WORLD BUILDING WHOSE IMAGINATION ARE YOU LIVING IN?
January 2022
TSAL Monthly Newsletter
MORE SOUL FOOD
thirdspace ACTION LAB
Image Credits: Galvan, Fall 2020 Ready-to-Wear
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Billboard Design by Alisha B. Wormsley
IN CONSTRUCTION MoMA: Reimagining Blackness and Architecture
Plant Seeds Grow Blessings (2020) Olalekan Jeyifous
We’re not down there, We’re over here (2020) Amanda Williams
Black Tower/ Black Power (2020) Walter Hood
Fabricating Networks (2020) Felecia Davis Artwork by Maty Biayenda
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Janaury 2022
TSAL Monthly Newsletter
MORE SOUL FOOD Read | Watch | Listen
CONTENTS 1 2 5-6 7-8 9 10
FRONT COVER IN CONSTRUCTION THIS MONTH'S THEME bell hooks ICYMI TEAM FEATURE
Activating Space. Activating People. 3rdspaceactionlab.co
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Janaury 2022
TSAL Monthly Newsletter
MORE SOUL FOOD Read | Watch | Listen
CONTENTS 11-14 15 16-17 18-21 22-25 26-29 30
SOUL CHECK + MIXTAPE VIBES + STUFF RESOURCES MIND CONNECTION SPIRT BACK COVER
Activating Space. Activating People. 3rdspaceactionlab.co
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January 2022
TSAL Monthly Newsletter
JANAURY'S THEME WORLD BUILDING Artwork by Franco Égalité WHOSE IMAGINATION ARE YOU LIVING IN?
KEY TERM OF THE MONTH: IMPERIALIST WHITE SUPREMACIST CAPITALIST PATRIARCHY A phrase coined by bell hooks to describe the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality. The term doesn’t value one system over another, and it complicates the questions of freedom and justice globally (in the context of class, of empire, of capitalism, of racism and of patriarchy). Dear Comrade, We are reminded of our collective desire for physical connectedness as we transition through a(nother) season, a(nother) year, and a(nother) rapidly-rising wave of COVID-19 infection + death. For the second consecutive year, our end of year traditions feel disjointed due to seemingly abrupt circumstances. Eager to connect, celebrate, and embrace, we let our masks down; with them, fell feelings of isolation and confinement as we prematurely gathered. What does it mean to gather in 2022? As corny and hippy-dippy as it sounds, ThirdSpace Action Lab is imagining a world built collectively centered around Black love. As we practice healing from the wounds sustained from living under imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, how do we imagine a world that collectively loves Blackness and Black people? Furthermore, in what ways can the act of gathering coalesce to engineer and prototype ? This month’s newsletter is a collection of narratives, data points, and events curated to expose us to the constructions of worlds outside of our own. However, we hope you leave here with a feeling of interconnectedness and an appetite for imagination.
thirdspace ACTION LAB
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January 2022
TSAL Monthly Newsletter
JANAURY'S THEME WORLD BUILDING Artwork by Franco Égalité
WHOSE IMAGINATION ARE YOU LIVING IN?
The imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchal imagination would have us understand gathering as a transactionary act. That, like a purchase from the corner store, we prepare a list of our desired commodities, we shop based on a series of desired characteristics, and some of us pay for what we want--while others of us pay for what we can afford. As aberrant as it may seem, TSAL invites our comrades (and newcomers) to hold liberated space to welcome our mutual desire for connectedness. As we enter January, let us orient toward possible + radical futures in this month’s newsletter; paying close attention to how we center those who are consistently marginalized, and by result, excluded from the act of gathering. We invite you to bring love into a public space, and by doing so, to complicate our shared understanding of the predetermined, objective, clean-cut lines of the public and professional. To invite love into our public gatherings would require us to extend grace, courage and intuition for ourselves, others, and as a non-unitary collective. Let us abandon the search for a universal or essential fix to the problems of our time(s), in gain of critical dialogue, together, about how we may imagine a liberated world comprised of differing perspectives. In turn problematizes our gathering principles (how we organize, with whom we organize, how power is disseminated and reckoned with during gatherings). A quote from bell hooks prepares us for our reentry into a world transformed by love: Action [like a sacrament] is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of an inward power. But as we act, we not only express what is in us and help give us shape to the world; we also receive what is outside us, and reshape our inner selves…It requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act. (hooks 2001: 77)
Onward, TSAL TEAM
thirdspace ACTION LAB
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WORLD BUILDER
bell hooks
Her words have gone beyond merely teaching us about life — they have uprooted archaic foundations, and built transformative, counter-hegemonic worlds.
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WORLD BUILDER
bell hooks Pema Chödrön & bell hooks on cultivating openness when life falls apart bell hooks in conversation with Sharon Salzberg - What Is Love?
A Public Dialogue Between bell hooks and Cornel West bell hooks & john a. powell: Belonging Through Connection bell hooks: Moving from Pain to Power I The New School The Study Group Bringing bell hooks to Prisons "The Radical Bureaucrat: Love" bell hooks by Lawrence Chua
“To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.” 8
bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics.
ICYMI
WATCH THE KEYNOTE CONVERSATION HERE 9
TEAM MEMBER FEATURE SHAMMAS MALIK
POLICY CONSULTANT Shammas recently participated in Leadership Akron's monthly speaker series: Leadership on Main.
"...as a community we focus a lot on outcomes, but when it comes to ARPA, the Valley, safety, and many other issues, we should balance that approach with more focus on process and more authentic citizen engagement. The more voices at the table, the more folks feel heard, the more we can unite all 190,000 Akronites around a common civic vision and make progress on the systemic issues we face around public safety, housing, education, and more. Each and every one of us has something meaningful to contribute in building a better Akron."
SHAMMAS' BOOKSHELF | VISIT THE READING ROOM SHELF HERE
Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes The Fiftieth Anniversary of “Feliz Navidad,” the Simplest Song Ever Written Vinny Thomas' Short Videos: Why I buried the city of Luxor up late brainstorming skilled v unskilled workers The warthog going live
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SOUL CHECK If you were to pick a composer to create the score for your biopic, who would it be?
EVELYN
Aretha Franklin
MAURA
Stevie Nicks
MS. TINA
Barbara Streisand
TREVOR
Harold Arlen
JENINA
Solange + Frank Ocean 11
SOUL CHECK If you were to pick a composer to create the score for your biopic, who would it be?
MORDECAI
AMBER
Stevie Wonder + Ennio Morricone
BENJAMIN
U2
Giveon
BRANDON
Tina Turner + Nicholas Britell 12
SOUL CHECK If you were to pick a composer to create the score for your biopic, who would it be?
DR. BIBI
Jimi Hendrix + John Coltrane
REESE
Tony! Toni! Toné!
SHAMMAS
Chance the Rapper
MAICA
Mitski + Regina Spektor
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LISTEN TO THE TSAL WORLD BUILDING MIXTAPE HERE
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VIBES + STUFF VIRTUAL EVENT JANUARY 08, 2022
RSVP HERE (REQUIRED)
CEREMONIAL SWEARING IN OF MAYOR-ELECT JUSTIN BIBB
With the surge in coronavirus cases, the Ceremonial Swearing-In Event will be fully virtual to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
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RESOURCES DIFFERENT WAYS OF GATHERING IN PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL SPACES
NORTH STAR BLACK COLLECTIVE
The North Star is centered on the history of Black cooperative economic thought and practice. We place priority on applicants who share the ancestry of Enslaved Africans in the United States and place value on their legacy of cooperative economics and collective care.
GREATER CLEVELAND VOLUNTEERS Greater Cleveland Volunteers manages the Cuyahoga County chapter of the national RSVP program for adults age 55 and older. Through this program, RSVP volunteers give their time and talents to help address critical needs in the community.
NEOCH HOMELESS CONGRESS
The Homeless Congress is an organizing group of community leaders and advocates with lived experience of homelessness. 16
RESOURCES DIFFERENT WAYS OF GATHERING IN PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL SPACES
ETHEL'S CLUB
An immersive wellness platform centering people of color. For you, by us — always.
A CULTURAL EXCHANGE A Cultural Exchange is a nonprofit literacy-based multicultural arts organization for children. It was founded in 1991 by a group of AfricanAmerican women determined to make a difference, led by Deborah McHamm, our first president and chief executive officer.
NATIONAL QUEER AND TRANS THERAPISTS OF COLOR NETWORK
Advancing healing justice by transforming mental health for queer and trans poc. 17
MIND
The Intellectual Work
READ Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee Statue Will Be Melted Down, Transformed Into New Art Nora McGreevy "In Charlottesville, Virginia, lawmakers decided to transform one torn-down monument entirely, reports Teo Armus for the Washington Post. Instead of storing a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, officials will melt down the 1,100-pound bronze monument into metal ingots—raw material that can then be used to create new art."
READ National Monument Audit Monument Lab "The monument landscape has long reflected the country’s history of war and conquest. It also speaks to the national crises of harm, trauma, and grief that are embedded within it. We can envision an approach to commemoration that honors veterans and weighs the extensive toll of war and conquest, and that looks to transform the monument landscape through stories embedded within communities that foster repair and healing."
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MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
MIND
The Intellectual Work
READ ‘Land Acknowledgments’ Are Just Moral Exhibitionism Graeme Wood, The Atlantic
"If you enjoy moral exhibitionism, to say nothing of moral onanism, land acknowledgments in their current form will leave you pleasured for years to come. [...] The acknowledgments never include any actual material redress—return of land, meaningful corrections of wrongs against Indigenous communities—or sophisticated moral reckoning. Nor is there an “easy way” to reckon with this past. [...] But if Microsoft is going to acknowledge a debt, it should also pay it."
READ Decolonization is not a metaphor Eve Tuck and K.Wayne Yang
“When we write about decolonization, we are not offering it as a metaphor; it is not an approximation of other experiences of oppression. Decolonization is not a swappable term for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. Decolonization doesn’t have a synonym. Our goal in this essay is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization - what is unsettling and what should be unsettling. […] We want to say, first, that decolonization is not obliged to answer those questions - decolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler futurity. Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity. ” 19
MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
Exterminate All The Brutes
Mabel O. Wilson - Design & Racism 2: "Can the Master's Tools Dismantle the Master's House"
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MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
MIND
The Intellectual Work
READ Ohio’s Real Overdose Crisis: Fentanyl-adulterated stimulants Harm Reduction Ohio "Ohio’s dangerous drug supply — not our state’s level of drug use, which is slightly below the U.S. average — is our deadly problem. Drug checking and a safe supply of drugs are the ONLY ways to significantly reduce overdose death during the drug war’s fentanyl era. The only real way to significantly reduce overdose death is to end the drug war. An adulterated drug supply is the inevitable, unavoidable, unpreventable result of drug prohibition."
READ The legacy of redlining means worse cardiovascular health for presentday Black Americans Mahasin S. Mujahid, Xing Gao, and Colleen Morris, Berkeley Public Health, Loni. P. Tabb of the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University, and Tené T. Lewis of the Rollins School of Public Health and Emory University.
“I’m hopeful that members of the public and policymakers see our findings as evidence that policies matter. When we aren’t intentional about prioritizing the health of communities and neighborhoods that are typically left out of development conversations or are chronically underfunded and overlooked, that has really harmful intergenerational effects." FULL OPEN-ACCESS PAPER: Historical redlining and cardiovascular health: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosi 21
MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
CONNECTION The Community Work
WATCH How urban spaces can preserve history and build community Walter Hood, TED
How can landscapes imbue memory of diverse perspectives, and force us to stop narrowing things down to a single set of identities? Who has the privilege to be singular?
READ India's Dalit Panther Party Karen Escalona, “The Black Panther Party: History and Theory of a Political Movement" "Known to have based their political strategies on the U.S. Black Panthers, questions have a emerged around whether the Dalit Panthers were simply a copycat Black Panther movement or whether they succeeded in their South Asian context. To understand the emergence and need for the elite Panther movement, it is best to trace back to the early 1950s and look at the mass conversions from Hinduism to Buddhism that were going on at the time." 22
MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
CONNECTION The Community Work
READ History of Disability Justice Project LETS "Disability justice recognizes the intersecting legacies of white supremacy, colonial capitalism, gendered oppression and ableism in understanding how people's’ bodies and minds are labelled ‘deviant’, ‘unproductive’, ‘disposable’ and/or ‘invalid."
READ Advocates push nationwide movement for land return to Blacks after victory in California Erica Werner and Troy McMullen, The Washington Post “It’s not an exaggeration to say that they would have been millionaires if they had been able to hold on to their property and their successful business,” Hahn said. “This was an injustice inflicted not just upon Willa and Charles Bruce, but on generations of their descendants.”
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MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
CONNECTION The Community Work
WATCH Black Femme Supremacy Nia Hampton
"A grassroots endeavor to connect Black Femmes through-out the African diaspora through the medium of film."
READ A Tech Whistle-Blower Helps Others Speak Out Erica Werner and Troy McMullen, The Washington Post
“All of the work I’m doing right now is grounded in getting actual change to folks in the fastest way possible and in the most equitable way possible,” said Ifeoma Ozoma, a former employee of Pinterest, Facebook and Google." 24
MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
CONNECTION The Community Work
WATCH Designing Cities For All: Exploring inclusive city design Afaina de Jong and Arna Mačkić
"How can designers or architects give a voice to the needs and ideas of inhabitants of a city? And which initiatives call for innovative, bold, and inclusive urban development? Together with architect Afaina de Jong, known for her work for among others Venice Architecture Biennale, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and Centraal Museum Utrecht, local designers and leading international collectives that shake up the way we work are invited to share their insights."
WATCH Interphase: How the Black Feminist Archive Yields New Bodies of Creative Growth Featuring: Mithsuca Berry, Zoë Pulley, and Nakia Hill “We’re all kind of archivists today because we have a notes app, we have instagram, we are all constantly archiving our lives. It’s about knowing that your experience is valuable enough to be told, to be preserved, to influence future generations and people who look like yourself. […] Finding the agency that your narrative matters.”
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MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
SPIRIT The Soul Work
WATCH Black Star: Rebirth is Necessary Jenn Nkiru, NOWNESS
"Director Jenn Nkiru authors a personal and powerful exploration of Blackness through piecing together dreamlike portraits with stunning archival footage that includes Afrofuturism pioneer Sun Ra and revolutionary organization the Black Panther Party."
READ Black Futures Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham
"The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics. In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, Black Futures opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every reader." 26
MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
SPIRIT The Soul Work
WATCH James Baldwin — Who can save whom ? (Meeting the Man) From Meeting The Man : James Baldwin in Paris. Directed by Terence Dixon United Kingdom, France, 1970.
"You can’t help but feel that there is something you can do for me. That you can save me. And you don’t yet know that I have endured your salvations for so long. I cannot afford any more. Not another moment of your salvation. And that I can save you. I know something about you. You don’t know anything about me."
LISTEN Power, Intention, and Gathering Finding Our Way Podcast
"Priya Parker is a facilitator, strategic advisor, the acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, and one of Prentis' newest friends. Listen as these two reflect on where we've been in the past year, what we have the opportunity to bring forward, and the ever-shifting dynamics of power when two or more people meet." 27
MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
SPIRIT The Soul Work
LISTEN whose imagination are you living in? bitchface podcast "In a remote location north of the Bay Area we didn't so much escape reality as re-create it. The landscape — the fog, the tall trees, the fields dotted with craters and other land art — was a canvas that we played with projecting onto. For two weeks (the length of our residency) we got to live inside of our own imaginations. (Whose imagination are we living in normally? What are we subtly taught to fear? To worship?) In our utopic visions art and queers and femmes have power. Our utopia is creative and collaborative and fun."
EXPLORE Queering the Map Lucas LaRochelle
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MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
SPIRIT The Soul Work
READ “Storytelling is the nucleus of my practice”: Bria Lauren on photographing Black women from her community Bria Lauren and Elfie Thomas
"On hearing her future plans, we feel certain that Bria is going to do justice to the people who have inspired her – “the women and men in my lineage who led movements, integrated political systems, and used their voice and resources to pour into the community of Third Ward and Houston.”
READ Ways of Knowing Edna Bonhomme
"Black people have always been interdisciplinary. They have done so by making their own way, adopting daring methods and composing narratives that supersede the racial logics trying to shrink them."
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MORE RESOURCES IN THE JANUARY 2022 READING ROOM SHELF HERE
Photography by Tyler Mitchell
PEACE. Read | Watch | Listen
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"Here the water is not waiting to waste you. Here the sun is not stripping you skin. This is the dark water of renewal, offering only one message: begin." ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS, SEVEN POSSIBLE FUTURES FOR THE BLACK FEMINIST ARTIST 30