Strategies for Meaning
Strategies for Meaning
First off, I want to congratulate and welcome everyone for making the active decision to be here tonight, many of you for the first time. It seems so challenging at times, at least I’ve been struggling, to find the energy to make and keep plans, even though I know I will feel better connecting with somebody.
Why are we so exhausted? There are a million very valid reasons, but I think most notable is the poor quality of our lived time. It takes incredible effort to keep up with this “immediate” society, moving at a speed which belongs to the time of production, not the time of art. I recently finished Leaving the 20th Century, a brilliant book by McKenzie Wark in which she discusses the lives and strategies of the Situationists. She poses a question that is lingering with me: what might be a practice of everyday life? How is one to live?
In our economic climate, free-time is scarce, a luxury only to be enjoyed by the “leisure class”. The boundary between work-time and free-time is growing increasingly blurry. Most of us spend most of our time in a day-job where we work in service of the products that we spend the rest of our time consuming. Consuming is not confined to shopping: you consume the news, the latest episode drop, even your friends’ lives and accomplishments. We fall prey to traps of consumption at every turn and there is a reason it feels hollow: it’s not free-time. When imprisoned in a cycle of consuming, every moment not consumed is a sacrifice. No one wants to sacrifice their free-time for anything. This is dangerous to everything that beholds meaning in our lives. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, the less free-time we seem to have, the more we need to use it. To break this logic of sacrifice, we must strategize the use of our time to give it freely.
Wark states: “The nucleus of a radical form of action is not the specialists in political praxis, but the connoisseurs of the free use of time.”
Stuck in the logic of consuming/sacrificing we never truly have to assume responsibility for the future we desire or how our community could benefit tremendously from what we have to offer. Not everyone is going to host big events or organize protests, and frankly that may not be what we most urgently need. We need to entirely transform what we honor and find important.
Artists possess the skill of world-building: we take an idea and roll it around behind our eyes, we play with it, letting it grow. Then we strategize how to give form to that idea and after strategizing, we take action to create the art object, to compose the song, and write the poem. Through this process we affirm our agency. That is the artist's power. To caress an idea from conception to actualization to permeation, to conception again.
What is occurring in-between the initial immaterial idea and the resulting material work? Strategy. We employ strategic decision making in order to build a meaningful piece of work, and we can utilize this same approach outside the studio. Wark urges us to embrace the revolutionary potential of a politicized aesthetics: the fugitive action of dynamic engagement with your surroundings as an embodied politic. Re-capturing your free-time for uses which lead to a world that is desired, different, more meaningful.
Maybe what you want is to be a good neighbor. Maybe you want your home to be an open door to your friends and community. Maybe you want to gather artists to create together because this solitary practice can be so lonely! We wanted a meaningful space for our community to come together to discuss, view, and share art. We wanted to know how our relationship to the work was changed when removed from capital. This was Adi and I’s vision, and you are all here for the 10th In Our Own Spaces Salon which is so crazy to us. The salon is not a magical occurrence but a project we strategize, honor, and give freely, because it is so important to us. And the benefit, this present moment of lived time together, will linger with me for the next month until it is time to start planning the next one.
This is just one strategy that makes room for meaning. Maybe the title of the salon is slightly off, but I think we are discussing strategies for the situations in which meaning is formed. Everyone here has different dreams and visions for the future, even if they are buried under a bit of doom. Those ideas are just waiting for you to give them form.
“Strategy is part calculation and part inspiration, part objective conditions and part empathetic intuition. Strategy is the ordering of actions within a situation that reveals its contours via a form of engagement.” Mckenzie Wark
We can talk and talk for hours about strategizing meaning, but this is an embodied, participatory experience, so we are going to do something a little different tonight for the group conversation.
Written for and spoken at the 10th In Our Own Spaces Salon, March 2025.
Strategies for Meaning
First off, I want to congratulate and welcome everyone for making the active decision to be here tonight, many of you for the first time. It seems so challenging at times, at least I’ve been struggling, to find the energy to make and keep plans, even though I know I will feel better connecting with somebody.
Why are we so exhausted? There are a million very valid reasons, but I think most notable is the poor quality of our lived time. It takes incredible effort to keep up with this “immediate” society, moving at a speed which belongs to the time of production, not the time of art. I recently finished Leaving the 20th Century, a brilliant book by McKenzie Wark in which she discusses the lives and strategies of the Situationists. She poses a question that is lingering with me: what might be a practice of everyday life? How is one to live?
In our economic climate, free-time is scarce, a luxury only to be enjoyed by the “leisure class”. The boundary between work-time and free-time is growing increasingly blurry. Most of us spend most of our time in a day-job where we work in service of the products that we spend the rest of our time consuming. Consuming is not confined to shopping: you consume the news, the latest episode drop, even your friends’ lives and accomplishments. We fall prey to traps of consumption at every turn and there is a reason it feels hollow: it’s not free-time. When imprisoned in a cycle of consuming, every moment not consumed is a sacrifice. No one wants to sacrifice their free-time for anything. This is dangerous to everything that beholds meaning in our lives. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, the less free-time we seem to have, the more we need to use it. To break this logic of sacrifice, we must strategize the use of our time to give it freely.
Wark states: “The nucleus of a radical form of action is not the specialists in political praxis, but the connoisseurs of the free use of time.”
Stuck in the logic of consuming/sacrificing we never truly have to assume responsibility for the future we desire or how our community could benefit tremendously from what we have to offer. Not everyone is going to host big events or organize protests, and frankly that may not be what we most urgently need. We need to entirely transform what we honor and find important.
Artists possess the skill of world-building: we take an idea and roll it around behind our eyes, we play with it, letting it grow. Then we strategize how to give form to that idea and after strategizing, we take action to create the art object, to compose the song, and write the poem. Through this process we affirm our agency. That is the artist's power. To caress an idea from conception to actualization to permeation, to conception again.
What is occurring in-between the initial immaterial idea and the resulting material work? Strategy. We employ strategic decision making in order to build a meaningful piece of work, and we can utilize this same approach outside the studio. Wark urges us to embrace the revolutionary potential of a politicized aesthetics: the fugitive action of dynamic engagement with your surroundings as an embodied politic. Re-capturing your free-time for uses which lead to a world that is desired, different, more meaningful.
Maybe what you want is to be a good neighbor. Maybe you want your home to be an open door to your friends and community. Maybe you want to gather artists to create together because this solitary practice can be so lonely! We wanted a meaningful space for our community to come together to discuss, view, and share art. We wanted to know how our relationship to the work was changed when removed from capital. This was Adi and I’s vision, and you are all here for the 10th In Our Own Spaces Salon which is so crazy to us. The salon is not a magical occurrence but a project we strategize, honor, and give freely, because it is so important to us. And the benefit, this present moment of lived time together, will linger with me for the next month until it is time to start planning the next one.
This is just one strategy that makes room for meaning. Maybe the title of the salon is slightly off, but I think we are discussing strategies for the situations in which meaning is formed. Everyone here has different dreams and visions for the future, even if they are buried under a bit of doom. Those ideas are just waiting for you to give them form.
“Strategy is part calculation and part inspiration, part objective conditions and part empathetic intuition. Strategy is the ordering of actions within a situation that reveals its contours via a form of engagement.” Mckenzie Wark
We can talk and talk for hours about strategizing meaning, but this is an embodied, participatory experience, so we are going to do something a little different tonight for the group conversation.
Written for and spoken at the 10th In Our Own Spaces Salon, March 2025.
