Journeys of Resilience and Hope

Policies, funding streams, and protocols change the ground under our feet day by day. But we are here, living in the now, navigating, changing course, rebuilding, persevering, and growing. These works highlight the journeys of individuals and communities overcoming challenges and transforming their lives, embodying perserverance and growth. Even in times of scarcity, there is an abundance of what we truly need.

I Had the Time of My Life, and I Owe it All to You

Industrial capitalism caused many ruptures. One of the most profound was the change to our sense of time. Seasonal time, festival time, cosmological time, spiritual time all became subservient to work-time and the clock of labor and productivity. The economics of capitalist time penetrate our psyches, as people strive for maximal efficiency. Productivity apps like Todoist, TickTick, and Habitica “gamify” our to-do lists, and Fitbit allows us to “close the circle” on our daily activity goals. In this way, capitalist time permeates most of our waking hours, while sleep tracking apps monitor us even at night. These works illustrate such claustrophobic aspects of time, while also exploring avenues for breaking free of these restrictions to access “deep” time.

The Wheel’s Still in Spin

“The times they are a-changin’.” We’ve had to swim, so that we wouldn’t sink. Modernist, functionalist, and capitalist epistemologies have impacted our perceptions and lifestyles. Modernity is “faster than thought,” and we can’t escape how it has changed how we relate to the world. But, “the wheel’s still in spin,” as we work to relearn, reclaim, and reconnect. These works illustrate the impact on our collective consciousness, as technology and productivity have rescripted our ways of being in the world. But they also show pathways for movement outside of modern epistemologies and ontologies. Because, “what if it all works out?”