I am seeking an invitation

(This is a rough draft. Subject to change as I listen deeper to my guiding desires and attune deeper to intuition.)

✧

I recently made the decision to wrap up my current client work without seeking new work (though thank you to everyone who has already offered incredible introductions, opportunities, and ideas). For a few years now I have split my time between client work, my individual studio practice, and an assortment of collaborations, side projects and experiments. As I near the end of this year, I am welling with want — want for more space, more time, more dedication to the worlds I have been imagining within myself and within relations.

And so, I have blocked off the next couple months as a deep research sabbatical for my studio and personal practice. My research will be focused on weaving existing networks around homemaking, grief tending, technological reimagination, and infrastructural repair (more on these research areas below). I intend to map these constellations, hopefully, meeting new stars and falling into other galaxies along the way. If you know of a person, org, idea or place that you think I should spend time with, please send them my way. 

I have visions of what this map (these maps, most likely) could look like: a collective, a coalition, a residency, the procurement of land and space for continued work to be hosted, tech tools and platforms to facilitate the work, social practices and grief spaces to enable the work, visual art and written expressions of the vision, and on and on ~ but before I get into outcomes and naming what I want to produce, I first feel a desire — a need — to pause, recalibrate, remember, and study. I could call this period a residency, a sabbatical, a project, a lifestyle. So far nothing feels right, and moreover, the desire to name it, to label it as something feels like some sort of defense or justification. Nonetheless, this is an incomplete but hopefully meaningful declaration of my intentions. 

I’ll be spending the first few weeks doing this work in Atlanta, where I currently call home. At the same time, I am seeking invitations to do this research elsewhere. If you know of a person or place that could host me in this deep research phase, I would appreciate an introduction. I have wants and wishes for what places might be able to hold me, but more than anything I am seeking a place with the desire and capacity to host. I can offer exchange for this hosting financially, through service, or otherwise. 

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SKETCHES* FOR THE CONTAINERS I AM SEEKING:

*These are only sketches, an attempt to name some of the vignettes I picture in my dreams. Most of these are not requirements. My strong bounds and needs are marked with ✹ and come first. In all of this, I let my desire direct me, but I am not so headstrong to believe that I know what I need (or even what I want). What feels most present is I have a desire to follow invitation, to go where I am welcome and take only what is offered. I trust that there may be invitations that come that are beyond what I could have imagined. 

Geography
Where I’d like invitation to go 

• (✹) Safe and welcoming for Black, queer, and fem folks

• (✹) Large or otherwise significant Black and diasporic community

• Regions: South America, Central America, Africa, Oceania/Pacific

• Language: Spanish-speaking communities (I speak conversational Spanish), Portuguese-speaking communities (Don’t speak Portuguese but I have a good amount of exposure to it and its in the learning queue) 

• Landscapes: Coasts, Oceans, Rivers, Mountains, Canyons, Volcanic Islands, Old-growth Forests

Infrastructure:
Where I’d like invitation to live 

• (✹) My rent money goes towards a local / an aligned organization / a responsible visitor

• (✹) Private bedroom 

• Existing homemaking project/experiment  — people are practicing hosting and sharing space, home, land

• Artist/writers retreat or residency space — has set up for deep work and making, working desk, studio space

• Rural / residential / not dense urban 

• Windows, light, views out to Earth and expanse 

Themes:
Where I’d like invitation to practice/study

• Expanse / Awe 

• Earth / Water

• Music/Dance 

• Homemaking 

• Grief / Loss / Transition 

• Magic / Ritual / Time 

• Lineage / Ancestry / Diaspora 

• Teacher / Mentor / Guide

Research Areas 
Where I would like to offer my time

• Homemaking

  • Place, place making

  • Earth tending 

  • Construction and building 

  • Collective living, collectivization, resource sharing 

  • Diaspora, lineage, 

• Grief tending

  • Grieving, mourning 

  • Ghosts and haunting 

  • Alchemy, empathy, recovery 

  • Facilitation and hosting 

• Technological re-imagination 

  • Caring for hardware, tech rituals

  • Relating in/to software, making home in interfaces

  • Visualizing supply chain and materiality in software/digital spaces

  • Mournful design practices and patterns 

  • Prototyping, experiments for new tools and platforms 

• Infrastructural repair

  • Alternative economies and investment

  • Resource sharing, solidarity economies

ON ASKING FOR AN INVITATION
(IS THAT A THING?)

Out of a fear of over-asserting my will, I have sometimes remained quiet and still, waiting for an invitation to act, do, or be. I still hold this fear and restraint, but I also want to move, want to go, want to make and learn and find and recover. So I am asking for invitations. I realize there may already be invitations and offers out there, opportunities that haven’t reached me, either because I didn’t hear the call or because someone didn’t know I was seeking. This is an experiment in my ever evolving practice of trying to be a responsible, respectful and loving human in entangled and dangerous world.