I: For a brief moment, held

It begins with an invitation…

This listening intervention is a creative experiment in collective witnessing and listening with/in the breath of another.  Through the creation and sharing of voice notes between women and trans-non-binary folks living with embodied experiences of breathing in/through/with discomfort, chronic debilitation, or distress - in whatever ways you define or relate to those terms - we will explore ways in which we might hold breath for each other. 

It is prompted by the question: what might collective care sound like?

Breath is a threshold between self and other; between the body and the world; between inter-dependent systems of respiration.  Breath is movement, even if when is disrupted, held, or difficult.  Breath is embodied and situated; breathing is political, it is poetic. 

We start with where we’re at, in all our ‘brilliant imperfection’ (Clare, 2017), with attention to how our bodyminds are feeling, meaning you can do this in bed, in pyjamas if that’s what you need today. We will make, share and listen to short voice-note recordings as a prompt for feeling-thinking-sounding our way together.

I am inspired by Rajni Shah’s (2021) ‘experiments in listening’ which invite the ‘attentive’ over the ‘declarative’.  Following Shah’s work, this project values silence, listening, attentiveness. In other words, tenderness: towards ourselves, in all our states of vulnerability, and towards each other. It values modes of embodied or sensory responses to the world that do not (or not only) rely on speech or making ‘sense’.

As Sick Woman Johanna Hedva (2015/2020) declares: ‘You don’t need to be fixed, my queens, it’s the world that needs fixing’.

There’s no right way to take part. We invite you to listen to and/or read the offerings we have created and respond (or not respond) in whatever way you desire. Take your time. Go slowly. Breathe.

We do not have fixed expectations around what to record; we are more interested to create a space for listening, witnessing and mutual compassion – to hold breath for one another across different thresholds of experience.

As feminist killjoy Sara Ahmed (2023) reminds us: ‘discomfort is revealing of worlds’.

There is so much embodied knowledge we carry, that we bring with us, that we feel... in our bones, in our breath.

If you wish, you can offer your own voice recording in response, or chose a creative form that most resonates with you, such as poetry, essay, song, music, spoken word. Be playful.

You might just listen to the voice-notes of others; witnessing them in private may be enough.

You might record what seems like ‘nothing’; if that is all you can do, that is something too.

It is up to you to decide who you’d like to share your responses with. It might be with one of us, it might be with someone new. You might want to invite someone else in. We imagine a web of care where protocols for shelter and privacy and/or connecting with strangers are determined by each of us, in relation.

How we might conspire (to breathe, together)?  Will you join me as a co-conspirator?

More details to come on how you can be involved…

References:

Ahmed, Sara. 2023. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. Penguin.

Clare, Eli. 2017. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure. Durham, UNITED STATES: Duke University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unsw/detail.action?docID=4775649.

Hedva, Johnanna. 2016. “Sick Woman Theory.” Sisters of Frida (blog). January 23, 2016. https://www.sisofrida.org/johanna-hedva-sick-woman-theory/.

Shah, Rajni. 2021. Experiments in Listening. Rowman & Littlefield.

II:

details to come

III:

details to come