In “Rethinking Repair,” Steven J.Jackson(2014) says: “what happens when we take erosion, breakdown, and decay, rather than novelty, growth, and progress, as our starting points in thinking through the use of nature?” (p. 221).
Our curatorial approach departs from the assumption of a world in flux, defined by uncertainty, fragmentation, and impermanence. Rather than see the contemporary moment through a lens of development, progress, and newness, we take as our starting point the condition of precarity, as articulated by Anna Tsing. Tsing (2015) conceives precarity as vulnerability to the unpredictable, the inability to rely on stable structures. It speaks to the open-ended gatherings we find ourselves thrown into, which continuously remake us and others in ways we cannot control. Everything is contingent; the possibility of rupture and rearrangement pervades.
This sense of precarity is not intended as a pessimistic outlook, but rather a means to honestly reckon with the fragility surrounding us. It recognizes that individual agency is limited, and heroic narratives of human mastery ring hollow. Yet there is solidarity to be found in embracing this common precariousness. If we accept the uncertainty of our interdependence, new forms of collective affiliation, resilience, and care become possible. Though existing frameworks may decay and come undone, from the gaps and fissures new collaborative ways of inhabiting the world can emerge. Our curatorial stance seeks, through the lens of precarity, to illuminate avenues for mutual aid and kinship that transcend illusions of stability, coherence, and control. By staying with the trouble of the present, we believe unknown possibilities for communal coping and flourishing will reveal themselves. [Jackson, 2014], [Tsing 2015].
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