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Our values 2 | Resistance

Agora Now

Reimagining artist development and public experiment across a global network of spaces.

发布日期: 2023年6月26日

The word resistance is often perceived as strong, strident, an act of standing firm against something. When we think about ‘the resistance’ during periods of war it equates to real courage in resisting occupation, resisting propaganda, non-co-operation and, making spaces of safety for those in acute danger.?

Resistance is one of our agora now values - in Dutch the word is ‘verzet’, in Portuguese and Spanish closer to the English word - resistência | resistencia.

What does it mean to think about rest as resistance? What does it mean to actively and consciously choose to slow down? In the post-pandemic hangover that we’re living in, the demands on our time, our resources, our security and our attention have increased. They seem intractable. There’s never enough quality time for critical thinking and relation, no space for our imaginations individual and collective, which causes us to have diminished energy or courage to act in new ways. Taking time out to ensure our wellbeing, resisting the constant pull, too often seems like a genuinely extraordinary and counterintiuitive act.?

Audre Lorde first advocated for rest as resistance in her 1988 essay A Burst of Light.? At the time she was battling against cancer whilst sustaining her commitment to doing work that continues to inspire resistance movements. She described rest as not self indulgence but self preservation, ‘and that is an act of political warfare.’ In doing so she posited important questions on: who gets to rest and who does not?? who has time and space and who does not? why is so much chaos left for marginalised communities to fix when it is not their creation? Questions as vital today as they were over 30 years ago.?

The Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe writes that ‘to ‘slow down’ … seems like the wrong thing to do when there’s fire on the mountain. But here’s the point: in ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises. We rush through into the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn’t a single way to respond to crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved. Sometimes, what is the appropriate thing to do is not the effective thing to do.? Slowing down is thus about lingering in the places we are not used to. Seeking out new questions. Becoming accountable to more than what rests on the surface. Seeking roots.' (1)

When, as the agora now network we talk about our value resistance, we mean that we are committed to staying present with everything espaco agora now can be. We take the time to protect this possibility. We try to always be conscious of how we can resist the global impulse and ‘norms and values’, resist colonisation and be activist. It means that as we say we believe that artists and makers need more time and space (and that we’re committed to solving that universal challenge), at the same time we believe communities and citizens need this too. We hold the space to bring this into being in relation, with awareness, with care for one another. When we do, we are forced to confront and examine our complicity, our trauma, our over-productivity, our attachments. By doing this together with our colleagues around the world, who each exist in different contexts and with different challenges and in different cultures, we are required to be attentive to ourselves so that we can be attentive to others. In the words of one of our makers, Brazilian, Dutch based artist Rodrigo Batista, this helps us bring life to ‘exchange, anti-individualistic discourses, collectivised discourses, and theatre as a public space.’?

Soon we hope to share news with you about the first residencies we’ll be offering to artists. The agora now vision is to offer a new kind of ‘slow’ residency that doesn’t yet exist in the performance fields. Artists will be offered a residency of 3 months, they will receive a living allowance, technical and producing support. The extended time will allow artists to focus on their research and process, whilst they inhabit the territory and engage with the local community in a deep and impactful way. These feel like small, slow and important steps.? Rest as resistance will be a central practice across the whole community of agora now so we keep in balance how we produce and make and, at the same time, stay alive and open to possibilities of all kinds.?