Framing statement

I’m not sure, but we want to make space for not doing, doing not doing, or not doing doing. We want to sit in not doing, sit on doing. Perhaps, we are already doing. Who are we anyway? Maybe we can’t stop. Or maybe whatever it is we are doing, what we’re not doing, is more of who we are. It takes an average of 48 seconds to digest a thought. Perhaps we might grieve about all of the not doing, along with all of the doing. We do, we don’t: do we? Undo something. We think maybe doing something different or not doing the same old doing might be worth a thought. Directions: please follow me as I explain the instructions. When we return to the room, we ask that you give this paper back to one of our group members at the door and take a seat on a chair in the grid, opposite another participant. Please look at the person facing you in silence for the duration of the exercise. We will switch off the light to signal the end of the exercise. If you need to close your eyes, you may. If you need to leave the room, you may. If you have to leave the exercise, you may return only after the exercise is concluded. Please note that there is no photography or video or audio recording permitted during our experiment. Thank you for your cooperation.

Participant response

by Kayla Anderson

On April 19, 2016, forty-six of us have gathered in a conference room at the HKW to think about what it might mean to sense in our insensible situation. It’s something we’ve all committed to do, for one reason or another, and the combination of our own individual wills plus an extreme amount of government and private funding have made it happen. Microphones around the room record our conversations, our irrelevant asides, our crinkling wrappers. Observers come to watch and gather information—sometimes in the guise of participants, at other times with cameras. I have the feeling of being in some kind of lab or factory—one that doesn’t yet have the machinery in place for production, but whose orchestrators anticipate it coming soon. We are not sure what the goal or the method is, but we know we are supposed to do something. There is a heavy emphasis on production from the outset. Each day, often before we have absorbed the information we are all here to generate, one of the observers reminds us that we are expected to produce. In our conference room we are engaging in a series of self-led experiments. Our factory is doing test runs of different things it could produce once it is outfitted with machinery. Will we be a factory for ideas, information, experiences, idioms? Shall we at least get things turning for a bit until the cogs arrive? Not long after watching Hito Steyerl’s How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013), we are ready to begin an experiment on “resolution.” Moments from the video echo in my head describing different resolution targets, who is and who is not seen. As the experiment begins we are each handed a slip of instructions and led out of the room in single file. We can choose to participate, or we can decline. If we opt in, we must walk in circles around the main lobby of the conference center. If we opt out, we may go to the bathroom. This action of walking in a queue makes us highly visible, and yet no one stops to ask what we are doing (or why). Upon reaching the entrance to the room, we are given another chance to opt out of the experiment. We are informed that once we enter the room, we will be part of the experiment. If we choose to leave, we must not come back until the experiment is over. Several people from outside our group appear and decide to enter, enticed by the blind commitment. Please note that there is no photography or video or audio recording permitted during our experiment. Once we enter the room, we give up our sheets of paper and take our places in a grid of chairs, each row facing another in pairs. We can choose to stare at the person seated in front of us, or we can close our eyes. At a podium, someone reads the definition of resolution: The firm decision to do, or not to do, something. It’s not the type of resolution I thought we would be defining. But, of course, the two resolutions are tied up in each other. I decide whether to see clearly or not; if and how to be seen. Often it might feel like these are not decisions I actively make, but they are. The participant across from me decides to close her eyes and I decide to give my personal data to companies such as Google and Facebook without reading the terms and conditions. We decide to be seen, unseeing. There is something uncomfortable about staring at someone with their eyes closed, and so, after some seconds, I close mine too. I also open them again and look around the room at other participants, each one staring at the person across from them. I cannot make a decision. What does it mean to be resolute? To withdraw? Perhaps because of the emphasis on productivity, this is also something that comes up at the conference. Sometimes the decision not to participate is the more difficult one to make. “I’d rather not” becomes a phrase several people pick up and hold out when asked to play games or produce responses. Just a few days earlier, several of us left another seminar and became free floaters (rogue pixels) without an ideological home. We did this because we didn’t want to further a dialog with which we disagreed. “We came all the way here” (decided to), we said, “and so we’d rather not” (decided not to). Was this the right thing to do or not do? I’m not sure. But back inside the resolution room, we have all opened our eyes. We have disbanded the machine. And now we must resolve to do/not do, but perhaps this time we will take more than 48 seconds to decide.

Participant reflection

by Marc Herbst

Scheduled at the end of the last day of the Anthropocene Curriculum, after a very playful day of other group exercises, the Resolution Group’s meditative encounter hit a unique note for me. The exercise began with a seemingly nonsensical stroll through the building—it wasn’t foolish; rather, it seemed to have no point besides getting participants out of the room while the organizers rearranged the chairs. Upon further reflection, I see that what it also did for me was to get me out of the playful routine I’d built up throughout the day. When we returned to the room, we were instructed to sit on a chair. Several rows of chairs were ordered near the front entrance, back to back, and therefore also facing other rows. I sat down quietly and soon enough someone who was to be my partner sat down across from me. In silence now that the seats were all full, instructions were read; some sort of mix between a wordless encounter with the person sitting across from you and a silent meditation with one’s eyes closed, if one chose. Truth is, I forget the specifics of the exercise. Really, I had a powerful experience between myself, the energy of the whole week, and the person sitting across from me. It made a lot of sense at the time—the term being “resolution” and all. I remember, I think, trying to figure out where my awareness might end and where someone else’s might begin, though this was but one of the wild variety of thoughts that went through my head. Afterwards, I had a meaningful chat with the person who sat across from me.