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If you would be interested in personal sharing, receiving a deck and more information information or discuss the possibility of organizing a reading session with us, reach out to us via email
tarot.reshape@gmail.com

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BACKGROUND THINKING / Governance of the Possible

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BACKGROUND THINKING / Governance of the Possible

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Documentation of the research of Governance of the Possible

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Fair governance models
Following the call of the RESHAPE Network to reimagine alternatives for the European arts ecosystem - specifically fairer governance models - we built a collective proposal for action underpinned by a new paradigm.

It is built from the bottom up, informed by artists' and arts worker's practice through a sensitive co-writing process. Starting from our specific Western European context, this material is limited to this subjectivity, but it is shaped in affinity with many other voices and informed by a wide range of knowledge and intuitions. As with all movements, it is on the way and unfinished by nature.

Marion Aland, 2020

Paradigm shift

No messing, we dive straight in at the deep end. Western society, and in turn its cultural sector, is built on the principles of exploitation and extraction (of others and of the environment) and there is no way out of this mindset and the structures created by these principles without first truly acknowledging this.

The dominant players in the art world are operating in the frontline of neoliberalism and embody its ideologies, acting as if there is no alternative. They may have recently acknowledged the Black Lives Matter movement, the climate crisis, and the exploitation of this neoliberal ideology, but have not made it their central preoccupation to imagine, propose, and experiment with alternative structures and governance to truly make change happen - these remain thematics for artistic programmes rather than urgent calls to reorganise and confront these hyperobjects. This is in spite of the tireless work, generosity, and energy of artists and activists working on the frontline of these movements. The cultural sector continues to gain social capital from their radical ideas and reimaginings, yet its institutions remain largely untouched. More specifically, in terms of governance - institutions continue to replicate and rely on structures that keep themselves safe and 'neutral' - remaining accountable to funders and professionalised boards rather than to the artists and communities they are set up to serve.

Understanding how these forces play out on the ground, across geographies and contexts, has been central to this work. Throughout the RESHAPE programme we have mentally and physically trodden a series of intersecting (often contradictory) desire lines. One line taking us towards models and methods to reshape the cultural sector through processes of listening, moving over and centring the voices of those who have been most deeply affected by this exploitation, another heading towards the total abolition of the sector understanding that reshaping is no longer possible the end must happen for something new to grow. After a year of collective learning we stand at this juncture - sharing ideas and prototypes that call to the sector and its operators (of which we are part) to drastically reinvent governance perspectives and operational logics whilst simultaneously understanding that in some cases this reinvention might call for an abolition. Over the next few pages, we are carefully taking our next steps...

To start making this work/prototype/change we first need to break with the harmful relationships, practices, and structures that choke our ability to imagine anew. To do this we will leave behind European institutions and funding bodies, which measure and reward the efficacy of our work and ways of being based on ideals of 'artistic excellence'. In Western Europe this is a concept established through a euro-centric education and colonial gaze. It encourages us to operate within timescales and budgets that call for individualised hypermobility, all of which favours those with freedom of movement, with citizenship, and those without care duties but with cash in the bank. Indeed, how can these institutional ideals and related practices that are based on the continuation of inequality ever be labelled 'excellent'?

Instead of a cultural sector that sets out to establish unfair and unequal driving ambitions, such as 'artistic excellence', we start this prototype with the call for a new paradigm in the arts. A paradigm that builds on a culture of co-responsibility and collective survival of the living, the free and of justice. By shifting towards a paradigm truly rooted in social justice we are then able to create models that imagine fairer ways of being together and value the most vulnerable in our communities, rather than seeking to 'include' them in the structures that are designed to exclude.

Within this new paradigm we can work together to create new narratives, common goals, forms of cooperation instead of competition, informed by a wide range of understandings, lived experiences and perspectives. In the following, we explore how we are starting to do this work through a collective space we call Governance Of The Possible.

Lydia Hamann & Kaj Osteroth, 2020

Governance of the possible (GOTP)

Over the past year we have developed a collective space for developing fairer governance models in the arts initiated through the RESHAPE programme and tested within our own roles and organisations. During our working sessions in Tangier, informed by the informal architecture of the city and related conversations with Think Tangier, we started to call this practice 'Governance Of The Possible' (GOTP), referring to the architecture of the possible, where urgent needs and informality define the next step.

Governance Of The Possible encompasses a prefigurative politics where the process of developing new forms of governance is valued as much as the outcome of instituting it. It provides a space to experiment with and implement forms of cultural governance that are intuitive, playful, and collective. A space to imagine a different way and start moving in spite of the heaviness and legal ramifications of such reorienting. We believe there is no fairness in governance without a sense of faerieness (fairyness) - bringing lightness, magical relationships with the world and each other, possibilities to transform, and a starting point of no single origin/position into the field.

We operate within GOTP to transport us to a world where the artistic paradigm has shifted already. We no longer set out to achieve imposed ideals of artistic excellence, we are no longer hypermobile, we do not strive to represent our nation, and we shun practices and processes that have us compete with allies. By practicing GOTP we can liberate ourselves from fighting for our own jobs or the survival of our individualised cultural organisations. Instead we refocus and regroup, centred on a responsibility of creating a culture of collective survival.

Through GOTP we collectively explore anti-oppressive forms of governance that allow multiplicity to flourish. GOTP is not a new model or a clear set of guidelines on governance. It's not another tool that defines who's in and who's out. It's a radical call to rethink the mechanisms of exclusion being practiced in our capitalist societies and institutions. It's a construction site full of opportunities built by many hands and taking multiple forms.

We believe that collectivity will help us navigate towards a culture of collective survival in a moment of absence of policy to underpin this movement. In our practices we experiment with building networks of trust. We start with the people around us. We try to understand the needs. We observe. We believe in the transformative powers of this dialogue and collaboration, building an infrastructure of the human and non-human relations we have.

Within GOTP we imagine ways of how to start operating in the shifted paradigm and how to work and how to be together. It sets out a range of possible governance strategies, actions, and tools. What we're aiming for is to build an affective - rather than effective - infrastructure together.

We gather around these topics outlined below. It's a starting point for observation, sensing, discussion, and the formulation of a collective answer or answers.

Being many

Who are 'we'?
How can we hear and respect multiple voices?
What voices do we hear and which voices might be silenced?
Are we building (better) relationships with the more than human world?
Where and how do we gather?
How are decisions made?
Is there space for disagreement and how do we handle it?
How do we work through conflict?
Can conflict inform common understanding?
What's the point of collective difference?
How and where can kinship appear?

Sharing values

What's the common ground we build on?
What values do we collectively hold close and why?
How can we ensure we are accountable to these values?
What if these values are not being centred by those we work and connect with?
How can our shared values drive an affective infrastructure?
Do we articulate values publicly?
What if values become obsolete?

Root and connect

Resourcing

Evaluation

Fair(y)ness

De-project

How to break out of the project(s) mentality?
Can we move to cycles, series and shadows instead?
How to operate within longer interconnected logics?
How to establish a lifetime (human/planetary) of support and care?
How to embrace loss of control?
Where are our savage places?

How to end

When is it time to leave?
Can we compost into something else?
How do we know when we are no longer needed?
How to tell others if so?
How to deal with your own ego?
How is our legacy (and related knowledge) shared?
How to celebrate the end?

How to start

What's the first step?
Are we guided by the practice of listening?
How to re-image the new without replicating?
How do we ensure that the new grows from the rich compost of knowledge created before?
How to be many?

The order of these points allows for an organic build-up to a process of fair(y)er collective governance. The last point acknowledges the process is cyclical. You can dive in at another point or another moment and navigate to the questions again.

GOTP values many positions of knowledge and allows multiple readings. In order to foster playfulness and encourage responses from other perspectives, GOTP includes a collection of practices we have used over the past few years.

Robyn Cook, 2020

A collection of (GOTP) practices

Through being and working together we have developed and practiced a number of tools to help imagine and articulate our thoughts, emotions, and (political) positions. They are part of an ongoing, alive process that is built through wider collective conversations. We hope that by sharing some collective practices we will be able to find resonance with others who are demanding and implementing forms of governance that are collective, open, playful, joyous, and resistant.

Sensitive Co-writing

What is 'Fair Governance' when it comes to the writing of (this) text? Together, yet individually, we governed the writing through listening, sensing and letting it happen and not worrying about authorship. We agree on what the result means through mutual consent: we accept initiatives of others and its difference, but we react if one of us thinks that this is harmful for the writing project as a whole. The misunderstandings, meanderings, and mistakes sometimes take us in fruitful directions.

By writing in this way we were and we are developing practice and ideas simultaneously, exploring dynamics of our collective difference, reaching out to an understanding beyond a personal point of view, beyond group dynamics and potentially beyond human-centred logics. We aim to create a voice that is not homogenised or disembodied from the collective that created it and we attempt to break away from the unaccountable, mono-institutionalised voice and instead to hold a space for and reflect the many people involved in the writing and creation process.

This is how it worked and works for us:

Together, we talk and listen actively.
We use metaphors, images and materials to describe what we mean.
We take notes in a shared document.
We take a break.
We have a collective reflection on the notes and together work towards formatting them.
Notes become headers for texts that are started by someone written in their preferred colour (say old pink), it is developed by another (in my fav jumper blue) and then another (for example deep purple).
We have a collective conversation on that rainbow of thoughts.
We transform text - we agree on a uniform colour, managing to articulate many divergent thoughts and voices.
We take time together - thinking through making.

GOTP Tarot Deck

As we were building Governance Of The Possible we wanted to talk and think about it more widely when our own understandings were still amorphous and unclear. We needed a tool to open up conversation about collective governance with others without clearly defining or indeed owning this space. We wanted to be able to talk about and shape our thoughts whilst also allowing for multiple readings and opinions, fostering playfulness, opening up to extended realities, encouraging responses from another perspective, bringing us away from a perceived position of knowledge and embracing spirituality and the more than human.

We began to use a set of tarot cards designed by the US artist Lisa Sterle which we annotated; first according to themes outlined within Reinventing Organizations by Laloux but later revised to what was emerging from conversations with artists and arts workers operating within forms of collective governance. We held several collective readings with the cards in a number of settings to garner a range of knowledge and interpretations - from an online new business models webinar to intimate conversations with lovers.

Developed and designed collaboratively with commissioned artists, each involved in collectives in different ways, we produced nine GOTP tarot cards. They have been interpreted and translated from the Rider-Waite tarot cards in accordance to a specific aspect of collective governance. We later joined these cards with a number of other tarot cards produced by the Transnational/Postnational Artistic Practices RESHAPE group to create a full major arcana of 22 cards.

We will gift the printed card decks to GOTP co-conspirators to be used as a practical tool for asking difficult or yet unknown questions and facilitate the building of their own evolutive collective forms. It allows us to escape from the logics of the current paradigm and together reroute the system.

Fairy Purse

The Fairy Purse is a tool to rethink fair payment and remuneration. It is intended to bring three concepts together: a self/group-assessment, flexible salary, and the Common Wallet. It is an attempt to bring attention to dominant remuneration systems, shedding light onto blind spots and unfair practices that traditional systems bring (especially within precarious employment, which is rife in the arts). It can provide inspiration to install one's own fair(y) remuneration system within an organisation and, thirdly, it highlights the multiple economies that can expand monetary reward.

In the Fairy Purse we still count the hours we work, but we put light on the periphery of that timeline. As such, it is a tool that can help to deal with the line between 'work' and 'leisure' time, which is systemically blurred in the arts sector anyway and often very problematic. Unlike many existing remuneration systems, the Fairy Purse can easily react to constant or unexpected change, in terms of personal engagement, but also in terms of budgetary changes.

The Fairy Purse doesn't exceed an existing budget. People receive 'fairy points' (this can be renamed for each organisation), which is basically measuring engagement such as: time spent, quality of the work, personal benefits, or general needs. The conversion of such fairy points into money depends on the existing budget in accordance with the actual needs of people. It is possible to convert fairy points into money later or having other advantages, exchanges, or remuneration options.

In GOTP practice, the Fairy Purse can be used for a singular project or can even be institutionalised on a regular monthly basis. A sense for fair(y)ness is a condition of the Fairy Purse, but it is also its aim: practicing the Fairy Purse should enforce and sharpen the sense of fair(y)ness.

Have a deeper dive into this here.

Autonomous Board for Something Else

This is the offer of a temporary alliance, forming a cluster of practices around a stuck issue of or around collective governance. The autonomous board joins together with others, like a slime mould or an inflatable parliament, gathering around specific local contexts (in urge or needs) and tries to get some collective governance going.

The Autonomous Board for Something Else can:

suggest structures that centre the new paradigm;

support through a process of peer collective learning;

share knowledge and networks of others working with alternate structures;

formulate collective rituals and allow space for healing;

get your ass moving and stop pissing around. ☺

Practically, any group, collective department, institution, organisation, foundation or directory office can reach out to the board. One of us - geographically proximate - visits the place of concern physically in order to build a temporary board. Together with another 'one of us' who is based in a different geographic area, several local people are invited to the discussions, as well as local representatives of non-human entities all working as equal members. The autonomous board must represent the three paradigm shift points, defending the survival of the living, the free and justice, acting as agents for those values defined for this specific situation.

Together offering a space for naming harmful practices and rebuilding again through collective learning, knowledge exchange and healing.

Painting by Lidia Sciarrotta - photograph by Latifa Saber, 2020

An Invitation

We call for institutions, arts funders, governments, and artists to join a shift of paradigm moving from the survival of the individual towards the collective survival of the living, the free and of justice.

Conspiracy has always been a common practice in the arts. We've all bent the interpretation of funds and frameworks to do what we are supposed to do. But what if we value this intersubjective network in its full potential? What if we go back to the etymological meaning of conspiracy, breathing together, or even the more general sense of 'plotting'. What if we orient our plotting from individual to collective, to organisation, to institution, to funders and framers, to recover its deep subversive function?

In order to change the dominant ideology that has a control on the future, you have to sabotage the current paradigm based on work, productivity, and success or rather exploitation and inequality. Climate catastrophes and Covid-19 show that it's not enough to stop functioning for a while to open up the space for another future. We'll need to roll up our sleeves, take a deep breath and make this future together.

We invite you to become part of a multi-scaled foamy fairy network. An organism formed of interconnected bubbles growing sideways and forming a cushion of mutual exchange, support, fluid knowledge, and joyful resistance.
governanceofthepossible@riseup.net
Where our understanding is rooted

Around Labour, Art and The Auratic Condition (This is not a love song) by 3137

Art and Sustainability by Sacha Kagan, 2011, Transcript Verlag Bielefeld

Care and radical care: https://syllabus.pirate.care

Commonism, A New Aesthetics of the Real by & (eds), 2018

Conspiratorial institutions? by Jesus Carrillo

Convivialist manifesto

Friendship and freedom

How together? Publication at the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019 by Construct Lab

Reinventing Organizations by Frédéric Laloux, 2014

Sociocracy 3.0

Sociocracy. The Organization of Decision-making by G. Endenburg, Eburon

Staying with the Trouble by Donna J. Haraway, Duke University Press, 2016

The Almanac

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project publications - From The Bottom Up

The Total Work of the Cultural Institution, Yazan Khalili with Rayya Badran

Transformative Justice

'On Democracy and Occupation. Horizontality and the Need for New Forms of Verticality' by Isabell Lorey, 2013

'Project's Horizon: On Time, Creativity and Art' by Bojana Kunst

The Project at Work by Bojana Kunst

Spaces of Commoning: Artistic Practices, the Making of Urban Commons and Visions of Change (2014-16)

Communitism in Athens, Greece

Common Wallet: Practiced by a Belgian group of ten art workers, sharing the same bank account

Glasgow Women's Library - Glasgow, Scotland

Kaaitheater: guided by the question 'how to be many'

La Coutellerie in Fribourg, Switzerland

Theaterhaus Gessnerallee in Zürich, Switzerland

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York, USA

Think Tangier

Peer to Peer foundation

Women's Center For Creative Work

How this is inspiring our own practice(s)?

Helga Baert is giving direction to the multi-voiced artistic team of wpZimmer to become a space that hosts formal and informal relationships of exchange, care, and responsibility and to foster artistic development processes; we decided to be multi-voiced at the root.

Martin Schick works as an artist in cultural management. For blueFACTORY, a public-private innovation district, he develops a cultural concept inspired by Social Permaculture. With TRNSTN he is co-constructing a cross-sectoral organisation with a dynamic governance model based on the model of holacracy.

Sam Trotman is director at Scottish Sculpture Workshop (SSW) in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. She is currently working with the team at SSW and a range of artists, local communities and partners to build collective governance practices for the organisation.

Saoirse Anis, 2020
Developed in the framework of the RESHAPE trajectory Fair Governance Models by its members: Helga Baert, Eduardo Bonito, Virdžinija Đeković Miketić, Fatin Farhat, Katarina Pavić, Ilija Pujić, Martin Schick, Sam Trotman, and Claire Malika Zerhouni. This text is licensed under the Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

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Fair governance models Following the call of the RESHAPE Network to reimagine alternatives for the European arts ecosystem - specifically fairer governance models - we built a collective proposal for action underpinned by a new paradigm. It is built from the bottom up, informed by artists' and arts worker's practice through a sensitive co-writing process.

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ON RITUALS & GUIDE TO DESIGN YOUR OWN RITUALS

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ON RITUALS & GUIDE TO DESIGN YOUR OWN RITUALS

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Welcome to the Depository of practices related to the tarot card deck of Archetypes of the Journey & Governance of the Possible prototyped in the frame of RESHAPE research process.
DOP is an open-source platform to be used to gain profound information about the cards, the research & the guidance for usage as well as a shared library of possible interpretations & expanded practices.

We invite you to interact with the DOP, contribute with your own thoughts & experience. Please take care of it with sensitivity & curiosity.

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TBA / Reading designed to imagine the future

1st card // dream future // what does it consist of? How does it look like? Who is present in it and who is absent?
2nd card // journey // what tools could help us on our journey? Which detours should we search for?
3rd card // internal resources // what traits should we empower in ourselves? what do we have to learn and unlearn?
4th card // networks // which networks are available? Which should we create or abolish? What kind of support are we looking for?
5th card // hint // what should be subject of our attention? What might be hidden? What do we keep overlooking?

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TBA / reading inspired by the 3rd quarter of the moon / reading of the transition

...
1st card // ..

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TBA //

"what we can take from a particular experience to design our own systems/constellations/relationships?"

1st card / system we live in
2nd card / what we can get from it
3rd card / our intentions
4th card / what systems we want to create?

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Below we propose some ways of reading and some spreads for the cards, inspired by some classic tarot spreads as well as newly designed readings

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EtherCalc - Share the URL to your friends and edit together!

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BACKGROUND THINKING / Archetypes of the Journey

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BACKGROUND THINKING / Archetypes of the Journey

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Documentation of the research of Archetypes for the Journey

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Transnational / postnational artistic practices
Imagining an artworld "after the national", this prototype guides you in putting connection before movement in a transnational and postnational art practice.

Our journey with trans- and postnational practices

For many art workers, working across borders is an essential part of the job. Many of us travel or collaborate across the globe, or invite artists from around the world into our organisations. Even if our organisations or our practices are strongly locally defined, we often relate to what is happening in the broader art field. Discourses and trends quickly cross borders. While working beyond and despite borders, we are not necessarily working 'inter'-nationally; meaning using our nation states to define us. But rather 'trans-' or 'post-' nationally; queering or diminishing the importance of national borders by placing the similarities and differences elsewhere than in national identity. We might hope that this perspective brings about awareness, empathy, and inspiration.

However, this kind of movement also holds some risks. Artists, curators, and researchers may have become privileged carriers of new knowledge(s), making overlooked realities visible, breaking down grand narratives, constantly eroding otherness. But the urge to travel, to constantly meet 'the new' or 'the other' can become an unsustainable practice reproducing destructive tendencies in our society, in the light of climate change, in the light of personal stability and sense of place and connection. During our RESHAPE process, we looked at the risks inherent in trans- and postnational practices in order to work on tools that can guide us towards making connection rather than movement central in our work. Coming from different corners of a continent (Europe) and a sea (the Mediterranean) we wanted to unite our situated experiences. We want to reshape the journey not only to include highways but also footpaths, detours, and alternative routes.

We analysed the unsustainability of trans- and postnational practices as having the following risks:

Self-congratulatory hypermobility, where the art worker jumps from residency to presentation venue, never really touching ground and taking this mobility itself as a measure of success. This often comes with the risk of exhaustion and burnout.

The lure of othering and exoticism, a practice where experiences are organized in categories of 'us' and 'them' within a Western gaze, and every encounter is seen as an exotic novelty, rather than as a personal meeting. Related to this is the creation of an artistic monoculture, where the specific context of arts practitioners is seen as inferior to the 'festival canon'. Work coming from different places starts to look more and more alike. Specific ideas around 'good art' and 'taste' or 'quality' are being exported, without looking critically at what these ideas are grounded in. The art world is being seen as having a centre and margins, where the margins have to assimilate to the centre.

Exclusion of those who cannot or choose not to be mobile, either due to visa issues, socio-economic context, or the non-recognition of certain practices as valuable.

Ecological neglect, due to excessive travelling in unsustainable ways.

Especially in Covid-19 times we observed a tendency of conforming, everyone moving online at once, the lack of development of other formats, the pressure to continue just like everyone else.

We dared to speculate that these risks represent a strong impact on the mind, our capacity to connect deeply to others, and therefore our political possibility for action.

We exchanged about the following questions:

What are the dialogues and non-dialogues between nomadic artists and the temporary communities they inhabit? In our search for the other, how can a true encounter be achieved?

How is travel affecting our personal life and our sense of connection?

How to recognise dynamics of othering?

How can travel or exchange increase diversity of practices and understanding, rather than promoting a homogenisation of artistic practice or the establishment of a new canon coming from a specific Western or European gaze?

Who are given the possibility to travel? Who are not invited?

How are people traveling and to what extent is the ecological impact of these choices taken into account?

What actions can be regenerative, on a human and ecological level?

What is increasing the pressure to act in a certain way?

While trying to find an answer to these multiple issues, something unexpected happened. A novel condition that showed the vulnerability, and the limits of our practices. Indeed, the global pandemic has forced many to be immobile, to live in lockdown. The rapid spread of the invisible threat, its unstoppable journey, has sharpened some questions, and made other reflections emerge:

In this shifting and unpredictable context, how do we reconnect to each other from a place of isolation?

How do we extend solidarity when we can't physically meet?

How do we create and inhabit spaces of dissonance, where different voices can be heard?

And how do we develop artistic practices when one of the core premises - that of humans gathering to experience something unknown - is no longer possible?

On the process

drawing by Ingrid Vranken

We started from here: an extensive mind map reflecting on what trans- and postnational artistic practices mean. Weary to generalize, we chose to start from our different personal experiences. What does it mean for each of us? We soon came to understand the vast difference in our experiences. This made us realise that the ideal system or collective that we could envision together, is not necessarily a physical space where we gather or connect directly; it is rather a flexible ecosystem that people can grow themselves, and make it relevant to their different contexts and realities all over the world, in an international or local setting.

During our research we chose to focus on the change-making potential of every single individual within the arts field. Not in a neoliberal effort to redirect responsibility for change to the individual, but rather as a mystical provocation where we believe that every act we perform within our organisations or practice can be an instigator of change. Driven by a radical belief in interconnectedness, we acknowledge that when one part changes, the whole system changes. So how can we tap into that potential?

During our process we did the following:

Identify the senses that we need to cultivate in order to develop change-making actions.

Play with these senses in creative and poetic ways, for example by growing plants and observing them, exchanging letters, circulating a box full of personal messages among us and testing the physical and emotional boundaries that keep us apart.

Create rituals that sharpen these senses and start to practice them ourselves.

Adapt the rituals to institutional or organisational contexts.

Form small working groups to receive feedback and speculate through a questionnaire and a survey circulated within the RESHAPE Group of practitioners.

Analyse the results and create a symbolic system of Archetypes that reflects on these results.

Bringing all of the work together in a Virtual Exhibition.

We have identified senses we think should be cultivated in order to move towards more mindful practices of (im)mobility, that prioritise connection over production, generosity over extraction. We have developed tools such as Archetypes, represented by a set of tarot cards, Rituals, and finally a where we explore and share a set of models and best practices for a transnational and postnational artistic and cultural field.

By Archetype, we understand a model that gets repeated over and over again in society. In order to change the way we work, we need to change the archetypes by which we structure our practice or our organisation. We chose to develop a set of archetypes based on the Major Arcana in the tarot as it is known in the West. These archetypes were developed in an attempt to flesh out the different 'senses' we want to embrace.

By Rituals we don't mean a metaphysical expression towards another unreachable realm, but materialist practices that connect us to the here and now. Through shifting our attention, the world shifts. Psychological research shows that rituals have actual effects on people's thoughts, behaviours and feelings. We propose a set of rituals that propose ways to bring the senses and archetypes into our daily lives and work environments.

In the Virtual Exhibition 'A Complex Journey' we share the collaborative process with the RESHAPE community. With this experimental mediascape we want to present a constellation of knowledge(s) including our own proposals alongside research texts, artistic projects, organisations and initiatives that reflect upon mobility issues, contributed by various people in the network. This complex journey is unfinished, and remains open with the aim to give you the chance to contribute and be part of it.

Sensing the Journey

We propose thinking through the metaphor of the journey, a journey that we take to create the change we need to see in our work. We do not want to set off on our journey with our eyes and ears closed. We decided we needed to develop some additional senses in order for the journey we propose to be regenerative. To counter the issues within (im)mobile artistic practices, we have identified five senses that could be tools in leading the way in our search for change: sense of Place, sense of Multiplicity, sense of Connection, sense of Generosity, and sense of Break.

Each of these senses responds to a particular problem, is linked to several Archetypes (elaborated in the next chapter) and is addressed through several Rituals (idem). We chose to work with senses in an attempt to follow feeling and bodily experience over cognitive processes, and move away from the moral or judgemental connotations of values or principles.

Sense of Place

We came to sense of Place, from a concern around hypermobility. When hopping from one country to another, or when in isolation, do we actually know where we are? Do we know how to create a relationship with where we are and who else is there? To know what it means to be in relationship with our surroundings, we wanted to learn from plants, those who grow from their environment, translating their surroundings into their form - each leaf expressing the way in which the light moves throughout the day, each root a calligraphy of where water can be found. By growing from an environment, the environment grows through you. Can mobile art-workers grow from the environments they are in, in the same way as plants do? Growing a sense of place could mean an increase of attention to the contexts in which we are working, who is part of that context, and what our own role is in that context. How does our context express itself in our work? Can we leave the places we work better than we found them? Sense of place pushes us to create long lasting relationships through and within our work.

In reaction to: hyper-mobility

Archetypes: The Traveller, Boundaries, World

Sense of Connection

We came to sense of Connection when talking about exclusion of those who cannot be mobile, or choose not to be. Sense of Connection desires to find ways to be together, to support each other, even if we cannot meet. By sharpening our sense of connection we would like to have more attention for who is not present, and how to include absent voices. But also how to fully appreciate everyone around the table in our working environment, and not make anyone feel invisible or unimportant. Sense of Connection could mean to make sure we document our processes, that we share what we know, that we make time and space for informal meetings and checking in with partners, former collaborators, and so on.

In reaction to: exclusion

Archetypes: The Mirror, The Call, Embodied Knowledges

Sense of Generosity

We came to sense of Generosity when talking about ecological neglect. How can we foster a radically generous way of being in the world? So rather than taking (from each other, but also from the earth itself in the sense of raw materials), we can focus on nourishing and care-taking.

Can we imagine ways of art-making and art-presenting that produce access and provide the conditions for both artists and audiences to thrive, to connect, and exchange? A practice not only concerned with its own life forms, but making life possible for others - human and other-than-human alike.

If we want to commit to that, we might want to start thinking about how we travel, how we feed ourselves, where the materials we use come from, but also how we treat each other and ourselves. When thinking about generosity, within a system that has brought so many people to burnout, we feel vulnerable ourselves.

Within our organisations and practices we might find space to create a generous attitude within a system that we recognise as exploitative, and speak out when we see or feel exploitation.

In reaction to: ecological neglect

Archetypes: The Garden, Reciprocity, Compost

Sense of Multiplicity

We came to sense of Multiplicity through discussing homogenisation of artistic practices and a lack of awareness of or interest in other value systems. We'd like to ask how we define the common ground and who is being left behind its frames? How to make sure to be open to the diversity of perspectives and standpoints, especially the ones we might not know how to read? Can we keep renegotiating the frames of our organisation/programme/institution? How can we invite different perspectives into our practices, and consider ourselves students again? Sense of multiplicity challenges us to step out of hierarchical value systems and find ourselves holding space for many voices and perspectives simultaneously.

In reaction to: artistic monoculture, othering and exoticism

Archetypes: Beyond the bloody ego (see Fair Governance), The Canon

Sense of Break

Sense of Break emerged from the experience of Covid-19. Many things stopped and at the same time, the pressure on many art workers increased. The differences and inequalities already present were made even more visible. The push to conform to online models and a sense of 'continuing as normal', made many of us feel alienated from our work. Sense of Break proposes a moment of pause. Not to relax, but to suspend action and observe first. Sense of Break acknowledges these moments in which we cannot make sense of it all; it sees the potential of chaos and disruption. Sense of Break is about the experience of burnout or the pressures to conform and move on that most of the art workers and practitioners are facing.

In reaction to: conformity and burnout

Archetype: Shock, Joy

Walking with archetypes and rituals

Both the Archetypes and the Rituals are imagined as tools for artists and art-workers, to use as means to shift focus in their daily life and work. The tools are designed to be adapted depending on the setting of the practice (on an individual or institutional level). We have some suggested uses, but they are first and foremost an invitation to play and observe.

The journey itself is a well-known Western archetype, a narrative repeated over and over again, from the Greek epos and the medieval songs about knights to action-hero movies, a story that is continually retold, footsteps that many of us follow when we narrate our own lives. But the archetype of the journey also appears in many Middle Eastern cultures, often related to seeking the path of God, of truth, of purification, self-discovery and growth. Going on a journey means observing where one is, cultivating a desire for the unknown, collecting the courage to step out, growing through encounters, and coming back changed. It is this archetype of the journey that also appears in the tarot. The tarot tells the story of a figure setting out, naive and hopeful, encountering many entities and experiences, translated into 22 Archetypes. Each of these encounters holds the possibility to view the world differently. Each Archetype invites the reader to look at the situation from a different angle, to be aware of blind spots, and find the potential for change. It is this journey that we would like to repeat here, with new archetypes - drawing from the traditions of the tarot as used in the West, but re-imagining them through the senses we want to cultivate.

We present our archetypes in the same order as in the Rider-Waite or Marseille tarot deck. The Major Arcana was split up between Trans-/Postnational practices and the Fair Governance - The Governance Of The Possible trajectory. The Major Arcana is split into two approaches, one focusing on the individual position, and one focusing on collective governance. These two journeys meet up in one set of cards. In this document we will be presenting Archetypes 0-5 and 16-21.

Each Archetype is joined with a Ritual. The function of Ritual in the community is that of providing practical actions to change our relationship with what surrounds us. With the introduction of Rituals we propose playful ways to bring the five senses and the proposals of the Archetypes into our daily lives and work environments.

0. The Traveller (based on The Fool / Sense of Place)

The Traveller is a searcher for new beginnings. Although enthusiastic and exuberant, the traveller can also be a bit naive, stepping into the unknown, believing in good outcomes. Wanting to escape locality, the traveller is privileged to hop from one place to the next, but risks attaching self-worth and the idea of success to how much and how far they travel. This condition is often precarious and the traveller can become exhausted. The speed at which they push themselves forward into the next 'somewhere' does not allow for place to materialize. Ready to board yet another plane, they may be missing what is happening closer to home, or in their folly of networking, may be devoting less time and attention to each contact they make. The traveller invites us to stay both courageous and naive, but not forget to look around us and see who is traveling together with us, who might be warning us for dangers ahead. The traveller tells us we are always travelling somewhere, a place that needs our care and attention too; and we are never traveling alone.

The archetype of the Traveller invites us to ask ourselves: What does the promise of mobility mean to me? Where am I rushing to, and what do I expect from it? What do I take with me on my journey? Who is joining me on my journey? What are the things around me that I am not seeing? Where can guidance be found? How am I travelling and what is the impact of this method on my environment and/or my connection to place? How do we learn from and enrich the places we travel through?

Associated ritual: the hidden ayat - Although meaning 'verses' when using the Quran, it is doubtful whether 'ayat' means anything other than 'signs', 'proof', or 'remarkable event' in the Quran's text. The 'signs' refer to various phenomena, ranging from the alternation between day and night, rainfall, or the life and growth of plants.

We propose to challenge the integrity of the status quo, to inhabit ambiguity and that which is hidden, activating not-knowing, the spaces in between.

Look for pencils, scissors, colour pens and markers, tapes of different sizes, or just a piece of blank paper to write on. If needed, look for a supply store and buy or borrow what is needed, always in moderation.

Once back to your nest, either temporary or not, concentrate on the textual or visual message you want to pass through.

When you are ready, take this creative trace, your ayat, and hide it.

The process of hiding has to be also a way of commencing a guidance, to reorient.

Once you find the hidden place, leave the room and go for a short walk. Do not expect much, just forget about it or wander, your imagination can indeed guide you to other lands and possible outcomes but the possibilities you know of the effects and continuity of your creative act, your ayat, will most probably remain unknown, enhancing indeed magic.

1. Compost (based on The Magician / Sense of Generosity)

Compost is magic. Compost sees the potential in what others consider garbage and knows how to wield and transform the material it is given. Compost asks us to stand still and look at what is already there. What is it that we have accumulated? What seems mundane, maybe even trash, could be powerful tools and knowledge, holding the potential for transformation and growth. Compost looks at the material world and sees it as a playground of infinite possibility and creation. As an artist or art-worker we might not always recognise the mountains of knowledge(s) and skills that we have already gathered within our practice or our organisations. But also, in what ways are our organisations and our practices already composting? To what or whom are they fertile grounds? Everything we need in order to change our practices might already be there, we just have to apply ourselves differently and also see our failures and mundane tasks as the places where transformation can be happening. Compost also reminds us that death is not the end, that we must trust that the traces we leave will be the superfood of others. Compost proposes the practice of rituals, in order to transform the daily into the magical.

The archetype of Compost invites us to ask ourselves: What do you want to change? Are there places or examples around you where you see that change is already happening? What is the environment that I have created for myself/for others? What kinds of nutrients does it offer? What would 'ending' mean for me? What traces would I/my organisation leave? What would happen after the ending?

Associated ritual: hosting and rooting - In response to the sense of Generosity, a set of rituals are designed to help to be rooted in your environment and/or hosting and sharing your resources and knowledge with your peers/ guests.

Before the guests come to your place, try to research them, find out more about their project, their personal passion or dream, and during their visit try to incorporate something (activity, or topic of conversation or special food) relevant to that. Share this process with them.

Before the guests arrive, create a playlist of local bands and artists. Send it to your approaching guests so they can listen to it on the trip. Before the guests depart, ask them to create a playlist for you. Listen to it after they have left.

When you travel to a new place, reserve the first day to take a walk in the city. Do not use a map! Become lost in the streets. Walk as much as you can. When your time is up, speak with local people and ask how to get back to your accommodation.

When returning from your travel, ask your friend or colleague to pick you up at the bus/train station or airport. Spend some time with this person, visit a cafe in the local area of your home, talk about your travel and listen to the news from your hometown. Let yourself experience the warmth of returning.

2. Embodied Knowledges (based on The High Priestess / Sense of Connection)

Knowledge is very often perceived as one of the most valuable things in our lives. Many people identify themselves with their knowledge. However, often one kind of knowledge becomes privileged over another, or one might not even recognise the different knowledge(s) one holds and works with. 'Embodied Knowledges' appears as an invitation to shift our attention to what is underneath the surface. This card invites us to be students again, and connect to an inner knowing, rather than learned skill sets and procedures. 'Embodied Knowledges' can be thought of as the knowledge of the seed - a seed 'knows' when and how to grow, but only at the moment it starts growing. This inner knowing does not follow a clear pathway thought out in advance. A seed feels its way up, taking decisions in relation to the circumstances it encounters, from the dark underground into the sun.

'Embodied Knowledges' invites us to ask ourselves: What knowledge(s) are present in my practice/my organisation? Which knowledge(s) are missing? How can I know through my body? If so, what does my body know and how? What kind of bodies carry knowledge? How can the knowledge(s) in my practice/organisation be activated, shared and distributed so they won't be collecting dust in the archive? How to make the bodies cooperate and make their knowledges benefit from each other? How to make decisions from a place of feeling and observing?

Associated ritual: The Walk - You are written by your environment. Allow yourself time to connect to it. To the area you are familiar with, you are bound to tightly. The Walk is a proposal to look closer. To perceive the changes, to perceive the previously unnoticed. To re-enact your memories and knowledge of that area.

Clear your mind. Try to forget what you know. Dismantle the patterns that you apply when going in the area. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath.

Disorientate yourself. Go into the streets you don't tend to visit normally. Accept the Walk as a process, not a tool to go somewhere. The purpose is in the action itself.

Stop at the places you always overlooked. Don't be afraid of the dirt, of the ugly, of the glamour. Become blank.

Dive in. Search for symbols, signs, new relations between things that are present. Imagine things that are missing. There are no rules. Assign new meanings, create your own structures and connections. Apply your senses. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste.

This is a time designated just for yourself. Your guide is the environment itself and your vacant intuition.

You walk, you perceive, you experience.

When you feel it is time, slow down. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Let your past memories, structures, and patterns flow back in. Re-orientate. Say aloud the name of the things you see. Name them.

Return to the initial point. Smile to yourself. Get back to your routine.

The Walk is finished.

3. The Garden (based on The Empress / Sense of Generosity)

The Garden represents a space or a state of abundance, which comes from the capacity of creation and regeneration. The garden can be abundant because it is constantly transforming, constantly in movement and in communication with all parts of its ecosystem. A healthy garden allows for different stages of growth simultaneously. For a garden to be healthy it needs a multiplicity of species and rhythms. The garden invites us to not only enjoy this abundance and diversity, but also to tend to it; no garden without gardeners. The garden invites us to think of our responsibility and our role in the creation of the possibility for all life to thrive.

The Garden invites us to ask ourselves: Who is being generous to us? Who are we being generous to? How are we connected to our surroundings and how are we tending to it like a loving gardener would? What can we learn from the other-than-human presences around us? What are the various rhythms in my practice/my organisation? How to make space for different rhythms to thrive?

Associated ritual: attuning to the vegetal world - In this ritual we will explore the connection to each other through our connections with the vegetal world. For the next few days, choose a vegetable that is in your surroundings. This might be a tree, a plant, some grass.

Take ten minutes out of your schedule every day, for at least ten days, to observe this vegetal being. Observe it from close by or far away. Make sure you are feeling the ground firmly underneath you as you are observing.

Take a picture every day and write down or make an audio recording of what you have observed.

Share these observations with a fellow practitioner of the ritual.

4. Boundaries (based on The Emperor / Sense of Place)

When travelling one will inevitably reach or cross boundaries, whether they are borders, schedules, or the boundaries of one's own body and energy. Boundaries proposes a reﬂection on that state in between, where the connection to one's surroundings is lost. Something is holding one back, something becomes stuck. In this state, the self often becomes the only stable entity. The archetype of Boundaries proposes a reﬂection on how and when we fold back onto ourselves, and how this influences our actions.

Boundaries invites us to ask ourselves: What boundaries have you encountered or crossed? What practices do you encounter and/or reproduce that might neglect or cross their boundaries? In what state do you feel most safe? How do you practice care? Are you afraid to slow down, to stop performing? Are you afraid of uncertainty? What kind of uncertainty and why?

Associated ritual: mapping possible routes - Before your guests arrive, either physically or digitally, take the time to think about what they would need to know about in your surroundings. This might be the local bakery, a nice park, a beautiful house, a spot that always makes your heart melt, a place with a sad or a happy memory. What would you like them to see, visit, make use of?

Take pen and paper, maybe different colours and hand draw a map of your surroundings that includes these places. Include details that are important for you. Walk your guests through the map on their arrival. Ask your guests to add to the map at the end of their stay and pass it on to others.

5. The Canon (based on The Hierophant / Sense of Multiplicity)

The Canon represents a set of practices that shape our everyday work or a framework of what is being visible and audible in our surroundings. A canon is actually a very performative notion: it is not formed by any natural laws; it is never granted nor unchangeable - no matter how solid it may seem. On the contrary: it results from a certain social contract, a result of someone's decision what to include and what to leave out, invisible, and inaudible. Who is making these decisions? How and with whom are they negotiated? And, last but not least, whose interests do they serve and whose needs do they tend to neglect?

The Canon invites us to ask ourselves: who are we talking to while shaping the programme and the structure of our organisation? What dialogues and non-dialogues took place between the communities we inhabit, temporarily, or on our everyday basis?

Have a look at the festival programmes in your localities. What are the artistic practices that are often presented, that are invited to other places, that travel and thus get their visibility? How does the canon of most successful (or, rather, most often presented) performances shape the basic aesthetics and production frameworks? Do they cherish the diversity of perspectives or lead to flattening and homogenising aesthetic expressions? Who is or isn't invited? Who remains excluded, either through criteria of selection, access to finances, or international diplomacy?

Have a look at your (artistic) practices: which are the canons shaping it? How can we continue to create and inhabit spaces of dissonance, where different voices can be heard, and can communicate with each other?

Associated ritual: standpoint invitation - There is a framework from feminist philosophy called 'Standpoint Theory'. It posits a direct relationship between people's structural location in the world and their understanding of the nature of the world. The further one is from the centre of power, the more comprehensive one's analysis will be. This is because those who are marginalized have to understand the viewpoint of the dominant groups, while those in the dominant position have no need to understand the perspective of the 'oppressed'. In other words, certain groups may be marginalized (based on disability, gender, sexuality...), but their insight represents anything but a marginal discourse. They may be marginalized, but their contribution is not marginal.

Look at your practice, your institution. Take a paper and position yourself (your institution) in the middle. Now use the rest of a paper to put down various groups and communities (call the archetype of The Canon to help you identify these groups). Place them around, above, below the central point in a scheme is such a way that the closer they are, the more present their voice is in your work. If they are not present at all keep them at the edge.

Now choose one of the groups or communities on the edge and reach out for it, find someone who represents the community. Maybe the person you are looking for is not in your direct network; in this case - expand. Ask your friends, your colleagues. Find a way to contact such persons and invite them for a coffee. Open yourself up to listen to what you might have been overhearing. Pay them for this labour.

Practice this ritual at a time you are about to start a project (a festival, new performance, new open call).

Variation: collaborate with these persons. Let them take over your position for a day, for a week, a year, for always? Pay them by the same amount you would earn in such time. See what might be changed.

6. Shock (based on The Tower / Sense of Break)

The archetype of Shock represents the shaken stability, a sudden cataclysm, but also change that can enable new ecologies. The unusual perspectives and multiple doors compound the idea of confusion, of finding 'the right way', many different ways. The 'storm' references the Hindu goddess Kali, symbolising destruction and rebirth. A very powerful energy in Hinduism, an ultimately one, a positive force. This confusion, shock, destruction, makes way for new beginnings, new connections, and growth. However thick we build our walls to shield ourselves or our organisations, change will always come, and in these moments, we need each other. However stable your institution might seem, you may have to rely on its porosity rather than its stability. For Merleau-Ponty, an institution exists to make experiences last. Building/establishing our own institution is a matter of creating a framework to allow continuity, to give back to everyone their own responsibility. An institution can also be imagined, not as a rigid tower, but as an organic cluster of vital functions, containing a certain critical mass that may be flexible enough to have space for change. For inspiration we could look at the trees; towering above, but intricately connected through a fine system of roots. Trees grow strong and stable, but are also flexible enough to bend with the winds or change their direction according to the clearings in the canopy.

The recent crisis provoked by Covid-19 has sharpened our journey and made this questioning even more relevant. All of a sudden, we (hyper)mobile cultural workers find ourselves unable to move and in a situation of isolation.

Shock invites us to ask ourselves: What changes can I see on the horizon? Am I scared of welcoming change? What false beliefs run through my days? What does stability mean to me? What does flexibility mean to me? How can we reconnect to each other, to our surroundings, to unknown others from a place of isolation? How can we extend solidarity when we cannot physically meet? How may a crisis open new doors? How would I shape my work/organisation if tomorrow I would have to start all over?

Associated ritual: the letter to oneself - This ritual can be practiced at any time, but is recommended as a moment of pause after a shock or after a period of exhausting work when things get back into their normal routine. Instead of thinking about the system and its rules, following them and neglecting yourself and your wellbeing. Reserve an hour and a half or two just for yourself. Create a serene atmosphere with a cup of coffee or tea or a glass of wine. Sit on an armchair or any place you define as comfy.

Now think of your activities. Use colour markers and draft a map of the network you are part of. Outline the structures you have been creating with your practices or the structures you are involved in. Indicate other people who are in those structures with you - your colleagues, fellow artists, employees, designers, producers - all human (as well as other-than-human) beings that you are in daily contact with, beings that are co-defining who you are and what you do.

Now close your eyes... and exclude yourself. Exclude yourself from all the structures, erase yourself from the network, let a blank space replace your position...

... now you are outside, you no longer belong to the structures.

Take a paper, a pen and start writing a letter. Address it to a person who carries your name. Write an honest message in which you describe why you would like to take over the blank space in the structures, in the network. Do not hesitate to take a critical tone. What would you change if you have this position? The privileges it brings? How would you treat this position? If you want to go deeper, focus on accessibility - imagine yourself to be in a socio-political-economic handicapped situation - what needs to be changed in the structures so you can be part of them?

Finish the letter. Empty your drink. Put the letter into an envelope and write down your name and address on it. Take a walk to the post office. Buy a stamp and deposit the envelope in the postbox.

Resume your everyday routines.

7. Reciprocity (based on The Star / Sense of Generosity)

Reciprocity shows us a figure under the night sky, bearing water both to the earth and back to the waters. Reciprocity recognizes that in order to care for others, we need care for ourselves too - whether this care is coming from us, or from the people we are working with. We cannot make things grow when our cups are empty and dry. In hypermobile situations, where people are coming in and out of our organisations, or where we ourselves run from opportunity to opportunity, are we really setting ourselves up for a reciprocal relationship? Reciprocity means always making sure there is something left behind, so the cycle of creation and generosity can continue.

Reciprocity invites us to ask ourselves: What does care look like for you? When do you feel cared for and when do you feel like you are caring? How are we giving and sharing with others? What are our privileges and how can we put them on the line? But also, what do we need to feel fulfilled and how can we ask that of our environment? Can the reciprocity of our relationship be a clear and transparent part of our negotiations, contracts, and others?

Associated ritual: beyond privileges - Once we have identified our privileges, we can put them to work. We can try and find ways to distribute them, use them in order to make space for others.

Step 1: Identify the privileges you enjoy. Browse through your institution, partners, audience... Search for the privileges that come with them. Whether their character is economic (stable or at least decent income), visibility (public outreach of your activities or your institution or office is situated in a highlighted area), network (your surroundings have knowledge and skills) or other.

Step 2: Translate the privileges into potential. Focus on one privilege and elaborate on its potential. See what it brings and imagine what someone else, someone who is maybe not yet present within your context, could do with it. Scout the NGOs in your area and see who they work with, take a walk and see which communities are present in the neighbourhood, and what their needs are. Who is in need of economic support? Who could use some visibility to support their actions? Who might benefit from knowledge gathered by your networks?

Step 3: Transform the potential into a direct action...

...and deliver it!

Inform your audiences about the work of a local NGO before your event. Make a note about them in your booklets. Donate five percent of your ticket income to support social workers in your area. Prepare a collection of warm clothes, sleeping bags and tents for homeless people. Use your newsletters, networks and PR to spread the voices of members of your community... There are many things that could be done. Even a small action is valuable.

Over time, make a small collection of Beyond Privileges actions and share them with your fellow colleagues, partner institutions, update them on your website.

8. The Mirror (based on The Moon / Sense of Connection)

The Mirror talks about the need for multiple perspectives. Sometimes we need to look at ourselves, our practices and patterns of behaviour, and sometimes we need to look at what is behind us, or around a corner. Though one should also be aware that a mirror can transform - make things seem bigger or smaller, or further away.

What we see in the mirror is just a reflection. A reflection that has cracks, or can cast shadows. To look through a mirror doesn't mean to try to see the things as they are, but to shift our focus to the reflection as image in and of itself, showing us what we need to see. Using a mirror may help to find focus, to step out of fixed narratives and ways of perception. The Mirror invites us to ask ourselves: How do we see ourselves/our organisation? How do we think others see that? What happens when we focus on a detail? What is unveiled? What remains hidden?

Associated ritual: reflection - Reflection proposes a way to obtain an insight into your practice by observing the practices of your colleagues from the field.

1st - Take a close look at the work of your colleagues. This can be an institution working in the same field, an artist with a similar approach, a specific organisation that is delivering similar services or ideas...

2nd - Observe both the negative and positive practices. What are things you tend to criticise or define as problematic? What are the activities that are tickling your imagination? What actions do you see as underdeveloped and which of them do you identify with?

3rd - Focus on the notions of: connection, place, break, generosity, multiplicity, or define those that you find significant.

4th - Use these notions as lenses to write down your ideas about the observed practices. Create a small mind map of your observations.

5th - Now take a look at your work. Take a carbon paper or a foil or any other transparent material and apply it on top of the map of your observation. Use a pen and start working on the reflection. Make a map of how your work relates to these observations. Search for translation of your previous notes and see how they project in your practice.

How do the things you find problematic appear in your work? Can you see similar patterns? How could you implement the inspirational activities in your way? Based on the observation, what kind of underdeveloped actions of yours come out?

Learn from your environment. Both from the positives and the negatives. Reflect your observations onto your practice.

Work with the Reflection when you have doubts, when you notice you are offended by a practice or when you encounter a highly inspirational event/person/...

9. Joy (based on The Sun / Sense of Break)

Joy can be expressed as a movement of coming into being and unfolding towards others. Much like the first cracks in a seed, joy needs to get out and do its transformative work. One of the first impulses to collaborate (trans-nationally) is the joy of being together, of collaborating, of exchanging ideas and points of views. A bursting out of ourselves together. Your free spirit may vagabond and joy may come as an alternative way of doing things.

Hospitality, as the joy of hosting, is about welcoming other people into your home to spend time together. The word hospitality comes from the Latin hospes, which came from the word hostis, which originally meant 'to have power.' Hospitality is all about the art of sharing power through joy.

'Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics
that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.'
(Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, 2016)

The Sun, with outstretched hands, is comforting and welcoming. The many hands of collaboration doing their thing but working together. The sunflowers referencing the traditional tarot card of the sun. They are joyful, strong flowers nourished by the sun. The white horses of innocence and perhaps travel, visually drawing on Islamic painting.

Joy invites us to ask ourselves: As a host, as a traveller or as a non-mobile practitioner, what brings me joy in collaboration, how do I valorise it? How do you find joy in what you're doing? To which values is joy related in your practice? How can you make the joy of collaborating trans-/postnationally grow? How does it sustain your practice? How can you value joy within your organisation? Can you plan for joy and celebration?

Associated ritual: two spoons - It is time you were travelling again.

You are exploring new places, cities, nature. And again, you are about to return home. You are bringing with you new experiences that you do not want to keep just for yourself, you are eager to share them. Before your departure, borrow a small spoon of your morning coffee or tea. Do it in silence, without anybody noticing it. Enjoy the feeling of secrecy. When you return home, unpack your things and put a spoon on a visible spot with a name of a destination where you took it from.

Let the time go by.

When you travel again, repeat the action with a spoon.

Come home, put the second spoon next to the first one. Now think of a friend you haven't seen since the past two travels or someone who is not allowed to travel as much as you do or someone you know, who had a long-term interest in visiting the place you have been to. Invite the friend that comes to your mind to the local coffee place. Order a tea or coffee for both of you. Take those two spoons from your travels and use them to stir your drink. Tell your friend about your travels, about the destinations, experience, things you saw...

When you finish your drink, keep the spoons on the coaster that goes with the coffee or tea. Let the spoons inhabit a new environment.

10. The Call (based on The Judgement / Sense of Place)

The Call is the first voice that we hear. Coming from outside, or from inside of us. It stands for new beginnings, and rising to the occasion. The archetype of The Call has two sides. On the one hand we can think of who is calling. The ones who let their voices and ideas travel into the world. The ones we might be listening to? On the other hand, we can think of who is being called, the one who is lured by the voice of the call. The importance that connects them both is a deep listening. Deep listening requires a state of openness, being receptive and pausing the desire to react. A call desires to be heard and to be answered. The calls are the first rays of sunshine touching the earth in spring. To answer a call, one needs intuition and empathy to establish an understanding. One needs to be certain of what is calling you, in order to act on that call.

The call invites us to ask ourselves: What are we calling out into the world? Who is reacting to our call? What voices are calling us? When do I experience a state of deep listening? Are there situations in which I could practice more deep listening? How does it feel to be ready? What is the impulse behind making the call and behind answering it?

Associated ritual: the email - The Email proposes to bring new elements to the never-ending communication cycle: joy, care, affinity.

Focus on one contact, one person you work with - this can be a person you haven't met yet, or a long-term colleague. Write an elaborated letter in which you share your mood, insights from your personal or professional life. Simply go beyond the simple message that you need to deliver, make the person on the other side of the communication pleased.

Transform the function of the medium, expand its possibilities.

Variation: Look at your past open call or at a situation when someone wanted to apply to work with you, or simply when you had to decline someone (go once again through this person's proposal). Write to this person with hindsight, ask what this person is doing now, establish the connection.

11. World (based on The World / Sense of Place)

The lack of any solid ground in the World may seem ironic. The ﬁgure representing World has no gender, inhabits the above and the below, is suspended between the heavens and the earth. World symbolizes balance and evolution; a cycle has come to an end, and a new one is about to begin. The world is a unity that is ever-changing, dynamic, and regenerative. The world is the endpoint of the Traveller's journey; what began as an undifferentiated space, has become a place endowed with value and care. In the world the senses of multiplicity, generosity, place, break and connection have been integrated.

World invites us to ask ourselves: What makes you feel fulfilled or balanced? Who or what is needed for you to have that feeling? When has a project felt whole and fulfilling? What was needed to have that feeling? What are the long-term connections that you are creating in your life, practice or organisation? Can suspension and quietness also become a way to move? When have I experienced both quietness and movement simultaneously?

Associated ritual: care - Care is more of a reminder than a ritual, but still it proposes an action.

Reserve one day per month (or find another period) to dedicate your working hours to your team and to yourself. Rearrange your office, bring new plants, make it more comfortable. Spend some quality time with your colleagues, help them with their duties, discuss your moods, share your fragility. After work, accompany your colleagues to the safety of their homes - take a long walk with them and avoid public transport if possible. Care for your team and for yourself is also work!

Using the archetypes and rituals

The Archetypes and tarot are developed as a tool to ask yourself questions about your own practice or organisation. Or to look at your work from a different perspective. There are different ways of using this proposal. You can take the card descriptions and the questions we have proposed as an inspiration, but remember that it is your own reading that will be important to your situation. Look at the archetypes we propose and let them speak to you, make them your own.

Below we propose some ways of reading and some spreads for the cards, inspired by some classic tarot spreads. Play around with these proposals and try out the ones that speak to you most.

You can do these spreads on your own, or as a group. When reading as a group, pay attention that everyone can bring their view to the table.

In general, tarot works best when you formulate an open question about your practice or your organisation. Think of a place where you are stuck, or a practice you would like to change. What is bothering you in the situation, what are you doubting about? Put both the context and the issue into an open question; meaning a question that cannot be answered by a simple yes or no.

For example: As an artist I feel quite lonely in my work, however I am often working in collaboration with others. In that case I could ask myself: What should I pay attention to in order to involve my peers more in my work?

When reading a card, before looking at the explanation, study the image. What do you notice first? What does it remind you of? How could that reflection be related to your practice? What else is there that you did not see right away? What associations do you make with the image, or with the explanation?

A card a day

Formulate your question and draw a single card. Read the card and notice what it brings up in you. See if you can recognise what the card proposes during the day. At the end of the day, either write down these observations for yourself, or discuss them in your team.

Alternatively, implement the ritual connected to the card. At the end of the day, observe how it has changed your day and your reading of the card.

Classic three-card spread

Formulate your question and draw 3 cards. Put the cards next to each other. Turn over the cards one by one.

1. The middle card represents the 'now', the situation where you find yourself. How does the card speak to you knowing that?

2. The left card represents a lesson from the past. Read the card and see how this has been true in the past. When has what the card speaks of been your experience in the past? How can that experience help you now? Think about what was present at that time. What did you do, and who else was there?

3. The final card on the right represents the future. Read the card and think of what you would like the outcome of the current situation to be. How can the advice of the card help in that? Where can you already see that on the horizon? What could be a first step you can take in that direction?

Variation of the classic three-card spread

A variation on the spread above can be used for specific issues. You can change past, present, future into other factors that are of importance for your situation.

In the example above, of being lonely in my practice as an artist, I could ask the cards:

1. In what situations do I feel lonely in my practice while collaborating?

2. What is missing in the context?

3. What are the kind of people or practices I would like to connect to?

Or when setting out to travel:

1. What to pay attention to before the travel?

2. What to pay attention to during the travel?

3. What to pay attention to after the travel?

Short Celtic cross

Formulate your question and draw the following cards one by one. Put them in the positions of the Celtic cross.

1. The middle card represents the 'now', the situation where you find yourself. How does the card speak to you knowing that?

2. The second card represents what is 'crossing' this situation. What is the problem? Can you define it more clearly?

3. The left card represents a lesson from the past. Read the card and see how this has been true in the past. When has what the card speaks of, been your experience in the past? How can that experience help you now? Think about what was present at that time, what did you do, and who else was there?

4. The final card on the right represents the future. Read the card and think of what you would like the outcome of the current situation to be. How can the advice of the card help in that? Where can you already see that on the horizon? What could be a first step you can take in that direction?

Cards 5 and 6 can be seen as moving factors that make the present turn into the future.

5. What is above? What is on your mind at the moment that might be blocking the situation? Are you preoccupied by higher goals? Are there some values you would like to push more?

6. What is below? Is there anything that you are not seeing? Are you not acknowledging some of your needs? Are there hidden motivations at play? Is there something you are scared of that you have to resolve?

Four advice cards

The four advice cards can be used on their own, or in combination with the classic three-card spread or Celtic cross. The four advice cards lie in one vertical line, from bottom to top.

Formulate your question and draw the following cards one by one.

1. The first card is a mirror. How do you see yourself or your organisation in this situation? What do you hope others see?

2. What are the resources at your disposal? Resources can be money, people, skills, knowledge. What do you already have that can change this situation? Where is what the card speaks of already present in your life or organisation?

3. Will give you advice on your fears and expectations. What are you afraid of, in what the card speaks of? What would you expect of what this card proposes? How can the card help you in overcoming some of your fears? Does the card question or empower your expectations?

4. An alternative outcome. How can this card play into a preferred future?

How to use the rituals and make your own?

We chose to work with rituals, understanding them as instigators of change and transformation. A ritual is not metaphysics, rituals propose materialist and practical practices that can incorporate magic into daily life. A ritual can produce small or big shifts in our perception, changing us and our surroundings. We chose to look at rituals of passage - moving from one paradigm into the next. A rite of passage is understood to have three main phases: separation, transition, and incorporation. In the first stage a separation is made with the old identity. This can be through physical or symbolic acts. In the transition stage one is 'in between'. The stage is marked by liminality, ambiguity, or disorientation. The old identity is left behind, but the new identity is not yet found. This stage is often found to create a bond or community between those participating in the ritual. The final stage is incorporation; the new identity is confirmed and acknowledged by the community.

The proposed rituals, linked to the archetypes, are only certain patterns of possible actions. Each of the rituals could be adjusted to your needs, to the issue you are following or extended with your creativity. Even though the results may be invisible at first sight, try to repeat some of them periodically, observe what changes. Some rituals are narrated to be practised individually, some are designed for groups or institutions. Yet each of them could be translated to whatever situation you are in. Rituals are flexible, always ready to work for you if you commit your time and energy to them.

If you don't find the proposed list satisfying or if you want to address a different issue, the easiest way is to design your own ritual, your own micro-action that can be performed to shift your reality. There is no right way or one method to create a ritual, but we want to share a few tips that might simplify the creative process.

1. Call the evil

First. Identify the problem you want to address. You can call tarot cards to help you find the struggle.

Name the issue.

Play with it (again you can use tarot cards to go deeper into it), try to see it from all sides; take a distant and a close-up view.

2. Reconciliation

Second. Befriend the struggle.

Accommodate it within you. See what feelings it provokes. Be with the feelings.

3. Get it out!

Third. Exorcise the struggle!

Find a way to translate the struggle into an action that tackles it, makes it visible, gives it another form, makes it possible to share it...

The action could be very soft - caressing the struggle and flattening its sharp edges. Or it can be radical - going directly to its essence.

Use your creativity, search for videos, performances, practices that are dealing with a similar struggle. Be inspired by them.

Involve others.

4. Write the ritual down

Take a piece of paper and write down the guidelines on how to practice the action.

After you test it, make edits if needed.

Share it with your colleagues.

For example: As an artist I feel quite lonely in my work. However, I am often working in collaboration with others. In that case I could propose: At the beginning of each group studio session you dedicate thirty minutes to share insights of your everyday lives/or once a week at the last hour of your solo session you invite a friend to join you to share your work.

Remember that rituals don't necessarily need to be created just for yourself. You can design a ritual for your colleague, for your friend, or ask them to design a ritual for you. You can make one for a guest that you are about to host or a host you are about to visit. Design a ritual as a birthday present or an anniversary gift for your institution.

Virtual exhibition: 'On the complexities of the journey'

Inspired by the power of both archetypes and rituals, and in order to further enhance and complement them, we propose to continue stressing and enriching this complex journey. To do so, we invite you to navigate and contribute to a constellation of other sources.

The movement of bodies, knowledge(s) and practices is a fundamental aspect of life. Movement and change are at the core of our multiple perspectives. Within this movement, within constant change, those that practice the creative act - artists, curators, and researchers - inhabit ambiguous lands. On one hand, they have become privileged carriers of new knowledge(s). On the other, the urge to travel, to be mobile, has become a privilege. Indeed, self-congratulatory hypermobility, the lure for the other, artistic monoculture, exclusion, and ecological neglect increasingly condition the practice of the journey.

It is in this context from which 'On the complexities of the journey: a prototype in the making' proposes an unfinished virtual exhibition of knowledge(s) curated collaboratively. This museum without walls will always be unfinished. Its content, the outcome of a set of questions posed to the RESHAPE community, is in need of care and contribution. We encourage you to care and contribute by proposing new content to continuously enlarge this constellation.

This virtual exhibition is articulated through five floating spaces. Each of these spaces is dedicated to the five senses previously described. Sensing involves understanding and becoming aware of our surroundings, unconsciously figuring something out, to enhance a multiplicity of shades of meaning. To start unfolding these senses, 'On the complexities of the journey: a prototype in the making' invites you to navigate through an unfinished universe and its constellations. In each of them, neglecting hierarchy, we, as hosts, have gathered a selection of artworks, gifs, projects, texts, and interviews contributed by the whole RESHAPE community as well as the archetypes and rituals proposed within the transnational/postnational team. Following the instructions made above, which are also accessible through the 'On the complexities of the journey: a prototype in the making' web, we invite you to put them in practice and if you are happy to document and share the processes and its outcomes, we will include them in the visual exhibition.

Through this constellation in the making, we propose a commencement to understand the journey, not only in its physicality but also as an essential part of what constitutes our lives.

To add to the existing, send a link to a copyleft artwork, project, text, or interview to the email you will find on the project's website. Your proposal should be accompanied by a short description of the piece specifying in which of the five senses you want to include it in.

From now on, you are also part of acomplexjourney.art.

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Transnational and Postnational Practices Manual

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Transnational / postnational artistic practices Imagining an artworld "after the national", this prototype guides you in putting connection before movement in a transnational and postnational art practice. For many art workers, working across borders is an essential part of the job.

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Here you find depository of interpretations - you can always edit the document with your observations on particular cards

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Print version of the cards
In case you have any problems with printing, do not hesitate to contact us

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comeplete list of the cards