expectations: I go here, I do this, and I get the result I’m looking for. I can optimize this current situation until it’s perfect, never interrupted by the rupture of change. But if I know where I’m going, why would I linger? What keeps me here, in this moment, actually trying to enjoy the damn drive?
I’m learning that my road map is a great tool to ground me in my goals and motivate me forward, and that there are exits, forks in the road, and unexpected closures that even AI powered mapping softwares couldn’t predict. So it’s really important to keep my eyes on the road, and hands on the wheel, so I can take that surprise exit, pick up that hitchhiker, and try to avoid hitting that deer.
Tonight’s theme is a return of our first Salon theme— bring a WIP. On this terrible, wonderful joyride of existence, nothing is ever “done”. Everything, everyone, is a work in progress. Even when we think we’re done with something, like there’s no more work to do, we are painfully mistaken. There is no finish line. You will never get there, I promise. So tonight, spend some time with your work, others work, yourself, and others where everything stands now, because it will never be there again.
Before we break out into conversation, I wanted to open a group discussion around this theme, pulling some inspiration from a book I recently finished called “The Agony of Eros” by Byung Chul Han. A little 4-page chapter titled “The Politics of Eros” spoke to what I believe we’re really trying to do with this salon as a form of political action. He writes,
“Eros guides the soul… it holds sway over all of its parts: pleasure-based desire (epithumia), spiritedness or courage (thumos), and reason (logos)... Rage is thumonic: it radically breaks with convention and inaugurates a new state of affairs. Contemporary politics— which lacks not only thumos but eros as well— has degraded into mere work… thumos is [also] withering away. Communal action— a we— now proves impossible.”
On our large-scale, collective journey, political rigidity keeps us stuck on the same path instead of allowing for passion-driven or rage-driven shifts and surprises. Unexpected change, these forks in the road, are rejected by a loveless, rageless politics. Han describes political action as
“mutual desire for another way of living— a more just world aligned with Eros on every register. Eros represents a source of energy for political revolt and engagement. It is clear that under the effect of a loving encounter, if I want to be really faithful to it, I must completely rework my ordinary way of ‘living’ my situation… The essence of the event is the negativity of rupture, which allows something wholly other to begin… Eros is the medium of the poetic revolution in language and existence… combin[ing] the artistic, the existential, and the political. Eros manifests itself as the revolutionary yearning for an entirely different way of loving another kind of society. Thereby, it remains faithful to what is to come.”
There’s a delicate balance here— remaining faithful to what is to come, while accepting what is, where we are “in progress”. If we’re always trying to get somewhere or do better, we’re forcing change. We’re “optimizing”. But if we’re too attached to what is, we’re stuck, non-moving. How do we find the balance that keeps us growing, learning, and changing, without falling prey to optimizing?
Continuing this salon format created a wonderful conversation among our community members around what we owe to ourselves and each other, how societal pressures impede the artistic process, and how to create the world we want for ourselves in what little time we have. I hope these ideas and questions will create an opportunity to open up new conversations and dialogues in your own communities.
