What if an art gallery was itself a work of art?

“Is it possible that creativity in arts organisations not be limited to the gallery space?”

Anne Bertrand has been flirting with this question for as many years as I have known her. When we first met almost a decade ago, she was asking it from a place of frustration. She had spent several years working for an artist-run organization and was feeling quite disheartened as a result. How can it be, she would say to me in exasperation, that […]

A quick dip into anarchy

When I heard that the first-ever South African Anarchist Book Fair was being organized in Cape Town, I jumped at the opportunity to check it out. I had been to the anarchist book fair several times in Montreal, but never with a specific goal in mind. This time, I was going with a more tailored curiosity: How do anarchists go about […]

Invoking Jim

My father-in-law, Jim, is a great destroyer of walls. Every house he has lived in will bear me out. Each is filled with reclaimed open space, the air laced with the cheerful scars of what has been removed. To create such space, a man needs to have a strong desire to see the world – the whole thing – from the chair where he sits. He also needs a hammer.

Pioneering change from within

Check out this thought-provoking theory of social change that Debbie Frieze of the Berkana Exchange describes in this 7-minute video clip. I particularly appreciate the question that Debbie raises towards the end, one that she says has been an important point of debate and exploration for her organization: Is it possible to create pioneering change […]

Unbinding continued

Tana’s recent post on “unbinding” reminded me of some reflections I had made in a paper I wrote a few years ago. In a section that was actually called “The Unbinding,” I was thinking about how difficult it can be to recognize exactly what it is that binds us. For someone like Tana (disciplined, orderly, […]

Unbinding

I have to admit, my yearning for control often outweighs my yearning for a better world. My visions are large, but my daily interactions are laced with an urge to put things in nice orderly lines and boxes. My ‘shoulds’ outnumber my ‘what ifs?’ Literally. I use the word ‘should’ promiscuously (I had been doing […]