‘Real utopias can be found wherever emancipatory ideals are embodied in existing institutions, practices, and proposals’ – said I. I was citing Erik Olin Wright. It was a lecture on ‘Sustainability, democracy and gender’, and I stood there, feeling unsustainably undemocratic, and I would get a very low score from gender scholars, as there was […]
Category: Deep diving
On the tyranny of Zoom, knowledge policy, flamenco shoes, and touching somebody’s shoulder
What is wrong with a Zoom meeting? Nothing. It’s perfect. A little bubble (or big, size doesn’t matter, marginal costs are zero, the more, the merrier), where you can convene and commune with each other in perfect harmony. Communication for all. Democracy enacted. Everyone can participate. Participatory turn. Erasing barriers, gaps, distances, divisions, frontiers and […]
On dancing with the shawl, faux pas, and being chiselled through research training
El mantón, the flamenco shawl, refuses to do my bidding. It refuses to levitate in the air in front of me, in order to then fall softly on my chest – like it levitates in front of my teacher and then falls on hers, right under her collar bones and covering her entire wide-open arms. […]
On deconstruction, acute social theory overdose, and Guernica
In the first couple of weeks of my PhD, I made the mistake of reading The Structure of Sociological Theory by Jonathan H. Turner. It’s an old book and somewhat out-of-date (at least the edition I had), but I just happened to run into it in India and brought it home. Not that it wasn’t […]
Introduction: A hundred fathoms under water
‘To fathom’ has three meanings which essentialise an artistic/scholarly process. In the most widely used sense, to fathom means to understand, comprehend, get to the bottom of something. Both artists and scientists spend most of their time figuring things out by thinking deeply. They also tend to imagine things which are not there, and sometimes […]
Preface
This blog is dedicated to you, my fellow artists/researchers. Do you recognise yourselves in this definition? Because I recognise you. My departure point is that everyone is an artist and a researcher. At least part-time, and at least in part. Some people don’t think of themselves as researchers, but we all are. We do research […]
Fathom 