March 8, 2021 ~ For Dara
By: Dorothy Santos
Tags: Podcasting, Kearny Street Workshop, We Wont Move, Bay Area, San Francisco

The artwork for the Bay Area-based podcast, We Won’t Move: a living archive. A Kearny Street Workshop Podcast

The present must be known in relation to the alternative temporal and spatial maps provided by a perception of past and future affective worlds. It’s an act of calling on the past to animate it, understand that the past has a performative nature, which is to say rather than being static and fixed, the past does things. — José Esteban Muñoz

I know I should have waited until tomorrow but I couldn’t help it. I went to the KSW website and saw the episode there I decided to listen. I am so proud of you, Michelle, and Kazumi. We Won’t Move is a much-needed living archive for the San Francisco Bay Area. I love the description of the podcast being a living archive because it becomes a part of historical and cultural geneology within the oral tradition. One of my mentors and professors Anna Friz reminded us in a seminar the other week that there is so much that can be done with podcasting. It can go beyond formats and structures. I’m looking forward to what the three of you do moving forward. Either way, please consider me a devoted listener.

At the beginning, you brought up “colonial ideas of time” and it got me thinking about how constructs of time affect and inform our practices as artists, curators, writers, thinkers, and creatives. We seem to operate on a concept of time also undergirded by capitalism and imperialism. Or how our time is monitored, surveyed, and made equitable or deemed valuable when attached to labor, productivity, and output. This is probably why so many people view the Arts as leisurely, but it’s everything BUT that (I mean, for some affluent people, Art might mean something else). But not within our communities. Art is intrinsic to who and what we are. This thought leads me to a question you raised, “What are the multiple ruptures that are happening and what is growing from these ruptures? While I understood it as a rhetorical question, I had some thoughts…

This past year alone, but even before, a multitude of ruptures within our global economy, social, cultural, and healthcare systems are birthing new ways of caring for ourselves and each other. I saw a post a few weeks ago about how GoFundMe has become one of the ways people in the U.S. have been receiving aid for healthcare needs and living (survival) expenses. I’ve been meaning to dig into Dean Spade’s book Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) because I feel that is one of many areas of interest for me as someone invested in researching and writing about the systems and logics of care.

But before I end this missive, I wanted to touch upon the non-human collaborator of the After Life show. When Thea brought up the little mouse taking the seeds, my heart melted. I’ve never been the biggest fan of mice (well, more rats than anything else, although I dated someone that had a pet rat in their apartment — that didn’t work out. Ha!). But I loved how Thea and the exhibiting artists didn’t mind this non-human being. There is strange serendipitous collaboration happening and a type of co-existing and survival on the mouse’s part. But when thinking about our livelihoods, the urban environment (not just San Francisco as a place, but unceded territory and land), what lies beneath, above, and all around it is within the bodies and beings (of all entities, not just human). I guess that’s why, when I go out in nature, there is a simultaeanous excitement and fear because nothing is punctuated by a building, cars, stop signs, and traffic lights. But that mouse knew exactly where to go to find what they needed (not bothering or harming anyone, but just trying to survive). Perhaps, I’m bringing this up because I started reading Lenormand cards to supplement my Tarot practice, which then supplements my life because you know me…I like doing 1,253,000 things.

In any case, one of the cards I got over the weekend was the mouse card, and it signifies “dwindling, deficiency, depletion, destruction, defect, flaw, and disease.” Now, I’m certain the mouse wouldn’t find that symbolism very flattering or appealing. But maybe, its presence is meant to remind us of our own humanity. The timing of the show is synchronous with the shifts (or ruptures) of our time. I love how art does that, it shows what is emblematic of a particular moment in time. When people look at civilizations, they almost always go directly to the art that was made during a particular period in history as signals or signs of what people found important or how humans might have lived. We Won’t Move becomes a part of the timeline.

To circle back around, I’m so proud of the fact that you are a part of this beautiful and important work. It has been incredible seeing you grow and develop into the human being you are. You will do great things and I always thought this of you when I first met you and Kimberley. You make me want to be better and do better. Thank you for inspiring me to put in the work. Thank you for teaching me how to be present in the world. And thank you for being a part of my life. I love watching you shine. Congratulations, my dearest, Dara. You, Michelle, and Kazumi are doing phenomenal work. Sending you love.