Transcript

Dear friends,

I’d like to speak with you today about our relationship.

We are in the midst of possibly the largest, most consequential redistribution of power that has ever taken place, and it is difficult—at times very painful. How we treat each other in this great transition matters, and lately we are hurting each other rather than moving forward together. 

How we speak to ourselves and each other may be more consequential than any truth we may ever speak to power.

More than an exercise in overthrowing one power structure for another, ultimate abolition is made possible through synchronizing our differences—it requires simultaneous human interrelationships that are liberated and unique.

Some people call this “double knowing”: an acknowledgement that together we hold many different sources of knowledge—and that they often contradict each other—and so if our work together is going to be productive, our relationships require critical, collaborative, reciprocal interactions around our most contradictory truths.

The ultimate abolition is made possible through a practice in listening to each other—listening in this chorus of resonance and dissonance. Can we hold space for this kind of messy honesty?

Because sometimes we hurt each other, sometimes we strike a chord of anger or despair in each other. But it is how to use this conflict that will decide what happens next.

So, as your co-conspirator, I commit to double knowing with you—and I ask these four things of us:

One: We can’t allow rhetorical frameworks to take on a rigid uniformity. We do not live in spaces shaped by our desires. We are trapped in homogenous logo-land surrounded by logotecture, and these spaces foreclose our futures. I’m asking that we don’t do the same thing to each other. We can’t allow our rhetorical frameworks to pin us in. What we need is complexity over perfectionism, curiosity over conformity. And I promise you that my contributions will be imperfect. I will make proposals with language that at times fails to honour your experience. You will do the same, no matter who you are. Because we are not interchangeable beings, and that's okay. 

This zeitgeist of perfection—of loyalty to strict rhetorical frameworks and intolerance of any infraction—will tear us apart. This thinking will infiltrate our minds and make us afraid to try, afraid to connect, afraid to speak—except for in our most private spaces. We will come to idolize a few as the only people who set the rules and can do no wrong. And the rest of us will be subject to scrutiny, judged by rules of mimicry and conformity, rather than experimentation and free expression. There’s gonna be times when we miss a beat, trip, stutter, and stumble. But let us keep moving.

Two: I’m asking that we take risks with one another. We have to push past the fear that our ideas or impulses will be rejected before we even try. We cannot be afraid of getting caught learning. Because learning requires us to make mistakes and to support each other through those mistakes—in the same ways that we support toddlers when they’re learning to walk.

If we aren’t learning, then we aren’t taking risks and we aren’t being honest.

Three is a plea for continually refreshing our rhetoric. We create meaning through practicing words together. The more we try out new words, different words in multiple ways, the better chance we have of making them mean something to us. As soon as we filter our words through mega-media machines, academic institutions, and popular discourse, our messages get watered down until they have no meaning anymore. Words have a life cycle. We must be willing to let go of our language—the words we wrote for us—when they become distorted. Because they will not serve us. We can say the same thing in a new way and move more quickly towards justice.

Four: Dialogue. Conversation. A live connection with your voice.

When you do something—especially something experimental, risky, or difficult—expect that part of that process will include the give-and-take of dialogue. It must. We rarely understand each other in the first breath, let alone the first DM. Let’s anticipate that we will need to explain ourselves three, four, or five times, in different ways, for people to understand what we're trying to say. And that's okay. We are not here to hurt each other. This is not a war, this is a relationship.

So, if you don't understand what someone else is trying to say, or they're saying it in a way that is difficult for you, start with a conversation rather than a rejection. Ask to understand. Not for the purpose of shaming, dominating, or competing, but because we just don’t always get each other right away.

How we care for each other in conflict is what will make all the difference; otherwise we are reenacting a police state ... giving orders, expecting immediate obedience to rules that we’ve created in isolation or within a small circle of people. This isn't a war. This is a commitment to honesty through vulnerability. This is a relationship. We are in relationship.

We hold in common one very big thing: the “we”—the human and non-human “we.” We need to survive, to live, to breathe, and flourish with dignity. This is the thirst that we can no longer wait patiently to quench. The tide is swelling. We must ride it out together.

Thank you.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that we need each other, especially because we don’t have precisely the same experiences, feelings, or words.”

As the twenty-first and final contributor to Artists-in-Presidents, project initiator Constance Hockaday shares a message calling for care, generosity, and understanding. Hockaday advocates for a qualified sense of unity; she acknowledges the imperfect and messy nature of working together, while suggesting that the very act of building and maintaining relationships is prefatory to social and political change.

Constance Hockaday is a queer Chilean American artist who grew up on the US/Mexico border. She is a director and visual artist who creates social sculptures, usually in public, about political voice and belonging. At age 19 she joined the Floating Neutrinos, a family of wanderers who sailed around the world in handmade vessels. From them, she learned to use the water as a public platform and began creating solo work on the water in 2011: from a floating boat hotel off the shores of New York City to a floating peepshow in the San Francisco Bay. Her latest project Artists-In-Presidents, brought together 50+ artists to address the nation in Fireside Chat style transmissions alongside the 2020 Presidential Campaign. Hockaday holds both an MFA in Socially Engaged Art and a Masters in Conflict Resolution.

ASL Interpretation