Fantastic figures at Hambi / Gathering, workshops, play

For the past 10 years, Hambi has been occupied – as the coal strip-mining moonscape is swallowing the ancient forest. I’m curious about the stories of resistance, failure, connection and extraction that we may find there. And I see our intuitive and creative approach as part of the liberatory struggle against enclosures.

Between incompatible systems, there is always a strange boundary layer, where concepts from either space stop making sense. At Hambi, there is the coal-mine which is all about violent and useless extraction, policing and enclosure, directly next to a beautiful ecosystem that includes the occupiers. What is in-between? What kinds of stories do trees, grains of sands, puddles of water tell that have lost their connection to either side?

There is a similar thing going on between bodies: Where one ends and the other begins, there is no defining narrative, only matter and possible stories. Through embodies consent-exercises, we will embrace and cultivate these boundaries, and find which unknown stories they contain. At the edges, our bodies transform into other beings. We will lose our old shells and grow new ones, improvise and encounter each other.

This is an invitation for everyone to find these juicy boundaries. It’s really the opposite of “normal”. Let’s embrace and celebrate that we don’t have the proper words to descibe ourselves or where we are!

Through open play and acute observation, we develop and embody “figures”. You can think of a figure as a major arcanum in Tarot (The Sun, The Pope, The Lovers…) or as any animal or plant or concept that becomes meaningful to us. By playing and living with each other in the body of a figure, we stretch our collective imagination.

• We embody these figures while cooking, walking around, resting.
• We share with each other what we observe
• We tune our figures to what we need and desire. When we lose connection, we find another figure.

What mutualities or ideas or conflics arise in the encounters between the figures? Each day, we will formalize some of these encounters in a little scene.

Most images serve the exploitation. Satellite images represent the globe as a grid of squares fit for ownership and extraction. But I think the camera can also produce other images, where everything is in relation to other things. To me, this connects with pre-modern withcraft practices, alchemy, shapeshifting. We will experiment with the camera as an apparatus that transforms a pyramid-shaped space into a flat, moving image which then stands next to the whole collective audiovisual memory.

Instead of planning an image or a narrative top-down, we’ll focus on the relations that we find between the figures. We will remain aware of the camera and step in and out of the frame. Each day, we will film a small scene and learn how to center relations in an image.

I hate the image of apocalypse. How nature, indigineity, femininity, peace are imagined as a passive victims, doomed. There are so many other archetypes and images for resistance, abundance, connection, diversity. There are so many other ways to relate. One is the sanctuary: a protected space where we find refuge and power-with.

Before everything, this gathering is a time for us to co-regulate, care for each other, grieve and celebrate, learn and teach, take it slow, and say no to what doesn’t serve us any more!