Dear all,

Berlin’s in “lockdown light” and the cold months are upon us, so it seems even more essential to design opportunities to gather with old friends and new.

I’d love to see you next Sunday, 29 November from 17:00–19:00 CET (11am–1pm EST), when we’ll feature a special episode of Present!: a “social dreaming matrix” led by L.A.-based psychologist and psychoanalyst George Bermudez together with artist Connie Samaras. Please register in advance. This two-hour participatory workshop focuses on the “social unconscious” through the collective sharing of dreams, reflecting on what they can tell us about the state of society today. The event is free and open to all; additional details will be provided beforehand.

The week ahead is full of other gatherings. Today kicks off Experiences of Oil, an ambitious online conference organized by Stavanger Art Museum and Curatorial Practice, University of Bergen exploring the social, cultural, and emotional effects of oil and other extractive industries. Together with Emily Smith and Benedikt Rottstegge, I’ll be helping to co-facilitate and design the conference—so please say hello if you join us and the amazing contributors over the next few days!

On Friday, I’ll be taking to the (virtual) stage to present a new talk: “A Rough Sketch of an Unfinished Draft for a Virtual Workshop and Space of Gathering Currently Called Commune /kəˈmjuːn/”, which analyzes recent examples for using (and misusing) group communications platforms to create more richly participatory experiences. My talk will be part of an online symposium from 26–27 November focused on museums, art universities, and diversity, hosted by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Dresden University of Fine Arts (HfBK). You can register by emailing the organizers directly.

Other projects seeded earlier this year are continuing to grow. In early October, artist Kalaija Mallery and I initiated a 12-week social experiment called The Artist’s Human Way together with over sixty people across the world. It involves small groups working through a daily, transformative practice both individually and collectively. Last week the project began to become public, with participants contributing to the artist-led digital space Home Cooking through 14 January.

A lot of my other energy has been focused on strategic initiatives like Walk the Walk 2020, who have raised funds and organized volunteers to turn out BIPOC voters in swing states in the US. Through them, I’ve been introduced to inspiring grass-roots groups like Women Engaged in Atlanta, Georgia. Women Engaged’s long-term, highly-effective voter engagement work is even more significant leading up to January’s runoff elections. If this sounds interesting, please check out these orgs and how to support their work!

Lastly, here are two books I’ve been reading this month. Feel free to drop me a line with your own reading recommendations!

• Amitava Kumar, Every Day I Write the Book: Notes on Style
  Although pitched at “academic writers”, this book’s deeply-felt reflections on the social dimensions of experimental writing, as well as Kumar's practical notes on the writing process, are provocative and useful. He calls for a kind of bravery within the academy—to take risks that move beyond established modes and genres—which resonates with the transparency he performs in sharing his own and others’ diverse experiences.
• Ann Cooper Albright, How to Land: Finding Ground in an Unstable World
  This book was recommended to me by designer, educator, and critic Silvia Sfligiotti in response to last month’s missive, and it totally hits the mark: a scholarly book about movement, loss, learning, and crisis, written in a way that interweaves personal narrative and critical theory with embodied dance and improvisation exercises. I’m still in the process of reading it, but Albright’s book strikes me as a prime example of risk-taking writing and practice.

As always, I’m sending out a healthy dose of hugs and balance to all of you. I look forward to being with you, somewhere, somewhen.

Yours,
Prem

P.S. If you ever need a little more movement, feel free to join me dancing here and here and here and here (or, for those extremely special moments: out-of-sync karaoke here)!

Prem Krishnamurthy

Ebersstrasse 3
10827 Berlin, Germany
www.premkrishnamurthy.com
@wechselmann

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