cross-pollination and open-source knowledge
“I thank the queer, black, radical, and hidden teachers – and, as Maria Howard states, I acknowledge that “nothing but the thread that binds them is my own”. ”
I have been thinking aplenty about my engagement with gathering, replicating, sharing knowledges - particularly as I try to embed a multiplicity of knowledges into the tangible craft objects I make.
In the introduction to my dissertation I wrote:
‘Tricia Heresay, founder of the Nap Ministry, and Mikaela Loach, both speak of how there are no new ideas, only new iterations, or evocations.1 2 This thread ties through much of the literature I have accessed for this dissertation. I am drawn to those who prioritise open-source access, or “open-pollinated” knowledge.3 They speak to learning as a cycle, encourage borrowing and sharing of teaching, or understand that this mode of thinking often pertains to “our histories that are all too often hidden, distorted, erased, and lost”.4 I thank the queer, black, radical, and hidden teachers – and, as Maria Howard states, I acknowledge that “nothing but the thread that binds them is my own”.’5
It often feels easier, I find, to acknowledge what I want to move away from here. Ownership, gatekeeping, production, erasure, and individualism.
A few found articulations of this:
“Also this zine is not all original work. A lot of the pieces are gathered from here and there, plagiarised at will to shed some light on our histories that are all too often hidden, distorted, erased, and lost. Replicate at will, photocopy like crazy, and teach each other. We’ve got lots of learning to do!”
Out of the Closets and Into the Libraries, zine
“authorship can only be co-authorship
Many of the words and ideas in this text are those of others. Some are italicised, others are harder to detect, in a bid to blur distinctions of ownership and to think around writing as commoning and conversation, a collective activity as well as an individual one. Nothing but the thread that binds them is my own.”
The House of Water – Maria Howard
“This work has been released to the public domain and is to be considered open source, open-pollinated or anti-copyright. As they say at the slingshot collective ‘feel free to borrow any of this, we did’.”
The Seed Ambassadors Project, zine
How can cross-pollination teach us different ways of ‘sharing’ knowledge?
How can I challenge structures that purport colonial harm (to those who have been kept from sharing and gathering knowledges)?
So, within my own practices - how can workshops enable real access? Ones that hold co-authorship at their heart - with resilience and without hierarchies of oppressive power - with open-pollination and the mutual aid of lichens. These are only what come to my mind now. Let us only imagine more, from more folks.
“... when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival. So say the lichens.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer – Braiding Sweetgrass, p.272
How can the material matters or objects within my practice embody their (abolition, transformative, queer, rooted, mutable, and fluid) knowledges?
Arjun Appadurai writes that “objects, commodities, ‘like persons,’…have social lives” and “they carry their history with them via the many exchanges that take place”. Harris and Korda have written that “objects not only have meaning in their present social contexts, but also their assumed past, and potential future.” These are where my matters may lay, wriggle, and root?
(In short: A little jumbled but full of consideration of where knowledges are from and how I might actively act to deeply embody that “nothing that the thread that binds them is my own”. And even this thread is not individual, nor do I own.)
Tricia Hersey, Ayana Young. 8th June 2020. Rest as Resistance. For the Wild. <https://forthewild.world/listen/tricia-hersey-on-rest-as-resistance-encore-267> [accessed: June 2020]
Josephine Becker, Mikaela Loach. 8th February 2021. Rest For The Many [accessed: 8th March 2022]
Sarah Kleeger, Andrew Still. Seed Ambassadors Project: A Guide to Seed Saving, Seed Stewardship & Seed Sovereignty. Zine. 4th edition. Oregon. 2010
The Bangarang Collective. Out Of The Closets And Into The Libraries. Zine. Lewiston, Maine. 2005
Maria Howard, House of Water, 2021