March 2-3, 2023
Graduality and (Mis)Interpretation
On March 2-3, 2023, I attended SpaceX-Rise’s ‘Training Event 3’ in Dublin. As with all events I attended in this series, the encounter proved far more conceptually interesting and useful to me than the term ‘training’ would normally suggest – associated as it is (in my mind, at least) with the kinds of institutional compliance type activities that, as academics with our minds elsewhere, we are all compelled to participate in.
Across two days, the event brought together scholars, practitioners, and activists across various fields in seminar discussions, art exhibits and performances, as well as a wonderful visit to a local community group trying to envisage new and anti-capitalist ways of being.
As a sociologist very much out of my comfort zone, and for reasons that go to the heart of why this project is important, one experience in particular stayed with me. A theme that had been emerging over the course of the event – unintentionally, I think – was that perennial debate over revolution vs. reform, with apparently little appetite for the latter among this staunchly left-wing group of thinkers. The recurrence of this theme seemed to me to be an interesting product of the tension between the revolutionary spirit widely and openly shared among participants, and the actual work being undertaken which, in order to achieve anything, is always forced to compromise with the world ‘as it is’.
In the middle of all this was one art exhibit – or performance, or both/neither; I’m a sociologist, so I’m not sure what the correct terminology is – that effortlessly captured, perhaps even sought to resolve, this tension.
We found ourselves, probably thirty attendees all up, scattered at the edges of a large exhibition space, sharing it with various moveable rectangular blocks that easily dwarfed the space’s human inhabitants. It felt like it was meant to communicate, in minimalist form, the experience of inhabiting any (post)modern urban space – though again, as a neophyte, I’m not sure I interpreted any aspect of this work as intended. To be honest, I’m not even sure I’m providing a fully accurate account of what took place.
The artist then proceeded to walk slowly across the space for around twenty minutes, shifting blocks here and there, while telling us some sort of story – the details of which I didn’t fully understand and can’t remember – about time, space and graduality. It was an utterly captivating, meditative, and for me, also puzzling experience. And by the end of it, the space had been completely transformed by the artist’s gradual re-ordering of the large blocks.
I’m quite certain that the artist didn’t intend this to be the meaning, but they nonetheless made a very convincing case for that much-maligned (on the left) concept of reform – the ways in which we can and do remake the world gradually, often imperceptibly, and with the little more than a narrative and the materials we inherit from the existing structures and cultures we seek to depose.
