Occupy y/our worlds: Humunculus

a performance workshop collaboration with Kim Jackson

We offer an experiment in systems of art-exchange that do not emphasize financial capital, but rather celebrate abundance and connection. We believe that art is not a commodity for speculation but rather a fundamental part of the commons, inherited and shared by all.

– Occupy Museums

The Occupy movement has famously resisted giving a specific political platform, which may be interpreted as an invitation for us to give it meaning within our own contexts. While we live and work under the pressure of capitalist relations, how do we make sense of the Occupy movement as individual bodies, in our personal lives, in our communities and as an over-arching political and activist discourse?

Artist/Activists Rebecca Garrett and Kim Jackson held a performative interactive workshop structured around the presentation of short video works and clips which orbit the question of how/why Occupy? How do all of our stories interact with analysis to give texture and meaning to our lives as lived within capitalism? Those who attended the workshop were invited to join in on a knowledge generating collective sharing on how we survive, resist, and how we do or do not Occupy. Claims to occupy or not occupy are made on the historical backdrop of the settler colonial histories of this Land. The work opened up a space for engagement with a contentious history which allowed participants to articulate repressed, complex, conflictual and emotionally loaded thoughts/feelings.

Knowledge that we co-produced was worked into an edible sculpture mostly for our gastronomic pleasure but also to think about the inter-relatedness of how we sustain ourselves and each other.