Take 5 photos of portals or portaling found during your daily routine or a mundane activity out in the world. These can be on your commute, a walk in the park, on the way to daycare, etc.
While finding these portals, consider what it is opening onto, or closing off. These images can be sites of blockage, resistance, intrigue, frustration, or longing. Something that resonates and allows you to open yourself to other possibilities. Notice what arises in you when you encounter these images. How do these images find you as well?
During the session, we will use these images to attune our practices of abolitionist rehearsal as portal workers.
Before you start writing, you can share your images with everyone by adding them to the signal group and we will upload and project them.
Start with the 5 images that you brought with you. If you didn't bring any, look back at any recent photos you've taken to find some. Work with the images that you feel most drawn to, you don't need to include all of them.
Prepare yourself to feel your receptivity. Listen to the lower frequencies** of your images. How do these images resonate with you? How do these vibrations reach you? Try to not intellectualise your response or abstract it. Maybe you need to move around or read something to find your mode of practice. Maybe you want to place your images together, or start with one image and add them one by one. You might choose to describe the moment of encountering this scene, the details of the materials, the relationship you felt to what's there, the questions that arose, the instabilities, the vulnerabilities. Did it prepare you for a future action, a conversation? What feelings did it open up onto--love, fear, grief, boredom, sadness, anger? Did you find yourself capable of being present with, or receiving them? Where do you find yourself now?
We will practice this now by preparing and writing for 30 minutes total.
* The title of the Infrastructural Rehearsals mutual training comes from the collection Poisonality, by Lauren Berlant. Berlant, L. (2023). Poisonality. In G.J. Seigworth and C. Pedwell, eds. The Affect Theory Reader 2: Worldings, Tensions, Futures. Durham: Duke University Press.
** Lower frequencies is a listening to images practice from Tina Campt. Campt, T. M. (2017). Listening to images. Duke University Press.
I'm training for a feeling.md