Dear radical dreamers,
following Ashish’s email I am going to offer some impressions and thoughts from the session, not in any order, I’m going to let myself do this is daydream mode..
Ashish had made miso soup, with nori and tofu, lovely, thank you, very welcome. I remember it came to my mind that nori is a species marine alga, slimy and smelling of the sea, on the end of my finger as I tried to retrieve it from the bottom of a mostly empty cup. What creature are you?
Ashish and I talked about native and non-native and invasion; and Ashish’s idea of migration ecologiesas political form. Iman and Natasha were on a sofa talking. I arrived last and the space felt warm and somehow hopeful. We were four.
Ashish invited us to view some printed artwork, about A3 sized, laid out on a table. The artworks were fragments of spoken word from a workshop held a Karst. I forget the name but the wkshp began with three makers Ashish, Iman and Tsitsi speaking from experience of nature and rupture or migration and natural / nativeness / invasiveness (that’s my recollection, Japanese Knot Weed). This was followed by break out group discussions which were transcribed by the three and read back to the entire group, there was group discussion at the end. We didn’t talk for long about this.
We moved into Iman’s studio to talk. The meet felt like planning, i think mostly it was planning for the 11th and then 25th and then 12th April . Ashish’s show at Thelma Hulbert Gallery felt imminent if not even present.
We talked a fair bit about the nature of the temporal flow of ideas and practices in dream ecologies and what to hold and what to let go. There was debate about form, which could be methodology, and how that might offer a route to a consistent practice. And, whether that would be a good thing or not. There was conversation about ‘the classic dream matrix’ and what place that might have in ongoing practices here.
A thought was parsed by those present that the embodied movement practice brought by Sarah B acts to somehow condition the space of dream telling. Is it that movement troubles, or worries at received protocols of the social, at prohibitions or inhibitions that form our consensual collective space? Physically exploring the space by movement and touch as well as listening and sight heightens and challenges ..this thought proposition or suggestion is crucial to what follows, especially for session of 11th.
Apologies, what follows is going to be a bit me-centered cos I was inspired by the conversation to think a lot, dream ecologies as space of ideation…
I ventured that the thing that is missing for me in Dream Ecologies is ecology, we need to bring it in. I was asked what I meant and replied: “the science of how plants and animals interact to create environments”. I was asked how to do that; my reply was that we should go and say hello!.. I went on to recount a thought inspired by being within this group…
The studio is in a crescent shaped road called the Cedars, or the units are called the Cedars? I had noticed previously that there are two old Cedars growing in the lawn just outside the studio, possibly planted by those designing this estate, possibly older. I had previously wondered about enacting a movement / sensing space to include them. What are they dreaming? What is the dream of the cedar? What do they carry? What do they remember?
These questions have become increasing urgent as the twin specters of necro-capitalism and genocide ossify in mainstream discursive practices.
In western epistemology space there are four true cedars, the two outside the Radical Ecologies studio are single representatives, one Atlas Cedar and one Cedar of Lebanon. Both native to the phytogeographic unit called the Mediterranean Basin. The Med basin is one of the most biodiverse places on earth, crucible of ‘The West’. What if it were normal to think of agency derived from, or in relation to ecological units rather than political units? What if we would defer to phytogeographic relations rather than/as well as, human geopolitical relations? Could the phytogeographic be a form of solidarity across national boundaries?
I remember saying “it’s on the flag” .. this was a declarative and perhaps not so useful reference to the relation between nature and state. The Cedar Tree is centrally place on the Lebanese flag. Ashish and I had chatted about me being pissed at the UK govt, for their compliant and participatory response to the US-Isreali genocide in Gaza. There is more here .. for another time perhaps..
As I write the Israeli state makes illegally incursions in to south Lebanon, shelling and bombing towns. Settlers and soldiers terrorize the people who flee at the point of a gun. Some stand and face down the tank barrels. Many are killed. What is left, if survivors return, is ransacked and burnt remains of human ecology. Here is where the Cedar of Lebanon was born. It is on us to detect the connections, to sense them, to notice them, here we look directly at a complex interface of colonial power, immediate horror and living form. An interface that spans generations and geographies, spans the personal and the political.. this is the dream space that does not recognize clock time or Euclidean scale, this is the radicality of claiming dream space as that of futurisms that go beyond statism and into ecoism. Its a reverie of sorts, but the reverie of the dictionary which definition, ”a state of being lost in one’s thoughts”; but a reverie composed of horror and grief. But yet, this reverie empowers and calms, the dream space optic collapses scale and time, to reveal USA/Isreal militarized hegemon, as garbage!
How does the Cedar being bring its knowledge here at ’the Cedars’ Dartington? How can we share knowledge?
…
I suggested that we could visit the Cedar as part of one of the evening sessions. We talked about the thought that the movement practice, particulary in nature’ might condition the dream telling space, Iman suggested the North Wood for the next session .. This was met with immediate consensus, Ashish asked Iman to book The Glade for the next session. There was some discussion between Iman and Natasha about sensing practices i think.. sorry but, my memory is probably faulty here..
We talked about how to maintain a strategy of outward looking reflexive practices that engage with politics by internally destabilizing the euro-western point of view, like literally claiming that dreaming is a point of view, dreaming is non-conformable space of sensory value and therefore somewhere from which political views/values can emerge and thus have some influence on the lives of others, ie have an ethical dimension.
We talked about the categories of awake and asleep and whether these are natural/real. It feels politically productive think again about the ‘real’ and perhaps dreams as a means of reaching into the real.
I do remember that Iman brought the idea that dreams are not independent of their telling, and therefore are in relation to … that somehow dream ecologies space is informing the dream space.
We were reminded of Ashish’s early proposition of dream as data and the idea that we are searching for pattern and that pattern, as yet, is not revealed.. perhaps? Previously we have problematized the ‘as data’ proposal as potentially extractive. My personal position is that my offerings to the dreamcollective are consensual, I am super-happy that the dreams I have offered are now part of a dreamcommons.
Iman Natasha and Dave set up a meet in the north wood, which took place yesterday now, the 4th, we planned the 11th.
With love, David.