Beyond Which We Can Currently Imagine
If I had to grab one book from a sinking ship, I’d pick this one: Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation by Jonathan Lear.
The book was gifted to me in 2021, just a month into the pandemic, when we were raw, openly grieving. It has grown even more necessary, even more prescient, as the latest climate reports issue forth.
And it has everything to do with art practice, with art and the ecology, with material practice and regenerative futures. Because it is about how one goes on. How one finds (makes) meaning. Radical Hope is a philosophical, deeply tender uncovering of the life of Plenty Coups, the last traditional tribal chief of the Crow tribe.* The Crow have been torn asunder by the US government. When relaying the history of his people, Plenty Coups says, “After this, nothing happened.”
Jonathan Lear sets out to examine what Plenty Coups means. What does it mean to say, to believe, that there was a point in time after which nothing happens? Imagining Plenty Coup’s state of mind, Lear writes (page 93): “I recognize in an important sense we do not know what to hope for or what to aim for. Things are going to change in ways beyond which we can currently imagine. We certainly know we cannot face the future in the same way that we have been doing. It is no longer a matter of planning another buffalo hunt or another raid on the Sioux. We must do what we can to open our imaginations up to a radically different set of future possibilities.”
Lear continues: “There is more to hope for than mere biological survival….If everything I care about, if everything I understand as valuable, if everything I understand about myself as valuable and making life worth living–if all that is going to evaporate, I would prefer to go down in a blaze of glory. I would prefer to be a martyr to that way of life. If I am going to go on living, I need to be able to see a genuine, positive, and honorable way of going forward.“
My purpose is to help build a world I want to live in. To create a “genuine, positive, and honorable way of going forward.” I don’t equate establishing an arts organization, hosting talks, or even community building with the fortitude and resiliency required to endure cultural devastation. But I do know that “to make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”** And I do know how to exercise agency, act with courage, and open my eyes to enchantment. From the day I was 10 years old and sat in a Robert Rauschenberg exhibit at the Smithsonian (1976), through studying art history at UCLA, to seeing Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting at the Museum of Art & Design (2005), and co-founding Textile Arts | Los Angeles, I’ve believed in the power of art, the desire for belonging, the necessity of action, and the delight of serendipity. I don’t believe we can change the world so much as I believe we can offer each other hope and fellowship, and we can co-create a future from a radically different set of possibilities. “Moral growth, spiritual strength, and lasting satisfaction come from difficult tasks done well, not simple things done effortlessly.”
Material Encounters is my cri de coeur. To create an even more inclusive community, to include an even broader range of materials, to champion not just creativity but also responsibility.
*Upon his death in 1932, at the age of 84, the Apsalookee (Crow) people voted to designate him as their last traditional tribal chief.
**Jack Gilbert (poet), A Brief for the Defense