together through the process: a final summary as lights go out

It’s a rehearsing, when I speak to you. Because I trust you. And this is part of a set of conversations that have happened over time. We’re practicing as it were, what it is that I think this new solidarity means. – Nick Mirzoeff, rehearsing solidarity by writing and speaking

What I love about collaboration is the way that we’re co-becoming together, creating who we are, and our difference together, in the process of creating something for other people. -Alex Martinis Roe, publish the process

Together, we can see the complexity of culture, society, and each other in ways that are so important for counteracting the very homogenizing, concretizing, limiting, scarcity-fueled narratives that get amplified in these periods of fascism. It’s such an important antidote, if you can commit to it and sustain and find enough people who want to sustain it. No one person can do it alone. – Aymar Jean Christian, the audience as cookout

If I were to dream about or have a sort of ideal, what would the first year look like? it would be having and building community that can help to make a young life thrive in community, in a world that people are trying to make healthier and better, not just for this one life but more broadly. -Anonymous, we’ll just keep doing those things in our families of choice

I’m realizing, in part through your blog posts¹ and their understanding of the different kinds of communities that can form—some of them planned, some of them spontaneous—I also need to participate in something that’s going to contribute more directly to this political moment, something more communitarian. – Gavin McCormick, dawn of a new practice

That’s the feeling of solidarity. That’s the feeling that we want to extend across the entire world, but certainly across our campus. -Joseph Entin and Mobina Hashmi, the payoffs of solidarity

So while corporatized digital technologies often network and link as ways of potentially amplifying and scaling, what we have seen is linking in order to intensify and come together as opposed to scale and dissipate. – Nishant Shah, intimate links

The act of filming or even audio recording an interview with someone … this is a very profound act. And so I don’t underestimate what small groups can accomplish and the kind of resonance they can have in the culture and the kind of change that they can evoke. – Erin Cramer, groovy women can do groovy things

Thinking about being in an audience right now² in this short period of time between the election and the inauguration of Trump is a very important thing for us to notice, and for us to practice, and for us to concentrate our feelings and our thoughts about, because we are the audience for what is coming. -Laura Wexler, we are the audience for what is coming: lights out @Meta©

COVID and Palestine are two situations where the government and all of our major institutions are saying, “Everything’s fine. No need to get worked up. We got everything under control. Everything’s okay. You don’t have to act. Everything’s fine. Everything’s normal.” And in both situations, I know that nothing’s fine. – Dan Fishback, integrated access: the audience in alienation and solidarity

In these moments, Visual AIDS’ job has always been to establish—not a bubble, but a discourse community that says, we care about these things and we take these things seriously. “These things” being the lives and culture of people with HIV, as well as the violence and injustice that is leveled against our communities. Kyle Croft, social justice. social media

Why do art when the world is literally burning? I’ve decided that it feels powerful to continue to feel a reason to create and just want to be happy. -Bea Hurd, a constant stimulation

I am trying to parse out the difference between making work that makes me feel better in a way that’s narrow and making work that makes room for change and room for resistance. -Z. Behl, a constant stimulation

This idea of imperfection, I think is both politically helpful and somewhat troubling to a lot of people right now. It’s like feeling out how to deal with this imperfection, or the ripples created by the commingling of performer, audience, and catharsis in the same moment. – Chloë Bass, audience to the audience: the co-taught feminist class

The interval that I’m in with Jackie is three weeks that repeats itself six times, but then that’s part of a larger interval because this is round two. And that is what I know. I don’t even know what day the inauguration is because I know when Jackie’s next infusion is, and it’s on the 13th of January, and then the second one is on the 20th of January. [Alex replies: The 20th of January is the inauguration.] – Michael Mandiberg, cycles of care in the interval

I anticipate the end of this project being in that darkness [a commitment to using the internet for a week without the amplification of Meta© products concurrent with the coming into formation of a new regime], which is a different kind of light. An electric energy between decent people dependent upon different technologies—letters, meetings, art, writing, speaking, teaching, witnessing, and this old blog—so as to better listen to stories, friends, and collaborators with an attention to and awareness of the other. And because these tools are labor and affect intensive: to make, publish, and read only as much as we need and can carry into our brilliant lives after the new darkness. -Alexandra Juhasz, publish the process

1. Summary of blogging practice, November 20 – January 1: an accounting: 4 questions and 21 audiences @ the new year. ↩︎
2. Statement of protocols for a developing blogging practice on November 26, 2024: https://aljean.wordpress.com/2024/11/26/my-practice-for-the-interval/ ↩︎