SOCIAL

Tag: organizing

Myceliating the System and Rebuilding Rot with Olga Tzogas

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA

First off, how are you?

O

Hello! Hello! I’m doing good, busy but really feeling decent these days. Lots going on but the rains are bringing me joy, because they help fruit so many beautiful fungi! It’s been a lovely year for wild mushrooms so far. How’s it going over there?

SA

It’s going well! I agree, the rain is so cleansing. I’m in Brooklyn right now, and there’s something about the weather today that is lending itself to both melancholy and introspection. I’m so excited to talk to you because what you do is very moving to me — teaching people more about mycology — and so I want to know everything. 

Tell me, what was your journey to mycology? 

O

Yes the waters! So cleansing, it feels so much better out there after a rinse I tell ya! Thank you for your kind words! I’m just the messenger of the fungi and it’s been such a treat sharing what I love with people and other folks catching on to the divinity of mushrooms and Fungi. I always loved eating mushrooms, in foods, and growing up, my mother, every New Years Day would make this really simple dish with white button mushrooms, parsley, wine and lots of garlic…mind blowing. As I started to steer my studies in community college away from art to more biology, I had some amazing teachers that were walking encyclopedias, they could see anything outside that was wild and tell you its name and everything about it. It was inspiring and mostly because when we started learning about mushrooms and fungi, we found hundreds of varieties and many of them incredible edibles. I’m super into food, grew up in a Greek diner and that’s the way to my heart. So they grabbed my attention and really, I just rabbit-holed myself into their wonder. It’s vast, as we know, mushrooms are beyond food, but medicinal, therapeutic, ecological healers and ceremonial. They are almost infinite in their abilities and their range of existence in so many fields of study and life. It was indeed the love others had for fungi that was contagious and I caught on as well.

SA

This is so concise, I love how you can track your love and interest in mushrooms right from these formative moments like New Years Day meals… Food is a gateway for me as well. I started gaining more interest in mycology/fungi/ the mycelium network through the work of Paul Stamets and Fantastic Funghi recently really blew my mind… just how intelligent this species is. You say you’re a messenger (and I believe it) so was there a moment that you can remember where you felt you had to teach people about this majestic wondrous plant/medicine? 

And if so… why? I’m really curious how that journey started for you. Did it feel like a divine calling? 

O

It’s funny because I think it just happened naturally. It’s almost like, every person who does know about Fungi is a teacher because we end up having to explain to folks what they’re looking at all the time hahaha. I would be at markets selling some gathered goods, when I first began my ‘business’ with fungi and half the time it was educating folks, because they would be like, “hey! I saw something like that the other day! What is that?” And you end up giving them a little lesson along the way. Really, though, it was the need for the info in the community around here, the desire to bring other teachers, to host, to learn from too. I definitely put lots of my initial knowledge to the credit of incredible fungal mentors like Ja Schindler of Fungi for the People, who really taught me how to grow mushrooms and encouraged me to share the knowledge as much as possible.  

SA

I feel like most people I meet who work with Fungi are teachers, you’re right. I’m also in awe of anyone who dedicates their time, efforts and energy into educating people about this Earth. You’re also right about community — I find there’s something really utopic about Fungi because they have this immense regenerative quality that is so profound — and in conversations even about our ecological future in the face of the current climate catastrophe I believe that Fungi does and will play such a role in how we reimagine the world ahead of us. 

Does that resonate with you? Do you agree? 

O

I want to say yes, but I’m also a bit bitter of green washed models of what our future could be like. I think we know what it could look like, because the models are present all over the world in various pockets of areas left alone from so-called ‘progress.’ Like, that recent Elon Musk tweet he’s offering tons of money to combat the climate crisis and it’s like, JUST PLANT TREES! LOL It’s the Industry fucking shit up, and they just want their little green washed eco campaign to make their other awful practices seem less terrible? Idk im pretty ‘anti civilization’ in the sense that so much is caused by immense industrial frameworks for everything we do and consume, I think it’d be way better if it didn’t exist at all LOL but obvs that’s not reality and we live in the so called late stages of capitalism, do I think mushrooms are going to make greedy jerks not mess the planet up? I don’t think so. I think there’s this boom for profit that just won’t let up. Do I want there to be a better ecological future? Sure do! But until we really see that, the pipelines are still being built, by the same companies selling green energy, giving us the ‘alternatives’ when really Mama Earth provides all. We’re so detached. It’s hard and it’s also just the systems in place, it’s hard to escape the rat race as they say. There’s tons of privilege that exists with this notion of returning to the land, growing food, growing mushrooms, etc because that’s not a reality that everyone can do, and sometimes the folks that were living on the land good, get displaced by giant energy projects, pipelines, developments, hotels etc. I’ll also say that, Paul’s youtube video about ‘mushrooms saving the Earth’ is deflective, it puts huge pressure and hope that one organism is going to save us, a ‘cure all’ if you will and it’s not that simple. I mean it almost is, but most don’t want to have that convo; abolition of the military, prisons and what was it? 70 companies responsible for the rest of the ecological crisis? It puts this personal responsibility on the US when it’s really on THEM.   

SA

Yes, I absolutely feel you. Late stage capitalism is really an interesting beast because it really wants to take the planet down and doesn’t care if it extracts the entire Earth for resources, it’s a devastating reality we live in right now but I guess it’s funny I’ve been thinking about the future a lot as I’m writing my fourth book on the wellness industrial complex (called Who Is Wellness For?) so I’m examining the question of futurity a lot. I absolutely believe we can only have a future on this planet by collapsing predatory Capitalism (though I don’t believe an ~ ethical alternative ~ which I’m sure they’ll try to sell us will work when our planet is literally melting) and that’s really the only way. Because… what happens when power lines go down, or labor workers can’t work — Capitalism relies on cheap labor and the “compliance” of the Earth… and I actually feel her saying NO. Like a big booming NO. And I think she’s going to keep saying NO! NO! NO! Until we are forced to stop and reconsider. So yes… absolutely feel you on the reality we are living, but I think that future relies so much on the hope that we can collapse and reimagine… without greenwashing but by actually collapsing and reinstating new paradigms. I feel like that’s what your work is doing on a community level… by educating people you’re giving them an entry point to their own liberation from Capitalism in a way!!!

So what do you think are steps we can take for anyone who reads this to engage with Fungi in a holistic way? I feel like learning how to be with these medicines is definitely a step toward redefining the right relationship to the Earth. 

O

Study them and all their relatives. Study the trees, smell the flowers, feel plants. Listen to the birds and go outside and see the Earth resisting the concrete and the flowers that make their way to every corner of the city and beyond. We need to listen, and you’re right, Earth is saying, NO NO NO! And we need to hear that and protect Earth at all costs. We need to connect to teachers and folks who are sharing. Obviously that could get tricky cuz the internet is filled with a wide range of info and content. I luckily did start learning about Fungi, kind of before there was much internet content out there and I began learning from folks in local mushroom clubs. It really is a great way to connect and learn. They know their stuff. It is definitely a more colonized approach to Mycology; most mushrooms are picked, identified, placed in herbariums and stored. But it’s a stepping stone to get comfy and maybe find your fungi crew to connect with. It’s a matter of time, we find each other. Sadly, clubs are very apolitical. They won’t talk about deforestation or climate crisis because this older boomer model, ‘leave politics’ out of it’ let me have my club time, when the habitats they like gathering from are under serious attack and gone. Thankfully now though, with the help of the internet, we have found more rad, inclusive spaces to adore fungi and study. I’m grateful to many teachers like the folks over at the POC Fungi Community, Mama Maiz and countless BIPOC Earth stewards leading the way.  Showing me and my community how to navigate with more care and connection. It’s been a journey for me, if we spoke 15 years ago, I would of told you I wanted to be the next Paul Stamets, seriously, now, with the grace and guidance of incredible people everywhere, my growth within the fungal centric world, I tend to be steered away from his model and more of a smaller, diverse, decentralized and interconnected one. I want discussions around water and land rights to be part of the conversation when we talk about fungi, when we talk about mushrooms at the store or in the packets. Where did they come from? There’s tons of mushroom companies out there right now and I’m def in favor of supporting smaller growers and folks making noise for change. Like, I don’t know about you, but I want to give money to people doing rad work, advocating for police abolition, the end to corporate welfare and a real eco centric paradigm.

SA

I think that’s why your work shows the radicality of fungi—because what is it if not a confrontation of death? I’ve been thinking about death awareness a lot as a way to navigate thwarting Capitalism. Everything you’re speaking to as well — abolition of cops, of prisons, of Capitalism, of these industrial complexes that need to collapse — is all a part of the future of Fungi to me, because with that very praxis of mycology there seems to be an intelligent system that though might not have all the answers how they respond and communicate with each other, at the very least, to me, is a radical way of showing how to learn from them. 

Thank you for this conversation. It’s been so healing. 

One last question, I want to know through all of this radical work that’s being done and needs to be done, how do you center and take care of yourself? This journey towards ~ the collective anti-Capitalist future ~ is a long one. How do you harness yourself for it? Do you use daily tinctures? Are there particular blends or fungi you would recommend for caring for yourself and your community through fungi? 

Are there any smaller growers you would also recommend? Folks that you would recommend others looking into? 

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

O

Yes, we definitely gotta decompose, myceliate the system and rebuild from that rot! Rot can be good and I hope we can get more comfy having conversations like this. Here, in the West there is this innate fungiphobic mindset that has stemmed from our fear of death and the unknown and I appreciate you bringing that up. Fungi are mystics and carriers of so much knowledge, bridging all the topics, all the waters, all the conversations and I think we gotta honor that. The medicine that I try to connect with is honoring my one commitment to take a walk in the woods at least once a week. It’s something I’ve been really trying to make sure I do for at least an hour a week. I know that might seem bizarre because I work with mushrooms, but sometimes, the farming and the business side steals the original joy, which was walking around, seeing what was growing, which is just such a delight. It’s new every time. It’s very stimulating and sometimes ya just end up picking berries or watching woodpeckers, heck or getting bit by a tick too, it’s not always a dreamy landscape.  When I do get the need to take medicine, I really like Turkey Tail mushrooms, they are incredible. I could talk about them for an hour on their own. I’m also really excited about growing cordyceps, and playing with different extractions with them. I love all mushrooms, they’re hard to pick. I tend to work with mostly polypore fungi, reishi, maitake, turkey tail and violet toothed polypore. I love chaga but I dont offer it anymore because I’m getting so shaken up by the massive extractive industry that’s just getting bigger and bigger.  The Chaga ‘fruit’ is only found in the wild and it makes me really scared to think how much of it exists on shelves of stores right now. When I am stressing about climate collapse, I tend to take some roses, elder flowers, tulsi, various herbal essences and lots of cannabis. Thank gawd for cannabis. Also lots of water, tons, and with lots of lemon. Hot water with lemon is my go to.  

As far as growers and makers, it’s almost impossible to not find a local mushroom farm at this point. There’s been a boom of mushroom farms and businesses. I def encourage folks to visit their local farm markets and see who is growing what. It’s a great way to get really fresh produce and foods. I love so many people doing so much amazing work, growing and sharing with their communities. Herban Cura does a phenomenal job offering classes and they also have a great line of extracts called BRUJAS that has both botanical and fungi extracts. William Padilla Brown, has an assortment of high concentrated extract of medicinals, very techy, and inspiring. Out West in Oregon, ZoomOut Mycology offers kits and medicinal teas and extracts.  Our fam down in Southern California, as mentioned POC FUNGI Community provides classes, medicine and resources to BIPOC communities to get into fungi.  For any mushroom cultivation classes I really do suggest the school at Fungi for the People, Ja and Val are incredible teachers and you will not regret it. It’s very loaded with info and most folks out there aren’t offering a course for 7 days which includes meals and camping. TBH I took Paul Stamets classes 12+ years ago and looking back, it was not worth it. It’s a bit of a novelty class, there were no real hands-on demos, no interactive way to learn. Very formal, and standardized.  Basically save the bucks and learn from smaller growers, his books tend to leave folks thinking they gotta drop $20k to grow a mushroom, that’s not the case.  They literally can grow on most water streams.  One of my current favorite cultivation books out there right now, is DIY Mushroom Cultivation By Willoughby Arevalo, who is soo talented and hilarious.

Thanks so much for this opportunity. Appreciate you

Resensitizing Grief with Sydney Gore

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
Sydney, how are you holding up?

S
Hi Prinita! These past few weeks activated a new level of exhaustion that I had never experienced before. I’m an empath so I get drained really easily and with this particular situation I can’t really take a break. This is simply my experience as a Black woman and I have to live through it in real time during a global pandemic. I’m doing all that I can to nurture myself and those conscious efforts seem to be paying off. This week I’ve been feeling like the energy in the atmosphere is pushing us toward a fresh start and that invigorates me.

SA
Describe your energy today in three words.

S
I love this question. I had an energy healing session the other day and my practitioner basically told me that my root chakra is out of sync so I’ve been paying closer attention to that area. But back to your inquiry… The three words that describe my energy at this precise moment are: abundant, tender, and rooted.

SA
What does being ‘well’ in the revolution mean for you?

S
THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THIS UP. To me, being “well” in the midst of a revolution means prioritizing emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual health. It’s about turning inward and acknowledging how you’re responding to what you’re feeling. We have to address our internal wounds and the deep trauma that lies buried there. You won’t be fully equipped to do the work that is necessary to help others if you haven’t made the time to take care of yourself. Racism is literally a public health crisis… Waris Ahluwalia once showed me how “healthy self” literally spells out HEAL THY SELF and it blew my mind. The gut-brain axis is so powerful, I hope more people educate themselves about this vital relationship–I trust my gut more than anything or anyone else. recently outlined how advocacy, empathy, anti-racism work, speaking up, and holding space for others are all pillars of wellness and I couldn’t agree more. Also, let’s decolonize the wellness industry while we’re at it!

SA
Racial grief is inevitable in a racist world. The Combahee River Collective Black Feminist Statement reports that, ‘an early group member once said, “We are all damaged people merely by virtue of being Black women.” We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level’ White supremacy perpetuates fragmentation, disconnection and disintegration experienced by all racialized people, particularly by women of color, especially by Black women. Grief can be a catalyst for collaboration, connection and bridge building. How do you navigate your need to mobilize, your need to grieve and your need to heal?

S
I have a habit of channeling my grief into productivity. Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism to distract myself from tapping into pain that I’m not ready to feel, but I always find myself keeping busy. It’s this constant state of “go, go, go” until I drive myself to a breaking point of exhaustion and the only way to avoid completely crashing is giving myself permission to rest. 

Following the murder of George Floyd, a switch went off inside me and for the first time in my life I felt invigorated to act—I refused to be silent about my experiences and with each passing day my voice has grown louder because the messages are no longer being ignored. I felt like it was my duty to raise awareness about the systemic racism that continues to poison the world so I threw myself into sharing resources to educate my network. 

By the end of the first week of protests, I was running on E and took the cues from my body signaling for restoration. I extended deadlines so I could have enough space away from work to process and reflect in real time without being overwhelmed. I’m still healing, but the steps that I take to nourish myself keep me grounded.

SA
Kwame Ture writing about the uprising’s response to the Vietnam war states: (They were) emotionally scarred, spiritually drained from the constant tension, the moments of anger, grief, or fear in a pervading atmosphere of hostility and impending violence. Where some of us channel our grief into rage and collective action, it is still necessary to sit with the mourning, to fully feel it and fully embrace it in order to move with empathy and affect. This concept of embracing grief becomes exhaustive when violence against the Black community is constant, it is daily. To detach from mourning is insensitive, but is it necessary for self preservation? 

S
As a diagnosed empath, I find it very difficult to detach from my emotions. I wouldn’t say that I’m desensitized to hostility, but when certain acts of violence become repetitive you sort of get used to hearing about them no matter how inhumane it is. I’m sure this is even more common for the generations that came before me and have witnessed the same injustices occur throughout the course of their lives. I don’t know how my grandmother is able to digest this material and out of respect for her I never ask because the last thing that I want to do is inflict emotional harm from a triggering topic. I have to sit with my grief in order to deal with it which usually means taking time to be in solitude with my thoughts and purge all the emotions that are bubbling deep inside my gut.

SA
Shock factor has been key in allowing folks on the other side to understand the plight of Black communities. Social media has aided this shock, where folks have been exposed to footage of death in real time. Lately, the amplification of Black death online has combined with the daily updates of lives lost to COVID19. The oppressors tactics of loss, fragmentation and disconnection renders the normalization of violence against Black and minority communities in America a spectacle. Do you think destroying the spectacle of violence is possible in an imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy? 

S
A few weeks ago I had a conversation with my mother where I asked her point blank if there was a moment during my childhood similar to what is currently happening because I couldn’t remember anything significant before 9/11. I didn’t have a political “awakening” until I went to college in 2011 and prior to that I wasn’t paying close attention to what was really going on. She told me that I was correct in my recollection, but pointed out this has become so intense in recent years because of our immediate access to information through technology and the Internet. The exposure that we have to these events on social media allows us to be informed immediately whereas when my mom was my age it would take longer for a report to surface about a non-local tragedy. Obviously, I have no desire to watch this type of footage whenever it surfaces online, but at least I have the choice to scroll past it. The fact that this is what it takes to convince people that violence against Black and marginalized communities is wrong is a bigger issue though. It’s exposure at the expense of our well-being.

SA
Over the past few days, we’ve seen spurts of online aggression towards Black women especially, by men who are not reluctant to give up their standards of toxic masculinity, men who are still attached to their ego and thus, essentially upholding the patriarchy. In her conversation with Boots Riley, Noname said it is difficult to fight the revolution when men who look like Boots are unwilling to acknowledge that they have a role in committing violence against femme identifying Black folks. As a brown woman, I empathize greatly. It’s hard to fight alongside male comrades when you know they are only fighting for themselves. Toxic masculinity renders machismo identity unable to present insecurity and vulnerability. (Most cis/hetero identifying) men often find it difficult to grieve and often this moves them into indifference. How do you think about this as something that needs to be dismantled in order to conquer the larger goal of destroying white supremacy?

S
I find it extremely frustrating and counterproductive that some Black men continue to be so unwilling to hold up their end of the bargain when it comes to protecting the lives of ALL Black womxn. It’s a glaring blind spot that hinders the growth of our community. There’s no progress without the involvement of Black womxn, PERIOD. We can join hands and shout about the evils of the white man at the top of our lungs, but this doesn’t absolve Black and brown men from their part in perpetuating toxic masculinity and committing heinous acts of violence. is a cancer and we need to cure everyone that is spreading it.

Noname was right when she declared that we are the new vanguard in the closing verse of ” Weak minds are dangerous because they distract us from executing our mission. J. Cole and men that think like him are getting us nowhere with their half-baked dialogue. In Salvation: Black People and Love, bell hooks writes “It has not been easy for black women to maintain faith in love in a society that has systematically devalued our bodies and our beings.” Oluwatoyin Salau should still be here today–her tragic death could have been prevented. Instead, she’s another name on the long list of Black womxn that were failed. In conclusion, LISTEN TO BLACK WOMXN. 

SA
Reclaiming grief is necessary in recognizing it as a force to challenge oppressive structures. How might we begin to think about grief as a resource as opposed to grief as something that needs to be fixed?

S
My friend , a certified death doula, describes grief as “the ultimate expression of gratitude for our losses.” I’m someone who struggles with uncertainty which stems from an underlying fear of the unknown, but have had no choice but to overcome my discomfort with death. I feel like this has something to do with being an only child and coming to terms with the fact that you might be completely alone someday. There is nothing to gain when you refuse to accept death as a fundamental part of life, but not everyone will experience death with dignity. By now, I hope history has taught us that oppressed people deserve to be protected while they are still alive. 

When my grandfather died at the end of 2018, I thought a lot about how he spent almost a decade preparing our family for that moment yet I still wasn’t ready for it when it came—I didn’t get to properly say goodbye the way I would have wanted to because my mind didn’t even consider that there would be no next time after that time. I agonized over his passing for six months because I felt that I hadn’t done nearly enough to show him how much I appreciated him when he was still alive. There are so many resources to prepare you for the next big steps in life, but the guide for dealing with the aftermath of death is a mess. 

Now as a way to move forward, I try to focus on finding different ways to honor his memory, striving to make him proud of the person I am becoming. My Pop-Pop once made this observation about me during our weekly phone calls: “You see the world for what it is—good, bad, or in-between—you see the world for what it is and you figure out how to navigate accordingly. That’s why I know I don’t have to be worried about you.” (Let the record show that tears were shed while speaking about this.)

The Importance of Understanding Medicine and Healing for the Revolution with Marisa Hall

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
Hi Marisa, how are you this morning?

M
Hi, my love! I’m doing well 🙂 A little sleepy, but at my core feeling inspired. How are you? Am I allowed to ask you questions?

SA
I’m good… or maybe that’s my default at this point. You totally are allowed to ask me questions, I want this to be a conversation.  

M
Amazing, I just wanna hear how you are! And I think we all have our default answer. Like, the truth is probably 90% of the time my truth is a foundational exhaustion. Beyond that, there’s life to be lived, so I find fuel somewhere. Like here! I woke up so sleepy but was like I gotta get it together for this interview. 

SA
Well I accept you as you are, always. Talk to me about this foundational exhaustion. 

M
Yeah, I actually was just talking to Marlee about this yesterday. Like, the reality of what we fight for. I’ve been considering this question a lot. What are we fighting for? And what we’re seeing in this catalyst in the movement is really just advocating for the ordinary. For it to not be exhausting for us (Black people) to do regular ass things (to be in love, to cook, to sit, to open our emails, open books, to take baths, write poetry and letters and get the flu) without the additional weight of fearing for our lives. It’s about the right to exist in the mundane and extraordinary. 

So when I think and talk about foundational exhaustion, I’m talking about waking up and feeling that weight. And I love the ordinary, I love being queer and black because we make life sparkle by way of achieving the ordinary. To live in this body is to exist in transcendence and that is a beautiful thing, in the end. I don’t know if that answers your question. What else would you like to know?

SA
I love this explanation because it’s so acute, it’s something that’s important I think, as a non-Black person, to recognize that weight, to understand this reality of Blackness for Black people, not just an imagined projection. Holistically, it’s an important part of acknowledging white inferiority, to know the history of oppression, and the current weight of it. What I love about you, and the work you do, is that you also are finding ways to shift this energy, to really look beyond it… to find joy, to find healing, to find reprieve. I want to start at the beginning. Tell me about why you gravitated towards making medicine? What compelled you?

M
Mmm this is a question I’ve mulled over at so many points over the last year or so, and I think there are so many multi-dimensional factors that have played a part in my journey into making herbal medicine.

The first and probably most important influence has to do with my ancestry and where I grew up. Some of my most vivid memories from my childhood are in my grandmother’s garden, in the Bay Area, California. My maternal grandmother’s family is Louisiana Creole, and she grew up in rural Louisiana with the norm being growing your own food and leaning heavily on community knowledge and resources to heal. When she moved to San Francisco after she and my grandfather got married, there was a lot of shame in that way of thinking, I think. To live and heal off of what you grew was a delicate balance between leisure (what you wanted to do) and class implications (what you could or couldn’t afford to do). So she was kind of discouraged from leaning on plants for medicine as not to embarrass the family, but did it anyway. 

When I was little, I spent so much time in her garden, mostly when I was home sick from school. I grew up with my mom, and my grandmother’s house was the default when she was working, and I got sick a lot as a kid. So, my grandmother would be doing her thing and I would lay in the grass and eat strawberries while she hung laundry on her clothes line, or sit under her fig tree and eat the fruit, or sit by the fence and eat the berries. The sun and the fruit were so healing for me and we were always outside. I think as an adult, my inclination was, for so long, to lay in bed when I wasn’t feeling well, and it took this re-ignited interest in nature that reminded me that being outside with plants is actually so integral to being well for me.

Plant medicine offers this bridge from the external (the dirt, the wind, the matter), to the internal (the vessel, the body) and I was reminded of this over and over after my grandmother passed away, because she would show up in nature all the time, often right when I needed her. And also when my family has needed her. There was a moment last summer when I went home and had a conversation with my mother and aunt about dandelion (which I was diving deep into) and they started reminiscing about my grandmother making them dandelion tea to soothe their morning sickness when they were pregnant. It’s such a beautiful lineage to uncover.

When I was in college there was a point when I was super anxious and depressed and was on medication for about a month, and it did not work for me. This is not at all to say that medication isn’t essential for some people, but I realized in that moment that I wanted to find other ways of managing without numbing myself out – I wanted to feel everything, just not be overwhelmed by the sensation of feeling everything, you know? Being amongst plants has always felt like something that is so sensory and joyous, but I also feel held. So, I guess there isn’t so much an origin story to my inclination to work with plants so much as there has been a constant presence and slow gravitation toward this way of working with them and being able to share it with people – which has been the coolest, most magical thing I’ve ever experienced and continues to blow my mind.

SA
The idea of you eating strawberries on the grass, or figs under the tree, is so beautiful to me. What a joyous idea. I think for me, though my knowledge of plants is not as expansive as yours, there’s a similar gravitational pull… and maybe a lineage (as you touched on with your grandma, too) that there is this almost inexplicable sensation of coming together with plants. I think that’s why I personally ingest a lot of plant medicine… I access myself through them. Another world, but another more honest self.

I’m also just suddenly remembering the time I put a picture on instagram of my backyard and you pointed out the dandelion, and it kind of made me emotional… because there’s so much beauty we don’t see that’s around us, and communing with plants is almost an instantaneous way of accessing that connectivity. 

Tell me a memory that brings you joy of learning more about plants.

M
Yes! I think it is so ancestral, and that we all have the ability to listen to plants more closely and notice beauty that is offered with no pretense more often. I wonder all of the time what we’ve done to deserve such beauty and an abundant resource and then have to remind myself that something made in and of nature would never ask that question. They just exist and offer. I’m just over here tryna be more like a plant.

I trained with Amanda David (founder of Bramble Collective in Ithaca) and owe so much of my framing of all of this to her guidance. One of the core principles that she focused on is the idea of ‘barriers to cure.’ 

So, in thinking about something like anxiety, one might refocus the lens to consider what the aspirational feeling or emotion or way of being might be, and what is getting in the way. So I realize that I want to feel calm, but instead I feel jittery or agitated or restless — the question that I’d ask myself, is what is between me and that peace or relief? The medicine that I choose would align with the thing that’s in the way. Getting really close with what can be scary brings me joy. A plant like Motherwort wraps its arms around fear.

I remember harvesting motherwort for the first time (which, if you search for a picture of it is this gorgeous, stalky green plant with jaunty leaves and serious thorny buds all up the stalk), and having a conversation with the plant and needing to go so slowly as I cut one stem at a time. It was a moment of collaboration and permission between the two of us, and that intimacy in process has been such a powerful and motivated constant reason to rejoice as I’ve done this work.

SA
So “barriers to cure” is essentially a concept of understanding your bodily response and then learning how to holistically provide for yourself? 

M
Yeah, essentially. It’s searching for the root of something instead of focusing on a symptom. The western medical system is all about treating symptoms. Numbing pain instead of trying to figure out what is causing pain and offering slow, tender care to that place while also finding ways to offer relief. And I think that folk medicine and western medicine can exist and work in tandem, for sure, but holisticism is so central to how I think about care and addressing dis-ease. Our bodies are so intelligent, we just need to pay attention and trust that we’re the experts in our own experience.

SA
Ugh, I love you. Yes, and I imagine this is one of the reasons that during the revolution (and before) you’ve been providing medicine for Black folks to heal and take care of themselves. What do you want people to think about when it comes to holistic medicine? Especially for someone who has maybe been failed by the Western medical system, but doesn’t know where else to look…

M
I want to encourage people to look inward. One thing that being in relative isolation can do is push the individual to pay attention to what is going on for them, which again, can be incredibly difficult and uncomfortable. So you take something like getting home from a protest in the middle of a pandemic where people are met with a lot of anxiety about their health, anger about systemic fuckery (thinking of a different word here), and physical and mental and emotional exhaustion. What tools might be helpful to temper a moment like that? 

I want people to be open to advocating for themselves, for saying no to things that don’t feel quite right, and knowing what questions to ask. It’s all about empowerment, and chipping away at this barrier that is, in a lot of ways, a learned mistrust of self. When we realize that we have everything we need in community, I truly think we’ll be able to be unrelenting in our pursuit of joy. 

The decision to offer medicine to black people at no cost was meant to remove another barrier so that the financial access piece was removed. Everyone should be able to integrate tools that could open a door to a fuller experience of their lives.

SA
I have been thinking so much about the learned mistrust of self, and how that engineers a constant state of anxiety because you never know what to trust (and especially not yourself) which therein creates a cycle of self-sabotage. One of the most helpful spiritual lessons I’ve ever learned is “trust your knowing.” During the revolution we’re learning how to equip ourselves, what are 2-5 herbs you think everyone should have, and why? Whether for protection, healing or self preservation.

M
Ooh, I love this question! I really love the idea of trusting your own knowing, because there is an implicit knowledge of knowing and an opportunity to ask yourself, what do I know? and how can I reach a greater state of knowing?

I’m gonna embed an image of an image of a little worksheet/zine that I made for a workshop a while back, but some of my favorites are:

Tulsi – this is an adaptogenic herb that is delicious and abundant and you can feel it. What integrating tulsi (in tea, tincture, etc) can do is help your nervous system recover from intense sustained stress, and help your body adjust to stressors so that all of your energy isn’t expended in the ‘fight or flight’ wheel that is so easy to get stuck in. When considering the energetic components of a plant, tulsi is one that grows so abundantly and toward the sun, so it’s excellent for fostering a sense of levity and expansiveness. It’s important to keep that in mind while we’re all trying our best not to burn out.

Rose – rose is honestly just the best. I put it in almost all of my blends, and it just feels like a hug. It’s an anti-inflammatory, and is a mild sedative. So if you get hot/flushed when you’re stressed and just need something to soothe you and help slow you down, rose is gentle and effective. Also just delicious.

Bee Balm – bee balm (monarda) has a beautiful flower that is like candy for hummingbirds. It has these trumpet-shaped flowers with the sweetest nectar at the base, and the leaves act as really powerful immune support (better than echinacea). My physiological focus in the revolution has been care for the nervous system and care for the immune system. Sleep plays a big part in my practice, but monarda is something I reach for when I’m feeling like I need something to bolster my system’s defenses.

Nettle – nettle is a superfood, so if you’re looking for something that is nutrient rich (and a neutral base for teas) nettle is a wonderful option. It’s a diuretic, so supports the urinary system which is also really important to take care of in moments of high stress as it purifies the liver, kidneys, and urinary tract. If you’re drinking or eating foods that feel hard for your body to process, nettle is good to integrate for balance. I usually try to have it early in the day for energy.

SA
Marisa, thank you. This is so powerful. Are there any last things you want to add?

M
Thank you! Lemme think…

Ok, two things:

One is a quote that has stuck with me in reference to considering one’s own healing which is in line with the Wise Woman Tradition by Susan Weed (has it’s issues, but there are some principles that can be reframed):

‘The focus is on the person, not the problem, nourishing not curing, self-healing not healing another. A give-away dance of exploration and experience, with no answer to the question “why?” No blame, no shame, no guilt, no reason, no answer ever to “why?”’

The second is this photo of my grandmother harvesting dandelion in San Francisco, in a white dress that she made, which I just adore. Nothing can keep us away from the earth, and that is powerful. To know that as long as you have access to the earth, you have access to healing.

SA
Have you read “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer?

M
I love that book so, so much! That was really the window that swung open for me (maybe 5 years ago when I first read it) in realizing that working with plants was something that I had to do.

SA
You remind me of Robin. The way you write about plants, really evokes a true love and dedication to them. It’s spectacular to witness, thank you. 

M
Thank you so much for offering this space! I love talking to you, always. Plants will always love you back and guide the way. I just want people to trust you can always turn toward the sun or go touch a tree when humans are bumming you out. 

is a writer, yoga teacher and herbalist from Berkeley, California. Her interest in healing stems from  a consideration of holisticism, to create a deeper relationship with self, and she offers these modalities (whether through making medicine, or teaching yoga) to nurture self-awareness, love and joy for one’s self and community. 

On Weed & Its Articulation

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

Mennlay Golokeh Aggrey is an incredibly inspiring person to me. She is the author of “The Art of Weed Butter,” an instructional resource, as well as an educator on the ethics of weed. There is something holistic about Mennlay’s approach, and articulation, that is encouraging. It makes me understand the importance of thorough discourse, even about what we consume, and how we consume it. She is also the co-founder and creative director of Xula CBD, the co-host of Broccoli Talk podcast, and the founder of a new benefit pop-up dinner, Cenas sin fronteras. Today we’re talking about her journey through weed, African botanics, her future-dreams, as well as Xula—and what it means to create ethical products.  

SA
My darling Mennlay, how are you?

M
Well, if I’m honest. I’m not doing super well today. But I think this topic of conversation might be a beautiful way to process some of those feelings. Since we’re still in Cancer season after all.  

SA
As a double Cancer (moon and rising) you know I’m all about this. I have a lot of things I want to ask you because I’ve found over the years you’ve just articulated so many of the things that I’ve often thought about weed, and the world of weed… So I’ll start by asking, can you tell me when you first started smoking? Should we start there? I feel like there’s so much stigma about weed and what it represents, and there aren’t enough (especially femme perspectives) of a relationship with the plant and what it offers. 

M
This is a beautiful place to start! When cannabis, weed, ganja, mota first came into my life, I was 14-years-old, a freshman in high school. At that time I was neither cool, nor an outcast. Just sort of floating somewhere in between. I was away at a boarding school for low income kids who might have “white potential” as far as success in school or whatever so I was away from home in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Dairy town USA. Life then was confusing and I suffered from what I know now as depression. Mostly because I was displaced from my family in a white town/space. So anyway one day I was at the roller skating rink with some friends from school. These type of activities were allowed on the weekends. So we were there and some of my friends had invited some dudes to come hang with them. As they were all sort of flirting and kicking it, I was passed a blunt. So I took the blunt and smoked what was my first hit of weed. It was less out of the desire to be cool, but more to avoid having to make-out with or talk to anyone—more so out of curiosity—to finally partake in this thing that I didn’t know much about.

This was that typical first time, this out of world experience where time stretched. My memory doesn’t allow for much more than that. But I know time slowed down and I found myself in a space where I didn’t feel depressed or anxious or awkward. I finally felt like myself (a space cadet LOL). At that point, I think I knew that this experience was for me. This feeling. It helped me connect with just being—a teen—a weirdo —whatever. It suspended time and allowed for me to be whoever and whatever I was.

I kept this a secret from my mother, other adults, and most other friends. My cannabis life was undercover from my first time in 1998 until 2005 when I first started cultivating weed in Humboldt, fresh out of college. For a long time, disclosure was dangerous and unacceptable. There just wasn’t space for me to talk about my experience. But I wrote a lot about it in my journal.

SA
I’m trying to have transparency of my own journey with weed, because I’ve seen marijuana—Santa Maria—to be such an important facet of my own healing journey. It’s kind of wild to me that you smoked your first blunt by accident, in order to not make out with anybody. In that there’s this inherent innocence that I love, it’s so cool that we get to rewrite rhetoric that doesn’t always make space for us, and our relationship to this magical plant. Was this your beginning of smoking weed more regularly? Do you smoke weed regularly? I’d love to know your journey and where you are with marijuana. 

M
That’s a really good question and something I often space out on. No, I didn’t smoke regularly because I didn’t know where or how to buy it. And honestly, I didn’t really yearn (lean on it) for it too much until college. In high school it was a once and a while ritual, whenever the so called bad kids would show up to the skating rink with herb, or if we snuck out. Which is another long ass story.

So, maybe I would consume herb every three to six months. In those times between, it was as if I was still able to hang onto that feeling of open time and space. An open heart and lightness that allowed me to enjoy my youth more than I had been. I think as the eldest child to a single immigrant mother of four, I often was the mother. Or internalized a lot of her woes. And so with weed, even in those few moments I could let go. And that extended beyond the moments of being stoned. 

SA
I wanted to ask about your upbringing. Was your mother strict? Or religious? Sometimes I have a hard time remembering exactly what happened in my relationship to smoking more regularly, but it has been really rewarding to go back to this teen self and try to understand her. Anyway—it’s also interesting to know you were the eldest, because even in your recollection it feels as if you were really mature about your decision to smoke weed (at a young age) and something I feel like is very “eldest child.” What began the transition to actually deciding to smoke? 

M
LOVE THIS QUESTION. You’re right, there is something rewarding about going back to teen smoking baby. To be able to conceptualize or maybe even compartmentalize what and why and how is nourishing. My mother was sort of the black sheep in her family. She had me at a young age and didn’t go back to West Africa with my father when he wanted to send us back. I think she was an outcast in her African community and didn’t take to religion in the same way as other parents might have. I did have a teen bible that I read a lot. 

When I started consuming herb it forced me to digest and question who this white Jesus was and why my family would worship a god that was brought over by missionaries. My mother and I did fight about this a lot and I think once I was regularly smoking in college I challenged her a great deal about my relationship to god. That’s when I became more spiritual and into the idea of something higher than me. 

The transition was fluid. I started school and had more access to herb and smoked a lot more of it. But my family still never knew. I had to set the example for my little sisters who I think still saw me as a next to mother type influence. Someone who made the grades and did the right thing, but someone who was obviously getting weird when it came to my beliefs about the environment and other self-righteous first year of college bullshit.

SA
White Jesus… Damn, the truth. Well moving from this idea of “the colonizer’s religion” (I definitely struggle with that myself, with Islam as well… that colonized a lot of indigneous cultures as well as profiited off the transatlantic slave-trade) but we started Studio Ānanda as a place to have these conversations. 

I feel like with the rebranding of “CBD” there’s this inherent whitewashing that happens, and I wonder how that’s impacted your work—how that question of whiteness—has impacted the way you navigate these spaces?

M
CBD aka diet weed has been (for me) a reluctantly deeper exploration of white wellness for. From its unexpected legalization, to its ability to make other psychoactive cannabinoids aka TCH look “bad.” I was initially really hesitant to start a CBD company, but my business partner (who is Mexican and queer) really encouraged me reimagine what we could change about the CBD space. 

One of the most vile aspects of white wellness is the constant appropriation of indigenous plant medicine. So it made sense for us to sort of reclaim it. To sort of position CBD as a gateway drug to plant medicine for BIPOC people. It is after all ours. Patient’s access to cannabis has unfortunately been left out of the discussion in legal markets For example, as we’ve seen legislation change in California from medical to recreational, we notice that free and or discounted access to cannabis for low income patients, and patients with HIV /AIDS, cancer, and other chronic illnesses have become second thought. Even though these same patients in the past are the reason why we have seen so many advancements in the industry.  One of the most important parts of 1996’s Prop 215 was that it was a law passed for patients, The Compassion Act… Back in the day as a professional cultivator, it wasn’t uncommon to gift or donate herb to folks who needed the medicine the most. That was one of the most beautiful manifestations of the law. 

So for Xula, the CBD brand I’m launching along with my partner Karina Primelles, we’ve been very mindful about ways in which we will offer compassion discounts and donations to people most vulnerable in our communities. 

SA
Yes. I wanted to actually start asking about . What was the reason behind starting it? I mean you’ve obviously explained the need for it, but I’d love to know more behind the decision to start it. Especially during a pandemic (or maybe even more the reason for!) 

M
Xula, as a company, started in 2018 though we don’t officially (legally) launch until the fall of 2020. We initially planned to launch here in Mexico, making CBD available here in the Mexican cannabis market. But as of now according to the Mexcian government herb and all drugs are technically legal to have and use but not to sell, that includes CBD and THC-dominant cannabis. So after a year or so of waiting, we decided to move into the US market since we’re both also US citizens. 

I am not Mexican, though I finally live here legally, she has her papers!! Haha! But the idea of Xula spawned from Karina and I’s desire to give folks access to legal CBD and cannabis in Mexico while also trying to negate the stigma of cannabis initially created by Spanish colonizers. Hallucinogenic drugs like peyote had been used in Mexico for millennia, as you know, but it along with weed became controversial during the colonial era when the Spanish associated them with communion with the devil and with madness. Fucking haters. That vile racist rhetoric crossed the border to the U.S administrators. Mexico’s cannabis prohibition began in the late 1800s years before prohibition in the United States. 

Getting a little off topic, but Xula is a direct response to that. Xula is a direct response to the absence of womxn, queer womxn, and BIPOC people in the cannabis space. We’re centered in Mexico City and honor not what it means to be a Mexican woman, a Latina woman, a Black woman, an indigenous woman. But also it means to be femme, non-binary and desire the feminine, softness that is cannabis herself. 

We fuse ancestral herbal knowledge and modern scientific understanding to create our products. They focus on hormonal balance, cramp relief, sleep and anxiety. We grow our own organic hemp farm in Southern Oregon, and use about 50 additional herbs organically grown and sustainably wildcrafted. Xula’s philosophy is embedded in the idea of bringing our awareness of plant medicine back to its native people and the ancestors of those native people. Our philosophy is to shift CBD from being in a white, basic, vanilla, hetero space—to a one that celebrates the fluid aspects of cannabis. The indigenous aspects of cannabis, the feminine and non gender conforming aspects of cannabis. 

SA
Also—CBD/cannabis is that a good way to differentiate them?

M
Maybe the best way to differentiate them might be CBD hemp and weed cannabis. It’s such a fucking scam all of it to be honest I hate it. But I think yeah let’s do CBD/ hemp and cannabis.

SA
You’re touching on something that—as a consumer of a lot of different cannabis products—I think is important to question. We need to holistically consider the impact of our consumption. I’ve recently been thinking about ways to engineer radicality in how we engage civically, and what if we started pressuring white owned CBD hemp companies to create a system where they were regularly donating to bail funds, or indigenous groups that harvest CBD hemp/ weed cannabis? Imagine if companies cared less about profit and more on making medicine accessible to everyone. 

I wonder if any of these white owned companies think deeply enough about their responsibility? Because I think if you are white-owned and you have a responsibility to give back monetarily, significantly, and regularly. I wonder and worry about the future of sustainable CBD hemp / weed cannabis, but it sounds like Xula is considering these aspects (and even just how to have integrity as a company) which is really exciting. What are things that you want to see shift in the next few years in regards to how we create anti-capitalist /radical spaces for CBD hemp/ weed cannabis, and we can be dreamy about this.

M
So Xula also owns our hemp farm. And it’s operated by women. That’s been huge and important for us. We also plan on having an access / patient corner where we offer discounts to certain communities. 

But dreamy anti-capitalist ideas for the entire space, for me, would be for all white-owned hemp and cannabis farms and companies to give 25%, 50%? 100%?! LOL of their sales, or harvest to some sort of board that distributes the wealth and or medicine to marginalized and queer Black, Latinx and indigenous communities. 

In 1619, the Virginia Assembly passed legislation requiring every farmer to grow hemp—meaning that it was illegal to not grow hemp in the United States. Guess who were the people growing hemp? Enslaved Africans. Apart from normal reparations for Black folks, the cannabis industry (hemp and marijuana) needs to also pay. The hemp industry, the agriculture industry, the industry of Wall Street all owe M-O-N-E-Y to the families of enslaved ancestors and to the Native people whose land they looted and stole. 

If there was a way for those payments to be made directly from especially corporate hemp and cannabis farms and companies (particularly those with higher gross incomes or whatever smart economists say) need to pay. We already know that only 5% of people in the industry with executive/leadership roles are Black. 81% white, so something radical has to be done to tip those scales. Because equity isn’t cutting it. Donations won’t cut it. They need their assets taken and redistributed directly from the government as a form of reparations from the establishment of the cannabis industry in the US. 

SA
THIS IS INCREDIBLE. We’re in the middle of a global revolution/global movement toward Black liberation and integrity in this sense seems so important. I keep saying this all the time, but we have to evolve as a species. I believe having these conversations, and just dreaming (which I feel like Mariame Kaba and a lot of abolitionists seem to emphasize how dreaming is SUCH AN IMPORTANT part of real liberation) so I’m grateful to be a witness to yours, as it reflects my future and hope to. 

What are things we can learn from the plant itself? 

M
One of the most interesting things about weed is what it teaches us. It’s hands-down the only reason why my curiosity and late night stoner nights turn into hard core albeit half-baked research moments. Some of the research I’ve done on cannabis, plants, food, flora and fauna has brought me to my own self discovery of Africa’s botanical legacy. And my ignorance to it. I think I’ve always had an innate understanding of who and how certain seeds and plants found themselves in different parts of the Americas, but I never considered it to be a legacy stemming from Africa. Like duh of course the original people would have had their hand in every species of plant and animal. Why the fuck it that so radical? Of course cannabis didn’t just show up in Asia and then somehow through magic end up in Europe and the Americas. It was changed genetically, chemically and consumed in Africa and like most plants brought to other parts of the world through trade, voyages and of course the fucking trans american slave trade. What I think we all can learn from Cannabis sativa is its ability to use itself as an example of how white dominant thought has plagued our knowledge of our collective botanical history. It challenges everything we know about plants, nature, healing and who is responsible for that knowledge. 

SA
Thank you for that beautiful articulation. This is the crux of something so major—how deep, and far, the impacts of colonization go—as well as the responsibility we have to rectify this. For folks that are maybe new to this conversation, where would you direct them to think more deeply about weed/the colonization of botanics… as well as maybe more holistic conversations around weed justice… 

Z
Botanics / orgs and readings

Soul Fire Farm 

The Black Farmer Fund

Farming While Black

In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World

Cannabis prohibition + colonization readings

Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs ((Spanish))

The African Roots of Marijuana

Digging up Hemp’s Dark Roots

A brief agricultural history of cannabis in Africa, from prehistory to canna-colony

Cannabis Justice:

Cage-free Cannabis

National Expungement Week

NuLeaf

Cannaclusive

SA
Any CBD companies you feel are worth supporting/ highlighting? 

M
Brown Girl Jane

Dehiya Beauty (they only sell a balm but i still covet it)

Elio

Frigg

Making + Taking Space with Naj Austin and Ethel’s Club

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SA
I am so honored and excited that we found time to have this conversation, thank you so much for your time. Can you describe your energy in three words today? How is your spirit feeling?

N
A heavy question! I’m also very happy to be chatting with you by the way. A nice break from the rest of my meetings. My energy today…restful, content, grounded.

SA
So good to hear. Ethel’s Club is such a radically crucial platform. The need to provide Black, Indigenous and people of color with accessible modes of mindful healing that both hears, sees and caters to their experience is something, I believe, aids the beginning of transformative action and Self awakening. I really see that in how Ethel’s Club is structured. What led to its profound creation and what are some challenges you faced when stepping forward with it’s conception?

N
Thank you for those kind and thoughtful words. A lot of things led up to the moment that Ethel’s Club opened doors to our Brooklyn clubhouse in November 2019. The two biggest forces were: my personal experience looking for a Black female therapist in Brooklyn that established a space where marginalized voices could stand in their power, and be seen and heard for who they are. With that in mind, the first idea was not specifically Ethel’s Club — I just knew whatever I built had to embody that ethos. The frustration fueled my need and desire to find a practitioner which blossomed into creating a place that sees you for you and also heals you with practitioners who look like you. To me a simple idea and, yet, a revolutionary one. 

SA
So incredibly revolutionary. At Studio Ānanda, we really believe that wellness for Black, Indigenous and people of color is a political act of claiming autonomy over institutional and technocratic spaces and very racist, sexist and discriminatory medicine and healing modalities that have been sold to us in the west. In America especially, health and mental care is disproportionately inexclusive to Black and Indigenous folks. At the start of the pandemic, and throughout the uprising, Ethel’s Club was moving so quickly to organize and present space for us to heal. Often, as folks whose work centers community health, it is not until crisis mode that our strategy becomes truly activated. What was that like for you and your team? And how did/are you taking care and grounding yourself as you both process and organize?

N
There wasn’t a lot of thinking – mostly action. It was right before the stay in place order happened in NYC and I had to make a decision about closing our doors. It wasn’t very difficult. I wanted to keep our community safe and out of harm’s way. The next hurdle was how do we continue to show up for them? What will they need? We managed to become the one immutable thing in many member’s lives. While the rest of the world was in flux, we were a place you could go online to take workshops, sessions, grieve, heal, laugh, talk. It felt like we were saving people. And I think we were, but at the time it didn’t necessarily feel that way. Taking care of myself is difficult. I am a caretaker. I worry about my team and my members from the time I wake up, until I go to sleep. I’m learning (mid pandemic) how to be a strong founder and what my personal wellness practices are. Each day is a new attempt at figuring out how to be better at both of those things.

SA
A daily choice we make with ourselves is to show up for our own self in order to be better for our community and those around us. It’s remarkable how with the virtual offerings, Ethel’s Club has been able to reach a global audience, stepping out from its original community in Brooklyn to now being a space where folks from around the world can tap into for grounding. What was it like seeing that evolution, maybe unintentionally, happen? And how integral are spaces like Ethel’s Club in allowing folks an arena to regenerate?

N
It was wild to see happen! We were so heads down in creating what we know, we had a member in the online clubhouse reach out and say “I live in Germany – is this event in EST?” and I think it was the first time I saw the enormity of the problem we were solving, especially as the world, all at once, lived through the pandemic. It was a very humbling experience. It has been exciting to connect with and provide space for creators, thought leaders, artists etc from all over the world who host our events – it sometimes feels like an endless treasure chest of talent. I am hard on myself and always feel as if we can be offering more, doing more but we’ve had members publicly state that they could not have “made it through” the pandemic without us. Or that we’ve transformed their lives. When I hear statements like that it’s surreal. But I think there’s power in identity and there’s power in reflection and we offer a place to find all of that in an authentic way. I think people have been searching for it for a long time. I feel very proud to be able to lead a company that is doing so much for folks, especially right now.

SA
I think it’s so beautiful how organic and fluidly this evolution happened throughout the revolution! It really speaks to your original inkling and passion that came from a deeply intentional desire to actively carve out thoughtful and considerate space.

And it truly is phenomenal that as a woman of color, a Black woman, you’ve pioneered such a transformative moment, especially considering that in 2016 the National Alliance on mental illness shared that Black women are 20% more likely than any other demographic to experience mental illness due to the compounding factors of racism, sexism and discrimination. The statistic is heartbreaking and enraging all at once. I was reading the other day about how the wide spread of acupuncture was through the Black Panthers’ integration of it in their clinics. This notion of holistic healing is so integral to the movement – the idea that to be a warrior in the revolution, we must care for our mind, body and spirit – and so much of how this movement has taken shape in the west especially comes from Black leaders. What does Black wellness look like to you? And how can those of us who are non Black but also exist in the wellness space help facilitate?

N
This is a hard question for me, because I think I’m still in the discovery process. I think Black healing can mean so many things – I’m inspired by the work of Tricia Hersey, Nap Bishop of the Nap Ministry who believes rest is a form of resistance. A form of reparations. A way to reclaim what has been stolen since Black people were brought here many years ago. I also believe in joy as a form of resistance – a way to reclaim something that is so often taken away from us. I think both are forms of self-care. For me, personally, it’s education. Learning and reading from our elders who have fought this battle and others like it. Understanding that I’m not alone, and that this is so much bigger. It’s hard for me to say how non Black folks can assist Black people on their wellness paths. I think the easiest way to start is to listen and be available to understand that Black people are not a monolith and will each navigate our wellness journeys in a way that best suits our path.

SA
Thank you, Naj. I think, if the pandemic has shown us anything it is that there is a clear disparity in who gets to be well, who has access to healing and health. Just as Black and brown communities were disproportionately affected by the pandemic, the structures of white supremacy are reaffirmed in the capitalist power dynamics that exist within the healing modalities of the western wellness and healing industries. Once healing becomes commodified and attached to capital, there is a type of disconnect that happens where we don’t interrogate why we are feeling unhealthy or the systems that perpetuate this inequity. Self reflection becomes limited and avenues for transformative action becomes narrow – we saw this especially with the performative actions of the ‘black tile’ phase. If and how does your practice with Ethel’s Club navigate these ideas?

N
My focus has always been on Black people and people of color navigating the above spaces and feeling as if it were not meant for them, although as you mentioned, many of the practices are born from Indigenous, South Asian cultures. The first way we navigated “being seen” and making wellness a form of everyday life and not a commodified-instagram version was to create a wellness studio inside the Brooklyn clubhouse. We pointedly did not make it any more special than the rest of the club because we wanted to make it clear that wellness is for us, it’s accessible and it should be part of your everyday life. When we brought everything online we approached it with the same ethos – how do we make people who have been left out of this conversation and rarely reflected feel seen and that this is specifically designed for them. Unapologetically. We do a lot to shake the frameworks that exist, call things what they are (I believe language is critical in ostracizing people out of spaces) and make things feel less performative. We’ve had many members message us and say “I’ve never tried yoga, but I went to that class and I loved it.” I want to create a world where people can always opt in to have practitioners who look like them be the way that they see the world and wellness.

SA
Yes!!! And that is what I love about the work that you’re doing. So much of it is about not seeing ourselves reflected through practitioners which automatically creates a detachment. When I engage with a practitioner who looks like me, it makes it easier for me to imagine that I, too, can become an expert at healing myself – thank you so much for reiterating that.

Before we end, I want to ask you, what are three or four things that you are eating, reading, learning, watching, cooking that are helping you stay grounded and well over the past few weeks?

N
I’m reading All About Love by Bell Hooks, I’m watching I May Destroy You (it grounds me in a much more reflective, philosophical way. I find myself rethinking structures that I thought were solid, specifically around consent and personal boundaries). I’m trying an all-vegan diet so I’ve been trying a lot of new recipes and flavors. I’ve felt very creative, which is nice. 🙂

Organizing through Imposter Syndrome with Zenat Begum of Playground Coffee Shop

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
How are you feeling today, Z?

Z
Hi! OH! I’m feeling an overload of emotional progression. 

How are you feeling today, P?

SA
Woah, I wanna hear more about this emotional progression. I’m feeling good, ready to take on the day and glad I get to start it by talking to you. What’s on your schedule for today?

Z
I think this is a great way to start the day. My schedule is typical today. I have a few calls regarding Playground funding and programming. I’ve been thinking more about structure as for the last 6 months I was getting through each day by being task oriented in order to do my job efficiently and neglected my own emotions in the process. September is always a recharge month for me and I think it is suggesting, rather, forcing me to realign.

Did I just say all that in one breath? Talk about efficiency, haha. 

SA
I mean, happy Virgo season birthday girl!! When did you begin to notice that the structure you created for your organizing did not allow space for your own self? How has the transition been as you’ve started to be more intentional with taking care of your emotional health? And what is emotional health for you?

Z
Aug 10th was the day I acknowledged an emotional sewage block. Like I couldn’t communicate. It was weird, even as I had been communicating actively through work, I had a difficult time conversing with people socially. 

The transition has been taxing. I think after being in the crossfire of work and mental health declining I started to see exactly how much of myself I was sacrificing. 

Emotional health is having a fluidity of emotions. The ability to process with care and tenderness as every emotion passes. Accountability and trust is a virtue of this said process. 

SA
When we were speaking last night you said something about accepting the experience of depression. I think there is something very profound about that idea of being fluid and open with emotions instead of holding on and lingering. I’m really happy that you have been making time for yourself over the past month. The work that you do is incredibly transformative and also incredibly demanding of the mind, body and spirit. Playground has been so responsive to the needs of the community since the uprising and it’s been really comforting to be part of and observe how much care is being poured into the community. What have your experiences as a South Asian woman organizer been like? We talk a lot about imposter syndrome, and especially thinking about our own cultural expectations to have a more institutionalized life vs what we actually do, and then organizing in a city where we have settled and gentrified stolen land – there’s so many layers to it. What does that feel like for you? 

Z
The concept of imposter syndrome is something almost everyone doing this work is feeling.

Being South Asian plays a role in how imposter syndrome develops over time because even in this global city, there aren’t many South Asians organizing with the intention to center Black lives. This is a critique of my community although there isn’t enough diversity within the South Asian network or intersection of Black folks to begin with. I have seen a lot of my peers build intention and work cohesively so that all voices are heard and acknowledged. Solidarity and resistance work can often make you feel like an imposter. Are you good enough? Do you have the discourse to verbally debate? Do you have an audience? Are people going to be receptive of your message? Being skeptical is what I am leaning towards these days. IS perpetuates self doubt and that is a boundary I have learned to protect.

Playground’s response to COVID is something our ancestors would have championed for their own communities. When times get tough, the tough gets going. Building community around you to distribute food to those food insecure. That is exactly why we do this – provide actionable solutions. 

I feel like I have been on auto-pilot for the last few months. The road ahead has its peaks and valleys and challenging circumstances are just part of the process just as much as the bountiful moments are. 

SA
I love what you said about Playground’s response being something our ancestors would have championed for their own. What’s more South Asian than ensuring your entire neighborhood is fed? Like, that intuition that Playground runs with is so deeply ancestral to me, which is ironic considering it is not like you yourself belong to this dense South Asian community. That’s what is so magical about pushing back on imposter syndrome, looking at the conditioning we’ve experienced and being able to hold up the parts which could’ve worked and then tweaking it to build something you know you and your community deserves. 

Do you think that the skepticism we have for institutions outside of us is sometimes internalized with imposter syndrome? How important is it to work collaboratively and collectively, and how do we do that when we’re in a moment where, even amongst organizers it’s becoming clear that transformative justice and accountability isn’t centered? 

Z
In my text exchange with you last night we were talking about the recent tarot reading I did with you. One of the cards set for the future intention was about collaborating. I think Playground had made exemplary collaborations to set the precedent for organizing. In a time like now, my communication has been spread thin because I feel as if I have my radar up all times. Which can be divisive when learning to trust potentially collaborators and their position in this revolution. This is sometimes a risk we take in the name of pioneering change. The revolution has to be stripped of its individualism. Working collectively is a human trait, it’s how villages are built. The same organization can create a larger space for us, thus having actual impact, hopefully legislative. Now, that is holding this country that exists on stolen land accountable. 

SA
Totally, I think that it’s also important to be discerning about the intentions of potential collaborators & I completely understand needing to keep a wall up so to speak to make sure that the safety of your community comes first. In fact, I think it’s what draws so many people to Playground, it’s firm stance in centering and recentering it’s community in a way that is so uncompromising. 

Z
I am burning incense in my bakhoor burner, listening to quarantine mixes, revisiting hobbies, working out, trying new recipes @ home, I’m working on a bookclub right now so I have been reading excerpts here and there to gather what book will be centralized focus, drinking my Playground community blend coffee at home, gathering with close friends to talk through days that are harder than others, motioning a playground green house right now to offer something beautiful and building my new home to create an environment to do these self care rituals and practices. 

is the owner and founder of  Playground Youth, a community-based organization operating out of Playground Coffee Shop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Playground Youth supports Bed-Stuy by ensuring a safe space to exchange art, cultural knowledge, and strategies. The organization tackles a range of community needs including literacy, food equity, and arts & culture through a range of accessible programs and events.

Creating a Movement of Integrity with Fariha Róisín

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Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist living on Earth. She is the author of the poetry collection How To Cure A Ghost (2019), as well as the novel Like A Bird (2020). Fariha founded Studio Ānanda alongside Prinita Thevarajah in May 2020. The pair recently sat down for a conversation on slowing down to reset our operating system and the significance in leading lives with integrity.

F
Hi love!

P
Hi! How are you feeling? You’ve had such a full on day. 

F
I’m feeling a few things — tired, exhausted come to my mind. My body (mainly shoulders) have been incredibly tender today so I’ve been feeling that constriction in my muscles, too. I’ve been smoking less weed these last few days, as I’m trying to sit with myself, and listen. But it’s actually so hard to keep that attention, to be mindful of my body’s needs, without assigning judgment. But then, my spirit today is also feeling conflicted: I feel joy that I’m here, talking to you, that I’m back in New York, but I’m also cognizant that I need rest. Always working within these bodily and mind conflicts I guess.  

How are you?

P
I’m also feeling a lot of different things this morning. I get out of quarantine in five hours. I’m excited to be outside and feel the sun directly on my skin, unobstructed by a window & to breathe fresh air!! Unsure about what my first few interactions with my family will be like, but overall excited. 

You’ve made it through a full week back in New York, and knowing your schedule, it’s incredible to me that you’re even able to make room for conversations like this one. I hope the weekend is deeply regenerative for you & that you’ll be able to restore fragmented bits of energy and call your spirit back to yourself. 

One thing that has always struck me about you is that even as you work on so many different projects at all times, the quality of your art and the passion in your presentation always comes through so strong. Where does that come from? I know what you’re saying is it does take a toll on your mind and your body, though the fact that you’re able to go for so long without losing steam… it’s incredible to see unfold.

F
Thank you <3 That reflection is so important for me because I think I’ve told you, but an astrologer earlier this year told me that I’m the type of person to do the work even when nobody’s watching, and I relate to that sentiment with my whole personhood. I am just dedicated to doing the work. I could explain that astrologically, I’m ruled by Saturn, so hard work is meditative to me. I find my best self when I get into that flow, which is what it is for me, a flow of motion. I do feel like a sorcerer, a magician, or an alchemizer, and that’s what all my work feels like. As if I’m channeling something. It’s so innate, so intuitive, that it’s really an energy that I tap into. Maybe it’s spirit, maybe it’s the ancestral realm that I’m dipping into, but I also think it’s a contract that I signed onto in this lifetime. I feel charged by something beyond me. 

But in the human realm, on the other end of the spectrum, I do suffer. As a child love was beyond me, and I have really worked to find that as an adult—in my community, in my friendships, at the very least. But I’m still bad at asking for help, or telling folks that I’m suffering. I’m very good at excelling while I’m barely surviving. Which I guess is a trauma response. 

P
I’ve known you now for about four full years and it’s clear that there is kinetic energy that flows through you. It’s tangible and I feel it in the spaces that you occupy, whether that be your home space or the way you manage your interpersonal relationships. There is a great deal of thoughtfulness that you move with, that you’re teaching me everyday. One thing in particular I’ve been thinking about is integrity. You operate with so much of it & I think it can be jarring for some, especially in an era where social media allows for a disconnected personality, to see that in action. The way that you’re able to be so vulnerable as a public facing figure, and yet at the same time struggle to ask for help, for me that is heartbreaking and another example of how you’re always trying to move without ego and in full transparency. 

F
Yeah, it’s honestly a battle. I struggle with it immensely. I don’t know if it’s my Cancer Moon (lol) or the fact that I’m a Jupiter Cancer. Probably not, I just think it’s instinct. My entire therapy is built around how I tried to make myself perfect and how I was still abused. It’s actually painful to think about. I think I was just raised by my sister and father with such incredible values. My dad is a man of his word. He’s one of the best men I know. Or people, period. I guess despite the kind of horrifying shit the three of us experienced, it encouraged us to be really caring and compassionate… and also not complain. Which is why I find it so hard to. I was sort of this court jester character in my family, always making people laugh. If my mother was having an episode I was thrown into the pit to calm her down. Sometimes willingly, but I wonder if a child ever really has a choice. I just saw myself, and my value, as a token for someone else. I didn’t realize that I could have my own life for quite some time. Now, many years later, I still suffer from not prioritizing myself or my own needs. The thought I could hurt someone always is what drives me. And it’s a lonely world being like this. 

I think the hardest part is people don’t believe what they see, and then they use it against me. That’s what Shaka, my ex told me a few months ago. I’m obviously not perfect lol and I have many flaws, but it is a really lonely thing to be dedicated to one’s word and to try to be the best example all the time. I’m just sort of always trying to be better. 

P
I’m reminded of the post-it note that sits above your desk in your office which simply says “just be good”. It’s such a simple yet difficult task for most of humanity to just be good.

What does prioritizing yourself these days look like?

F
I love that post-it note so much! Prioritizing myself means trying to locate how I feel at all times and letting that guide me. But because I was extremely abused, my senses are sort of dulled. Especially when it comes to being uncomfortable… so I’m trying to gain better fluency to myself so I can actually ascertain what I need in a moment. And that is a lot of work for someone who could never say how they felt (when it was bad). There’s a lot of deprogramming of such simple things for me, and I guess I’m just trying to be kinder to myself, show myself the compassion I give everyone else all the time.

P
I think it should be spoken about more how childhood sexual abuse and childhood abuse survivors in general have to literally rewire their brain in order to fully function as a capable adult. You are actively doing that work while on tour, writing a fourth book, running a studio and all the other bits and bobs that you fit yourself into.

What is coming up for me now is this slowness you drive, which is antithetical to everything that we have been taught. A slowness and a gentleness which ultimately says that, if you are not kind to yourself and others, if you are not slow with your journey and with the journey of others, then your practice will not be sustainable and your purpose might not be realized. It’s not an easy thing to move this way in a city like New York City especially. 

F
Yeah it’s incredibly difficult to have that kind of discipline. I learned this by trial and error and basically I’m a fast learner, and I don’t want to waste time. My own or anybody else’s. I think when I was in my early 20s I was messy enough times to realize that shit doesn’t work for me. I don’t enjoy it, it’s too shameful for me. I hate carrying that weight. I think all of us have moments of entitlement, where we feel we are owed things. Especially as a survivor. Then, I think by the time I re-entered New York, and especially after my last break up, I realized there were holes in my character that I had to address. It’s when my real first spiritual download happened, as if I was like Fariha 4.0, my system was re-energized. In plant medicine circles the human psyche is referred to as the “operating system” or O.S a lot, and I relate to that frameworking. What are you keeping in your body that is old hardware? What isn’t serving you anymore? To evolve basically means ending patterns. 

So for me, aligning myself with who I say I am was a very important step in the evolution of myself. I have high standards, but I’m a person that gives such high standards back. It’s something that I have to remind myself all the time, and actually that is what’s begun to (to refer back to your earlier question) help prioritize my needs more—just because I’m bearing witness to how I’m evolving.

P
Right – you are only expecting from others what you expect from yourself. That is a very radical type of accountability. Truthfully, as someone who is in their early 20s, I’ve never experienced a dynamic like ours where you really do hold me to how I say I’m trying to be in the world. Because, you’re right – a lot of us are carrying this really slippery entitlement that is often leveraged in terms of our past. But with you, you see it and you say ok, so now how are we going to move forward and be better and avoid repeating stagnant patterns. 

It’s not an easy way to live, it’s actually very uncomfortable and I respect you for your ability to be comfortable with uncomfortability. So much of the hope I have in the mission for Studio Ananda really does tie back into the way you and I both handle conflict, confusion and collaboration. 

On Wednesday our filler post was, ‘your greatest enemy is in your hearts and mind’ and we were informed that it was a line pulled from Thich Nhat Hanh’s letter to MLK, where he was writing about the parallels between the inhumanities in Vietnam and the civil rights movement. He was delving into this idea of – transform yourself first to transform the world around you. And that’s what seeps out of so much of the art that you create and the way you live your daily life. 

F
Thank you. Our relationship has taught me so much about the importance of reflecting your best self at all times. We are friends who ventured on this incredible, beautiful mission. It means that there always has to be an emphasis on full transparency. When I need to tell you something, that may be difficult to say, it’s actually so powerful for me to remember that I owe it to the both of us to be completely honest. Because our work relies on that transparency. What we are creating with Studio Ananda has never been done before. So it means that the way you and I co-exist, or even how we work with Sonia/Raver Jinn, has to be of the highest order. I think sometimes I feel like a monk, and I’m sure you know lol, I’m just really obsessed with integrity. 

The other day I pulled the Jaquar Card which is Integrity/Impeccability card in my Medicine /Animal Tarot Deck. It brought tears to my eyes. It made me think of my ayahuasca shaman Jyoti, who is somebody who has incredible integrity. That means she’s sometimes scary, lol. I don’t endeavor to be like her completely, but I think there’s immense value in bluntness, in telling the truth. And that’s the energy I want to bring to my work, to my relationships, to Studio Ananda. 

P
And ultimately, you are just helping me see myself a little more clearly as well. It’s cool that you’re able to do that in a way that is candid, blunt only to cut the BS and allow for a really clarified perspective on the situation. Which is super different for me to experience as someone who has only ever been met with a bluntness that was self serving and meant to harm rather than bring higher understanding, so thank you. 

What are your deepest hopes and dreams for Studio Ananda? 

F
To create a movement of integrity. I hope that people are moved by the discipline of evolution and encouraged by the people we talk to, the archive we build, the schools, the impact that we foster and create. I take deep solace in the Islamic Renaissance. Studio Ananda is a harking back to that time of enlightenment, to show people how reflection and healing are radical tools to dismantling systems. Now, in this lifetime, in order for us to work together and destroy capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy, we need to understand that there is a collective call to action. That starts with the self, of confronting the demons, the ancestral baggage, so you can be a true accomplice and comrade. All liberation groups were destroyed by the ego. We need to work seamlessly and understand the true way to truly liberate is to do so yourself. It begins with you and it becomes a mighty foundation to then inspire and motivate others, or to hold them up in their process. This is what we owe each other. This is the way we face the apocalypse. I want humans to evolve. I hope Studio Ananda helps on that journey.

P
Feeling very blessed, activated and grateful to be able to build this space alongside you and curiously waiting to see where the universe takes us with Studio Ananda. I feel very humbled to be able to stand beside you and offer this space as a resource to others. 

I know it’s getting late over there, how are you feeling right now? 

F
The feeling is mutual, my love! I feel good. I’m so excited for what’s to come. We are building, co-creating, a truly moving place. To watch us grow has been a gift. I’m also looking forward to continuing this conversation. There’s more to come, and more to say. We are expanding in so many different ways, and it thrills me to be on this journey with you.

P
Same!

Holding on to this thread of integrity, do you have any particular resources that come to mind, texts, audio, visuals that have encouraged you to stand strong in your practice of integrity? 

F
Oh I love this! Ok, what comes to mind is the John O’Donohue On Being episode, as well as his book Anam Cara. He was a poet, priest and philosopher. I don’t know why I find him so moving, but maybe because he’s writing about survival but through the lens of beauty, the importance of always keeping something beautiful in your mind. 

I also have been so called to action by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and other abolitionists like Mariame Kaba. To be an abolitionist, I think, relies on integrity. It means believing something so beyond you, and so outside the realm of experience, but to dream for it anyway. To believe in transformative justice means to be better for it. If we believe in abolition, we have to transform ourselves, as a species and as people. That’s exhilarating to me. Same goes with the environment, in the hope of being climate warriors. I’ve been reading Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva, and similarly, it’s such a hopeful book. This time, pandemic time — this portal itself — is asking us to push against our inertia so we can save this planet. 

P
Perfect, thank you for sharing these. Do you have any last words you want to add? 

F
I’ve been meditating on this quote by Joanna Macy, “We can sense that we are in a space without a map. That we’re on shifting ground. Where old habits and old scenarios, all previous expectations, all familiar features no longer apply. It’s like we’re unmoored, cast loose. In Tibetan Buddhism, such a place, or gap between known worlds, is called a bardo. It’s kind of frightening. It’s also a place for potential transformation.”

Dreaming Into Action with Annika Hansteen-Izora

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SA
Annika, I’m so happy I get to speak to you today! 

A
I’m so excitedddddd :))) Love y’alls work and just really hype to be a part of this! 

SA
Can you describe your energy right now in 5 words? 

A
Hmmm….floating, cognizant, shifting, open, dancing

SA
I feel honoured that I get to float and be open with you today. I was so struck by one of your recent on the notion of communal dreaming, and how you so eloquently articulated the importance of making space to dream and to dream together. I grew up in Australia in an abusive household. From the ages of 15 – 20, every night before I went to bed I would dream about living in New York. When I was 22, I moved to Brooklyn which was the start of a more intentional healing journey for me. The idea that a radical imagination can set us free is something I hold so close to my heart as it was my very experience. When did you start thinking about the importance of dreaming? And can you speak more to dreaming as a way to sway against escapism? 

A
Mmm…all of this. Thank you for sharing that with me. I’m also very much in the same space – that radical imagination is something that sets us free. I’ve always been a very dreamy, introverted person. I would say my dreaming began out of child wonder, but as I grew older, it became a coping mechanism. I grew up across Palo Alto, CA the suburbs of Sacramento, CA, and Portland, OR – all very white spaces, where I was often one of the only Black people in the class. And that led to loneliness and isolation. Dreaming was a way that I could move out of the space that I was in. Out of that curiosity, I started reading more works by Black authors, and started seeing and absorbing the work of people like Octavia Butler, artists and theorists that were dreaming of worlds that existed outside of white imagination. That started to water the seeds that dreaming was something beyond what we might conceive of as individualist retreat. I started to think of dreaming that could pull me towards other people – and to create something outside of what we’ve been given by colonial ways of thinking. For me, over the past years, I’ve moved towards this idea of communal dreaming. Dreaming has always been a space from which I’ve imagined new ways of being, for myself and those around me, but when I keep those dreams to myself, they only remain in the corners of my imagination. As someone that’s struggled with recurring depression for years, I often go inward, and my dreams collect beside me. When I began talking about my dreams with my loved ones, with my friends and homies, they often reminded me, “That is a beautiful dream, and we can make it true. It can be true, I believe in this, we could support and build this together.” I was able to move away from the escapism that my dreaming can sometimes lead to by talking about it with others, from holding an intimate space for dreaming with others. 

SA
The ways that our colonist conditioning has squashed our childlike capacity to be imaginative is, I think, a very real and intentional violence. It’s so incredible that you have been able to foster a space to speak a lot of what you are dreaming about into existence. And I think there is so much to say about the science behind things like manifestation. There is a general cynicism I’ve observed, though, when it comes to manifesting and dreaming, do you think that is another symptom of the structures that we occupy and an internalization of a conceived loss of power? 

A
Yes, absolutely. I would say that we have to even think about what we think of as dreaming being something we have to intentionally question, to think about how dreaming may be conceived through a colonial white imagination. Why is it in so many circles, dreaming is thought of as frivolous, individualistic, escapist? As something that is running from reality? I think that’s something that a colonial white imagination is trying to teach us, that dreaming means a rejection of what is, of logic, normality. When so much of dreaming stretches far beyond it. I wonder about how dreaming has been commodified, like we’ve seen in some cases of self care. Self care is a radical practice, that’s been articulated by so many Black, queer, disabled, trans and women communities as something that is critical. Over time, self care has been commodified into green smoothies and bath bombs. I think about how that has happened to dreaming. To conceive as dreaming as an escape is to reject its roots, which is in imagining outside of the confines we’ve been handed. Dreaming is a way to think of new spaces to create, grow in love in, take care of each other in. It can be a way that we can create power, redefine what power is. I think we all just need to think about the ways we define what dreaming is, if we’ve ever conceived of what is meant to dream alongside others. 

SA
“The American dream” comes to mind. The colonial ways in which we’re encouraged to dream and imagine but still within a structure, still only to maintain the status quo. 

So, essentially, you’re encouraging a type of imagining the world that pushes back on this hierarchies, reorganizes and resees. I want to uplift this as something sooooooo subversive. Especially in a place like America, where routine is encouraged and spirituality is considered as this abstract thing – imagination really sets the foundations for a way of being in the world that completely goes against the grain.

How can we move from dreaming in a way that’s immaterial to materializing the wonders that we imagine? How do we make sure that communal dreaming is not an abstract, intangible action but something that drives real solutions?

A
This is such a beautiful question. I’m mulling over it, because it’s popping off so many thoughts for me.

I have multiple answers to this. I think one part is in recognizing that dreaming can come from spaces of lushness, pleasure, and wonder. Dreaming can also come from spaces of deep grief, and deep rage. I think about what Octavia Butler said about dreaming. She said dreaming is a way “to give warning when we see ourselves drifting in dangerous directions.” I think one part of moving communal dreaming away from the abstract is holding the multiple realities that dreaming can come from. That makes me think on how we are actually creating spaces to dream. Are we showing up for each other to provide the care that gives us the capacity to dream? What gives us the freedom to even dream about realities beyond what we’re currently in, and can that be a space to explore communal care? I think dreaming is very, very in hand with providing care for one another. For making sure our needs are met so that we feel safe, and in giving space to be emotionally and spiritually valued and heard. I’d ask us to think about how we’re creating actions to support each other’s capacity to dream, and spaces to share dreams. That can happen through many different facets. A book critique with one another is space to dream, making dinner for a friend is creating space to dream, creating gardens, creating mutual aid organizations to support our communities. If dreaming is to move towards action, then we need to care for each other in ways that even allow that dream to be said. 

SA
My heart is so full! I’m thinking of prayer circles and about something as simple as a dream circle. It’s such an easy yet subversive practice and you’re right, it does involve a lot of intentionality and care. 

How do we encourage those around us to be active dreamers without coming off as people with their heads in the clouds? The phrase “dream a little” can be so hard to even imagine as people who have been so conditioned to not push past the corners of their own imaginations. 

A
I think meditating on dreaming as a form of action, as a method of study. I think encouraging each other to see those who have shown dreaming is a form of action. Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Marsha P. Johnson, are all Black artists, theorists, activists, that refer to dreaming as a way to move past the constraints they’ve been given. They all then showed up to their dreams with action, by creating art, supporting their communities, providing critique, leading movements. 

I also think it’s important to note that dreaming can be thought of in terms of radical societal shifts. It can also be held as the transformation of ourselves, our relationships. We can think of dreaming as our own capacity to change. It was a dream, of a younger me, to be able to write, to explore and hold my queerness. And over time, that came true. With support from other dreamers, friends, around me. 

I think we really need to sit with, and show up for, what we mean when we say radical dreaming, what other activists, artists, and theorists have meant when they say that. Often-times, I see ‘radical’ placed in front of a phrase (compassion, community, tenderness, etc.), without explanation or example of what is inherently radical about it. I think dreaming has shown itself to be radical across time to shift the entire world, through policies, relationships, collectives, by showing up through action. I think to be an active dreamer requires a responsibility to think of how dreaming has been used radically in the past, and how dreaming can show up with real action. 

SA
One of my favorite quotes is by Arundhati Roy where she writes…. “Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” 

Thank you, Annika. So much of what you shared is really helping me imagine and conceptualize tangible ways of being in the world and creating new worlds. And I absolutely agree that it is important to name and explain, because another tactic of the status quo is to not provide those explanations so to keep things abstract and unreachable.

As we come to an end, I want to ask you, what are some key resources, be it audio, visual, texts, that have really helped you foster and nourish the move towards communal dreaming? You’ve listed brilliant Black writers and theorists, I’m wondering if there are other specific pieces of art that you hold close in this practice?

A
Thank you so much Prinita for this conversation. Heart is feeling so full. 

There are sooo many dreamers that have inspired me to think and imagine new worlds. 

The music of , , , people that are creating entirely new worlds and soundscapes through their music. I’m also currently reading Glitch Feminism, by Legacy Russell, who brilliantly is exploring the ways that the digital creates room to explore expansive identities. The Care Manifesto, by the Care Collective, is a brilliant piece that really has us consider the political movement behind caring for one another. I also love the artwork of Teresa Chromati, and Tschabalala Self, who make new worlds out of their pieces. Activation Residency, a Black trans led residency that holds respite for revolution retreats. There are endless others, but those are some spaces where I’m being nourished to dream. 

On the Visual Appropriation and Erasure of Lower Caste Histories with Khushboo Gulati

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SA
Hi Khushboo!! I’m so grateful to be speaking with you. How is your spirit feeling this evening?

K
Hello! My spirit has been ruminating this evening ~ been sitting with my thoughts, letting myself flow and create! How is your spirit? And also excited to be here and in dialogue with you! 

SA
So glad to hear that you’ve been able to have what sounds like a fluid and restful day. I think this retrograde combined with the new moon energy has been pretty heavy for me personally, I’m looking forward to spending the next few days in rest and quiet contemplation. Can you speak a little about your practice with me – if you can even generalize. You are someone who is so multidisciplinary, multi skilled + multitalented – so maybe, how do you define the art that you create if you were to narrow it down?

K
I hear you! These last few days have felt chaotic energetically so I have been resting more and my dreams have been very amplified! 

Yes! Thank you for seeing me! My creations engage with my journeys of flesh and spirit, time(less-ness), flower splendor, the elements, challenging values and narratives of oppression, rewriting internal and external narratives, transformation, detangling pain, my dreams, and igniting wonder. My art practice is a reflection of my healing practice. My practice is rooted in embodiment and sensorial activation and is reflective of my own process of self-excavation and evolutions into my deepest selves. My process is shaped by ritual, elemental reverence, stillness and movement, collaborations with qtbipoc community, liberatory politics, and my intuition! Is this narrowed down enough haha?

SA
So so so beautiful. One thing about your art practice that really drew me in is how tangibly sacred your process is. And how willing you are to offer that with the world. I also really love this notion of sensorial activation. I’ve only recently come back to my body, I’m still calling bits of myself back, and your work is so palpable while also speaking to inner healing. 

Your tattoo work is especially something that struck me – when did you get into tattooing and how did you begin to foster the process of channeling inner vibrations through the tattoos? What does that look like when you are giving someone else a tattoo?

K
Thank you for your affirmations! I appreciate hearing that ~ Sensorial activations in my work came from my own healing work. It brings me closer to my spirit and invites a deeper connection to my body. My art has been a sanctuary to create new worlds that reflect my visions, desires, and pleasures and invite different ways of feeling, being, and seeing from what is taught to us or socialized. The process of calling ourselves back into our bodies and spirits is definitely a nonlinear and expansive ongoing process that takes new form as we grow, unlearn and relearn and revel in the unique and magical songs of the self! My tattoo work has definitely been an expression of sensorial activation, as a somatic healing practice that bridges and expands mind, body, heart, and spirit! I started learning how to tattoo in 2016 from my friend Sookie, the night I graduated from college, which was a really symbolic moment of moving away from this academic logical world to this sensorial, intuitive, and creative world. I was dreaming a lot about tattooing myself months before this night but was not consciously acting on these visions. I feel like I have been connected to this practice in various forms (and in training) since I was a kid. I was always the kid drawing on other people in class with my inky ballpoint pen, drawn to adornment, was raised in a household that was visually stimulating with Indian wall hangings and embroideries my mom decorated the house with that I was subconsciously studying. I started to do mehndi/henna for myself and my community and felt really connected to that energy exchange and ritual. When I close my eyes I see patterns, fractals and intricate images constantly. I also feel that having a dance practice growing up shaped my understanding of the rhythms of the body and how it moves, which informs how I tattoo. Decorating the body with sacred adornment has been so powerful for me as a queer non-binary person in defining myself on my own terms and celebrating the vibrances that I feel within! I also feel that what I have learned from organizing has informed my practice of tattooing as a political act of honoring and celebrating the layers, stories, and histories that belong to the communities I tattoo! I transitioned to learning how to use the machine last year with the help of community, Mirza and Jaime. Honoring my teachers in this work is so important to me! I am self taught and community taught!

My tattoo practice is rooted in amplifying the autonomy of and connection to our bodies, hearts, and spirits, inviting transformation and deeper self-awareness. Each session is a sensorial ceremony to mark the flesh with symbols soaked in intentions and prayer, acting as a powerful tool to reclaim the body, challenge fear, projections, expectations and the socializations of our bodies. My client and I will talk about their meanings and what it brings up for them over email. I never share my flash sheets online to protect my work and because they are also so deeply personal and reflections of my spiritual journeys and lessons. When the client arrives at my studio, we usually check in about how we are both doing and I go through what the tattoo process will look like. I ask their body boundaries, communicate with them how I will be working on their body/where I will be placing pressure, reminding them we can move with this process in ways that support them and their comfortability with breaks and breaths. 

Once the image is placed, I ask that we take 3 deep cavernous grounding breaths and to set an intention with this tattoo. I ask what they would like to affirm, invite, celebrate, or release with this piece and I set an intention as well. After that process to invite presence we begin the process. Tattooing different parts of the body can bring up a lot of emotion and energy, so I want to make sure to hold space for this and encourage the client to listen to the messages of what is coming up! There is never any rush with my sessions, I do not like to work with that energy because it disrupts my process and channeling. Because I am a Gemini, I love to ask questions and I will usually talk with my client (to whatever extent they want to share) about their journeys, how they flow through this world, what they creating and dreaming about, what they want to transform, their ancestral histories, their favorite time of day, etc! 

SA
Wow Khushboo, I am so moved by how deeply intentional and thoughtful your process around and within tattooing is. The reverence you have for this palpable energetic exchange, the ways that you’re making room for lineages and hundreds of years of histories – it’s such a holistic approach to embodiment and meaning making.

I know for me, I’ve had to really slow down when considering who I will approach for my next tattoo because I do want to be in a space where my body is honored and my spirit is seen. It’s so comforting and exhilarating to know that you’re really digging deep and combining gentleness and interrogation into your tattoo work. 

I want to talk to you about a recent trend that I’ve been observing that is the tattooing of markings that resemble that worn traditionally by Dalit, Adivasi and other ‘lower caste’ communities. I only have recently begun learning about the ancestral histories behind these types of markings and it’s concerning that there is this rising trend where both South Asians and non South Asians are pulling from communities that have been historically discriminated against without context. What have you been thinking about this?

K
The energy exchange of tattooing is so vulnerable and intimate, it makes sense to want to work with an artist that moves with community care and trauma-informed approaches. For me, this work is not just transactional or commercial, it is so process oriented and invites so many worlds of flesh and spirit. Tattoo artists must consider who is coming into their space, what they are bringing, and how to honor their clients as well as themselves. This has also meant making visual vocabularies that are outside Brahmanical and white imaginations. Tattooing, in my approach, is a form of care work of holding space, deep listening to the body, energy, and the client, and supporting the client in activating their agency through this process. 

Upper caste people have been appropriating and taking from caste oppressed communities since the inception of the caste system—from their literal labor, their cultural practices, to their humanity. This dynamic of upper caste people appropriating tattoos that come from oppressed caste communities is a very colonial dynamic and peak casteism. The ease through which upper caste people appropriate comes from caste privilege and this domination mentality/psyche of entitlement, lack of self-awareness, disconnection from the self and their positionality, and not knowing the vast histories of oppressed caste communities. This dynamic is also coupled with capitalism and patriarchy, where upper caste people reduce tattoo histories and vocabularies from oppressed caste people down to just aesthetics. This dynamic is extremely harmful and violent, and perpetuates caste supremacy. It destroys the sacred! I was reading from Akademi magazine that “Savarna history is a history of erasure.” Appropriation feeds anti-indigenous ideologies and is another form of colonization of oppressed caste communities. By appropriating these visual languages, upper caste people are erasing the contributions, intellectual+creative labor, imaginations, and agency of the original practitioners and wearers of these tattoos. Upper caste people can adorn themselves with these appropriated symbols without consequences and receive praise and adoration, while oppressed caste bodies are hurt, policed, controlled, and dehumanized. This appropriation is extremely disrespectful and harmful in a time of Hindu fascism, rampant caste violence, and ongoing labor exploitation of oppressed caste communities, when oppressed caste communities have shaped everything without receiving credit or dignity. They have created the visual expressions and cultures of South Asia and we have to honor them and their artistries. 

Upper caste tattoo artists and non-South Asian artists have a responsibility to practice integrity by honoring and respecting the boundaries and practices of oppressed caste communities. Tattoo artists must incorporate deep research into their practices and integrate anti-caste work into our practices. To be transparent, I am caste privileged, making it an even greater responsibility to challenge this casteist appropriation and actively listen to and support Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi liberation movements. 

Something I have noticed is that a lot of upper caste people in the diaspora will look to aesthetics as an entry point into understanding their identities, but will not think about the artisans and makers behind these crafts, textiles, embroideries, etc. It is in this process that the meanings, intentions, and histories of oppressed caste people get commodified and decontextualized. The irony is that I will see upper caste tattoo artists and people talk about appropriation of their ~culture~ by white people but will not even mention how they are replicating the same dynamic through casteism. Another layer to this is that many upper caste people’s perception of their culture has been shaped by Brahmanism and North Indian Hindu upper caste hegemony, which is inherently violent and problematic. Additionally, while simultaneously taking from Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi visual practices, upper caste people and non-South Asians are romanticizing Southasianness and Hindu imageries with tattoos. This is deeply dangerous as well because of how Hinduism is also appropriated from oppressed caste people and has caste supremacy and brahmanical patriarchy written into its scriptures. The construction of Hindusim as a peaceful, romanticized religion comes from upper caste Hindu elites utiltizing European historiography of India as this mystical peaceful land. Hinduism has been used as a tool for nationalism, fascism, and upholding upper caste ideals. Brahmanism/Hinduism & caste supremacy is a construction by upper caste elites to create systems that subordinate, exploit, and control oppressed caste communities and represent Indian society as a monolith. It was framed as a holy and sacred structure to justify its existence and to maintain its power so deep, deep in the psyche of South Asia and South Asian diasporas. The gravity of this appropriation of tattoo languages by upper caste people is manipulative, immense and wrong by how much trauma and damage casteism has caused and continues to create. These acts are a form of spiritual and political warfare. Nothing is separate from history. Tattoos are political, the body is political, it is the site of imagination and possibilities. It is a reflection of the social, political, emotional, spiritual, psychological and historical ecosystems, circumstances, and journeys they come from. One cannot detach tattoos from history and dynamics of power. 

SA
This is such an in depth interrogation of the violence that exists within so much of South Asian caste culture. Even within the system of yoga, there’s so much space made to critique the west’s appropriation of the practice, and yet so many South Asians are unwilling to address how the practice itself has its roots in violence against lower caste communities. 

Now especially as we are experiencing the peak of Hindu fascism, it’s so interesting how platforms like Instagram get used to proliferate these images of South Asianness funnelled through ~experimental village-esque~ tattoos. It’s so crucial for us to really think about how we are playing into the mass spiritual, institutional and physical erasure of lower caste and historically marginalized South Asian communities. We absolutely need to start interrogating the ways we perform our identities – even more so if we feel like we don’t have a connection to caste dynamics, because that is usually how and why we become so complacent with the romanticization of ‘South Asianness!’ I want to delve so much deeper but I want to be mindful of your time, to end – do you have any resources that you might want to share for folks who are interested in learning more about the caste histories and visual languages of tattooing? And what advice would you give for those who maybe already have markings on their bodies that they weren’t super intentional about? 

K
Yes caste is everywhere and engrained in every facet of life, making it even more important to constantly be interrogating everything we have learned about South Asia and South Asianness. I want to give thanks to the Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi and Muslim activists, scholars, artists, paradigm shifters that I have learned all this information from.

I remember when I was first researching tattoo history in India it was hard to find comprehensive information and now I realize this is because of Brahmanism. I have been learning from Dalit feminists, that this is the savarna washing of history with casteism denying and erasing oppressed communities and their histories and the resources to wholly document their vastness. When I did find articles there was barely mention of caste dynamics and written in condescending or voyeuristic tones. My learning has come from caste oppressed activists, artists, and culture workers on instagrams and thru online articles. B.R. Ambedkar, brilliant Dalit visionary and leader talked about building a counter culture to Hinduism & caste supremacy. This means making sure our tattoo practice feeds a culture that is working towards liberation of oppressed caste communities. Our tattoo practice must nourish a counter culture that honors and encourages healing, transformation, harmony, inner work, accountability, action, communication, research, pleasure, joy and authenticity. 

As I have learned from Ambedkar and other Dalit activists, true allyship means to abolish caste and divest from Hinduism. There is nothing to salvage or reform about institutionalized injustice! 

For deeper learning, there are so many resources online you can find through the Equality Labs page—they have a list of book recs. I would recommend reading The Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar, Debrahmanising History by Braj Ranjan Mani, books by Kancha Ililah, articles by Thenmozhi Soundararajan, to name a few. Follow the pages of Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi artists+ activists. Some wonderful pages to follow– @, @, @, @, @sharminultra, @gracebanu, @ranaayuub, Huma Dar, Yalini Dream, @, @, @, @ and sooo many more. 

Upper caste people must challenge casteism in their families and caste network! As Dalit feminists have stated, the burden should not fall on Dalit people to fight Brahmanical patriarchy and caste apartheid—this is an upper caste creation and upper caste problem. Upper caste people must listen and surrender to Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi leadership, liberation and communities. Organize with folks committed to caste liberation, find an Ambedkarite organization! Upper caste people must engage in deep inner work by taking responsibility for the harm our ancestors have caused and were complicit in. This is healing the conscious, subconscious, and conscious where casteism resides. This is healing and taking responsibility for your bloodline, of reprogramming, dismantling, and interrupting toxic and violent belief systems and behaviors. Because caste is so embedded in our relationships and psyches, it is critical to heal how we build with one another. 

Creating a connection to the self outside of caste supremacy requires us to be creative and open our hearts. We must remember that we have the capacity to grow into other forms of knowing and connection, especially knowings that center liberation. We must remember that we can shapeshift and transform. We can create new worlds, traditions and rituals that affirm life. We have to build relationships outside of assigned illusions of caste supremacy and invite a deeper more radical loving. To the folks who have markings on their bodies that were not very intentional, I would say let this be a learning moment to move with deeper intention, self-interrogation, and research. Let this be a reminder to interrupt casteism and caste apartheid everywhere. May this be a reminder to commit to a lifelong journey of undoing the violent legacies of Brahmanism. May this be a reminder to bring forth the worlds envisioned by caste oppressed communities. May this be a wake up call to fight for the dignity, humanity, autonomy, justice and healing for oppressed caste communities. May this be a reminder of the reparations upper caste people owe oppressed caste people. May this invite you to rewrite history so that the same cycles of history and hatred are not repeated.

is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer born and raised on Tongva Land (Los Angeles). Their creations engage with the journeys of their flesh/spirit, time/less-ness, ritual, flower splendor, the elements, challenging values of oppression, embodiment, rewriting internal & external narratives, detangling pain, dreams, and igniting wonder. They channel through painting, tattooing, graphic design, sensation activation + curation, textiles, installations, and dance, creating lush worlds around saturated loving, healing and existing… new ways of flowing, being, seeing, connecting. Their work is guided by shifting paradigms, transformation, metaphysical spiritual exploration, intuition, creating autonomous affirming spaces that center justice, liberation, love.

Their practice has been an ever flowing journey of constant learning, flowering since 2010. They are interested in reflecting the deep connections between the personal, political, and spiritual. Their work has been and is shaped + informed by decolonization and debrahmanization, anti-capitalist anti-racist organizing, abolition, ending caste apartheid & Islamophobia, Black liberation, queer and trans liberation work, disability justice frameworks, & healing+spiritual justice work~

 

Institutional Obscuration with Zarina Muhammad of the White Pube

Posted on by studioananda_vvxgqu

SA
Hi Zarina! Thanks for making time to speak today – how are you doing?


Z
I’m doing well. It’s been a good week and I’ve just transitioned into doing White Pube full time so I’m juggling a bit but mostly well.

SA
How did that full time transition happen?


Z
Oh, I think it happened a few weeks ago. I normally have a day job, pre pandemic I was working 3 days a week 9-5. And then the pandemic hit and my hours were cut in half so I started doing a day and a half a week. Now I’m doing a half day a week because my job is in the travel industry and that doesn’t exist anymore.

SA
Oh wow, that’s a big shift. How have you and Gabriella been managing the White Pube as you continue to do other work?

Z
It’s always been just the two of us and I think we’ve always been overworked than we have the time for. Rather than using the word busy, I hate the term ‘busy,’ it feels non descriptive at this point. But we’ve always stretched ourselves more than we can accommodate and we’ve always been in a kind of frenzied state in that way. So to be honest, being full time has been nice so I can catch up with stuff.

SA
Can you speak a little more about stretching yourself a bit thin? Did you ever expect that there will ever be a ‘pay off’ for the work that you do? 

Z
It wasn’t immediately that we became stretched too thin. We started the White Pube in 2015 and we were students back then. We didn’t really take it seriously until maybe 6 or 8 months in and even then it was quite manageable. It got a bit mental in 2018, we had a bit of a year that year. The summer was a bit mental. We were included in the Dazed 100 list and we started a Patreon a few months before that and all of a sudden the number of Patreons we had just kind of skyrocketed. All of a sudden we realized we had an audience beyond London and Liverpool’s insular art scene. That’s when we felt a bit of responsibility attached to what we do. Things just started ramping up a bit. Whereas before we were writing a bit and we took it seriously, at times, but it was never more than just thinking. Now it’s become a thing where we’re writing and we have a clear purpose. We’re writing and we have things that we want to materialize or happen or push for and there’s this urgency in at least the UK’s art scene.

I don’t think we started with any hope that it would pay off, because we did start as a joke. It sounds kind of facetious because we did never think that it would pay off. I don’t know why we decided to publish every Sunday, it didn’t make sense now looking back at it, but I don’t think we would have made it this far if we didn’t have that deadline. It’s been a pace that’s kept us going, that once a week deadline. There’s something between Gab and I, this immigrant mentality and oldest daughter syndrome. I don’t think we went into this with the idea that there was going to be a pay off. In our mind it’s more of a colossal laugh. 

SA
What were you and Gab studying when you started? And what were your conversations like when you decided you were going to start The White Pube, however serious or not serious that was?

Z
We met at University. We both went to Central Saint Martins and were studying a BA in Fine Art. We were both in 2D as well which is quite funny because I don’t know if I made a single two dimensional work when I was there. And Gab used to paint in the first year and stopped in the second. But we were in the same tutor groups and so by the time October 2015 came around, we had this relationship that was quite established. There was always a group of people in the studio who just sat around and spoke about things. Saint Martins had this particular studio culture at the time where people would just go in and have a chat about work and life, it was quite conversational. I don’t know what happens in other art schools, but we got quite caught in the institutions of art. This was something that was reinforced in the teachings. 

Saint Martin is in Kings Cross which is North Central London, and it used to be quite a run down area in the sense that it wasn’t highly gentrified and developed. While we were there they just went through this process of gradual upscaling, The Guardian was there and all of a sudden Google moved in and then there were ‘nice’ coffee shops and a &otherstories and fancy clothing stores like NIKE and Cahartt and this was happening over the three years that we were there. All of a sudden now, the area around kings cross is this weird public/private space and the tutors were aware of that. They came from a more radical art school education from the 80s and 90s where you could just have these radical conversations on building an institutional life or living a life of autonomy from institutions and they tried to teach us in a way that made us question the role of institutions in our lives. Gab always says it was like learning how to tell the time, she didn’t know what they were on about until one day it clicked and she was like “I’m in an institution”. And the same for me, I was never that conscious of it and all of a sudden I was hyper conscious. We were in an institution paying something like nine grand a year, borrowing nine grand a year and more on top of that to live that we were never going to pay back through this arts education in an educational establishment that was slowly turning into a ‘University.’ In the 80s and 90s it was this radical art school and now they were teaching us how to do ‘professional development’ and impressing upon us the importance of health and safety and skilling us up to make this a vocational experience, but for what? So, I think the art school itself trained us to fight it. 

That was kind of the general setting so it made sense that in 2015, Gab and I had this experience of knowing each other’s practices. She recommended I go to this show in Chalk Farm which is a short bus ride over from the art school so I went to the show with her review in mind. On the way back I had a copy of the Evening Standard which is this free daily newspaper and there was a review of that show in the newspaper. So all of it in my head at once just clicked. The show, Gabs review, the newspapers review. I kind of realized that art writing as it currently stood didn’t really make sense with the rest of my life. Or the way I interacted with art and the other end of art was theory and this dense impenetrable shit that would never of course make any kind of bearing unless you bothered to interpret it in relation to the show which was also quite dense so you can’t. So there’s no inbetween or middle ground in that. But Gabs review was word of mouth, friend to friend and that made sense. So I came into class with a copy of the Evening Standard and we’d have a conversation about how art writing was bullshit and we should just do it ourselves. Everything clicked. 

SA
It’s so interesting how that happens. I look at my own education in an art school and it’s only when I got into the institution that I became aware of my participation within this system that says it’s doing one thing and is actually doing another. What you’re saying with Gabs review is speaking to the accessibility of understanding so much of this language. So much of this language is made inaccessible to an audience that isn’t an institution. This hyper awareness, in a sense, makes us lucky because we got that in an institution. But what happens when you’re an artist and you’re making work but you’re not exposed to these radical conversations? What happens to artists that need to sell their work and be signed to a gallery? Is this mission behind the White Pube to make these ideas more accessible for these groups of people?

Z
Early White Pube might have said that our main goal was to democratize access to these dodgy art world entities. I think now we’ve kind of moved past that because I don’t know how vigorous that academic understanding of the art world is in comparison to life and the institutions themselves. I think this year we’ve seen that academic institutions can lag behind popular discourse. At the moment, I’m not really sure where our criticism stands in terms of the stodgy monolith of the public because the public is this spectre in relation to art and institutions and artists themselves. We can’t just conjure the public out of nowhere. Often institutions will imagine or create their public which is equally fabricated or non existent. So I’m not really sure where we stand in relation to that. At the moment we are just writing for ourselves to just feel through the ways that institutions rub up against artists specifically and wider as kind of a top layer of an arts ecology that has many levels and stratas and ways of being. Institutions don’t really make much sense to you if you’re a new artist and you’ve never had a show and you’ve just been making work in your bedroom and you live in London so you also have to pay rent and somehow make a living in a 0 hours job, so how are you going to fit art making into that. How does your studio practice work? Institutions don’t come into it, just the fact that you’ve made art is a miracle in itself – that you’ve had space to think. So part of it wants to create a way to write about art and feel through the critical whatevers about art. Ways of thinking about art away from institutions because they clearly lack behind. At the moment, the ways that labor practices are tearing through the art world and the way workers rights are being stripped away wholesale, not just in the arts in the UK but across the world in some parallelled way. It’s not institutions and their language that’s leading the front of the bulge, it’s the people within them that are often exploited by them. That’s a tense question right now.

SA
I feel you. Coming back to this idea of feeling out how you’re rubbing up against these institutions, what does it mean to you as an artist, as a writer who is constantly thinking about your own exploitation, how do you look after yourself and stay grounded? And what advice can you give to artists who are becoming more hyper aware of their conditions in this institution.

Z
Both Gab and myself sit in quite a weird place in that we’ve been incredibly lucky and it’s quite a mystery to us how we’ve done as well as we have, whether that’s well at all, but, as well as we have. The idea that we got this far is entirely a mystery to me. I think it’s a great amount of luck and that luck boils down to our willingness to do this kind of thankless work, week in week out, with no conception of pay off. But also this social literacy when it comes to Instagram and Twitter. We’re quite young and we have this ability to accumulate social capital. So I don’t know how to advise people that sit outside of that or who don’t have access to these very specific things that I have access to. I’m not entirely sure how it’s worked for us.

In terms of my general keeping yourself sane advice, I have not gotten the best track record on that. Over the past five years, it was just this year that I stopped letting this all kind of drive me around the bend and said, alright fuck it I’m going to therapy. And god bless the NHS to be honest, I think it’s completely changed my life. I know there are various critiques of CBT and I know I can’t change the world around me but I can change attitudes towards myself and for some reason that just holds a lot of power right now to me at this moment. 

And maybe in a few years it will stop making sense but I’m going to ride this wave for as long as I can. That seems like the only coherent logic at the moment. I can’t control the Tate or the South Bank or the Barbican, I can’t control any of these institutional players, I can just change myself and the ways that I interact with them. Because of all these little bits of social capital that we’ve accumulated, that’s quite significant. It’s not nothing. I think a really important part of keeping myself sane was recognizing that there are two ways of thinking about things: Things that fall into your sphere of think points and then your sphere of control. Where those overlap, that’s where you need to direct your attention. I can’t do anything about coups in Bolivia so it kind of feels pointless about me worrying about it beyond, ‘oh, that’s quite bad.’Tate workers were on strike and they are facing redundancy and the institution is not giving them the full terms of their redundancy, they’re trying to find loopholes. So what can I do: I can go and speak at the protests, I can badger 60K people on Instagram about it and get them to donate to a strike fund, I can do all these things that I think whenever I feel like I’m going mad, it’s probably because it feels like it’s all a bit out of my control. But I can make tangible contributions to these things that I care about and focusing on the good shit that you can do, no matter how small.

SA
Do you think understanding the institution has helped you understand yourself?

Z
If anything, it’s made myself more illegible. Before this all started I was young, Gab and I were 21, we were fresh and baby faced with no wrinkles or grey hairs. I didn’t know much about myself or the world. By doing The White Pube, we had all these incredible experiences and interactions. It’s not all bad interactions with the institutions by any means. We’ve had these incredible opportunities and have met incredible people, and have these wonderful moments where I’m like, ‘Oh my god I’m so thankful that I do this job, god I’m so blessed.’ Not to sound like a Kardashian, but it’s not all bad. There’s been moments of character development through that, and I think the moments with the institution have obscured any kind of sense of self that I might have accumulated. Because the role of institutions isn’t to be transparent or provide you with information, they’re meant to be opaque, they’re meant to obscure all these things and work you into a higher system of categorization or work in a register slightly above your own so that you’re obscured within it. Whether you work for them or write about them. My life without them would be infinitely more satisfied and fulfilled because then I could just write about the art directly and I wouldn’t have to come up against the institution and registered charity numbers and arts council funding. All of these things get between me and the work and I often feel like my writing about institutions is a diversion or a distraction kind of. I feel like I’d be a much better critic if it weren’t of institutions. I could write about the work in a true interface. Those are the moments that I feel like I’m doing a very good job, or that I’m developing as a critic. The last review that we published was this Sunday, it was an R.I.P Germain show at Dead Yard at the Cubitt and I think any questions I had about the institution evaporated through curation. It was the curators, Languid Hands who are just good, capital G good at what they do. I feel like that was the best thing that I had written in a good few months, maybe this year. It might not be groundbreaking to anyone else but I feel like I broke new ground beneath myself, that had been rumbling away for a few years and that was when the institutions just evaporated away.

SA
How do you find satisfaction and pleasure if you are doing this type of work full time. What’s your go to to help you not feel obscured? When do you feel the most yourself?

Z
That’s a really good question, it’s so fucking philosophical in such an abstract way. Me and Gab wouldn’t be able to do this without each other. I think such a key part of how this all operates is that we are mates, fundamentally, at the base level we have this wholesome friendship. One thing I noticed during the lockdown, without travel, is that I really missed just like going out for dinner in a random European B city. We spent the last year travelling so much, we went to Norway four times and Sweden for no good reason. All these stupid little odd jobs that would pay us tiny bits of money, and we’d get our flights paid and hotel paid. We probably end up spending more on being tourists than what we made, but that felt like a moment where everything was in balance and I could deflate the pressure. Me and Gab would be plodding around Bergen, seeing the sites, going to look at a mountain, having warm apple cider next to a roaring fire in a small cafe. I really missed that this year. I think friendship grounds you, it’s nice to have another person to guide you with a hand on your back. We’re not alone in this experience and any time I do feel slightly obscured or thrown a bit to the wind, it’s always nice to have Gab next to me where I’ll go, “was that a bit weird?” and she’ll respond, “oh yeah that was weird, right?” We can be in cahoots together rather than conspiratorial solitary. Understanding you’re not alone.

SA
I love that because it’s also speaking to I guess the purity of the work that you’re doing because it comes from such nourishing, virtuous and wholesome place. What is your dynamic like working together? How have you established boundaries and transparency being two friends who now have this enormous responsibility and do you think about the ways that you interact with each other as a way that you want to see a lot of these institutions shifting? 

Z
I don’t think we think about the dynamics of our relationship too hard. It just works and we’ve never really questioned it. We were born seven days apart, we’re both Cancers, we have such cosmic alignment. Gab’s a Capricorn moon and is an Aquarius rising and I’m a Sag moon and an Aries rising. For some reason, there’s just this nice dynamic where if I feel like I lack, she has the ability to spur me and push me further. She can take ground on that lack for me. We complement each other quite well. What I’m not good at or battle, she finds easy. She’s very hard working and organized and pushes me. I’m good at procrastinating. Sometimes the admin overlaps in my mind, I’m not very good at that. She’s just like, “no, get it done,” so I’ll be like “ok fine!” Because we have this relationship of deep respect and admiration for each other. Someone recently asked us what the biggest thing we disagreed about is and honestly, we had one argument and it was because I found she did not use the conditioner. I was really baffled. That’s the only time we had an argument and it was so silly. I hope I’m not tempting fate now. We both admire and respect each other’s opinions and craft and interests. Even if we disagree with each other about an artist or artwork, it’s never that deep. We have this balance of always being in conversation and going at the same speed. 

SA
There’s like this element of camaraderie with your work that brings up this idea of incorporating a non serious working environment which is antithetical to an arts institution. It sounds more sustainable and I really appreciate knowing that that’s how you two mesh together. Can you speak to your daily routine, things that have kept you going and grounded?

Z
There are obviously things, but for me the most important one was, I started therapy last year towards Autumn and it wasn’t full CBT because the NHS won’t refer you to full CBT. So I did mini CBT and then started full CBT in the second week of the lockdown, it felt really crazy. My therapist kept saying “Don’t be too hard on yourself if this takes longer, because this is mental for me too!” It just lasted a bit longer than it had to, but it was really good, it was the right time and spaced out in the right way. The perfect time for me to work on me, specifically. Even now as we are going back into lockdown, I feel like a more healthier person because of that. 

I am a creature of routine. So I’ll wake up at 7 am every single day, no idea why. I won’t even lie in on a weekend. Part of this isn’t really true, sometimes I’ll oversleep on a Saturday and it’s fine. But when I oversleep I’ll wake up and feel hideous in the face. So I wake up early, have breakfast and make two cups of coffee. And then I’ll sit down, faff around, do a bit of work – one week is a writing week and one is an admin week. If I’m writing, I’ll only really start at about 11:30 am, will probably only get an hour in before lunch and then probably only get an hour in before it’s time to stop in the evening. If I’m doing admin, it’ll be fine, I’ll do little bits

Lockdown was hard because I couldn’t go to the gym. I don’t really have the motivation to workout in the living room or go for a run in the great outdoors, I need to go to a place and have the only reason I’m at the place to be to exercise. So that was a bit of a mental one for my routine. Every single night at half six, I have to stop working because I’m going to the gym. I’ll spend an hour at the gym and then it feels weird going back to work. Before I was sending emails till like 11 pm, no etiquette. And I was quite overworked. So now I have an end of a day and that’s more important. In the grand structure of the day, I think it’s important to have a solid beginning and a solid ending. You do the job you have to do in the amount of time that you give yourself. 

I really miss being on public transport and just the mundane everyday bits and pieces I was doing before. So the small bits of normality are helping me through.