MICRO-CAR E

SMALL ACTS OF RESILIENCE
FOR LIVING WITHIN THE EARTH’S
C A R RY I N G C A PAC IT Y

This work took place on the unceded
territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam),
Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and
Səlílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations and the
territories of the Jicarilla Apache, Pueblos,
and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute).
As uninvited guests, we humbly
acknowledge where we are, and also
that Indigenous ways of knowing–
shared through writing, storytelling, and
responsibility to place–have guided
this work.

Supported by the Jake Kerr Faculty of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr
University of Art + Design, the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies,
and made possible in part through funding from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

While a land acknowledgment is itself
a small act, it is a prompt to all of us to
remember that we are on Indigenous
land. Let this be an opening for all of us
to contemplate ways to support movements for Indigenous sovereignty and
self-determination.

Special thanks to Steven Lam and Ian Werely.
Produced in affiliation with the Emily Carr DESIS Lab—desis.ecuad.ca
©2020

Avi Farber, Jean Chisholm, Julie Van Oyen
and Laura Kozak, 2020

MICRO-CARE

CUPPED HANDS
NOTES ON PROCESS

In April of 2020, while we and the world scrambled to
come to terms with a global pandemic, a small group of
us assembled to answer a call from the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies. The call was to respond to
a Policy Horizons Canada report called The Next Generation of Emerging Global Challenges: Living within the
Earth’s Carrying Capacity, produced to “identify the
next generation of global challenges for consideration by
SSHRC”. This 114 page report felt so heavy, so mammoth,
so intimidating—and yet so important—to reply to.
How could we, from the humble makeshift workspaces
of our kitchens and bedrooms, generate something in
response? And how could we do this while managing our
own mental health and well-being through a time where
everything felt like quicksand?
This project began from a place of searching for some
optimism and agency in the shadow of massive and
systemic forces. We documented and discussed modest
actions of resilience and care for ourselves, each other
and the systems surrounding us: our weekly discussions,
secret instagram, and informally shared reading list
themselves becoming a typology of care. Weekly calls
evolved into reading and writing, and we let the project
be led by our instincts through the spring of 2020, a
period of time where each week felt new in tone; the
result of almost-daily bombshells in the news.
We wanted to open the project to voices beyond our
own, without replicating the vacuous generalism of an
open call. Relationality being an important part of care
that we discussed, we each decided to invite one person
from within our own circles to contribute a text and
take part in a discussion. This approach is something we

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learned from Holly Schmidt and Justin Langlois (Float
School), and is a way of working that we offer to others.
Mimicking fractals, where “infinitely complex patterns
are self-similar across different scales” (maree brown, 51,
2017) we hoped to bring together divergent thinking and
interdisciplinary approaches that started with a group
where everyone had a social stake. This report holds our
divergent but intersecting reflections on care, beginning
from the smallest seed of ourselves. We think strategies
and approaches like this are vital in meeting the complex
challenges of existence as 21st century humans. Through
remaining humble relative to the global challenges laid
out in the Policy Horizons Canada report, we hope our
work can create a container for complex and meaningful
interactions to spill from.
The text in this publication includes five sections:

5

Cupped Hands
On the formation and context for the project

9

A Carrier Bag Theory of Care
An introductory text on relationality
Julie Van Oyen

13

Beads on String
A collection of short texts on care,
strung together
Avi Farber, Jean Chisholm, Julie Van Oyen,
Laura Kozak, Jess Sung, Monique S. Carr,
Oluwasola Olowo-Ake and Jacquie Shaw

41

Mesh
A diagrammatic collection of fragments
from a dialogue between contributors

55

Messages in Bottles
A reading list that emerged from the project

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MICRO-CARE

A CARRIER BAG THEORY OF CARE
JULIE VAN OYEN

“A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a
sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder.
A recipient.”
Ursula Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction1

In the face of staggering ecological and sociopolitical
turmoil, I am submerged. Daily reports of burning
rainforests, leaking pipelines, rising temperatures, viral
pandemic, police brutality, white supremacy: I am
engulfed. Adrift in Story’s End, a roiling sea of hindsight
and impotence and blame, drowning in human shame.
How did we get here? Is the story, as Le Guin says, truly
reaching its end? The Hero’s story, the killer story of
mammoth-slayers, conquerors, colonizers, seems to have
run out. All of the mammoths are dead. As a container,
Earth is full. Less full of life, now, yet heavier than ever.
As a bag, it is leaky; pierced through by the straight, sharp
arrows of the Heroes and their linear stories. Its capacity
to carry us in this form is waning.
A small wooden boat appears, more of a canoe than an
ark. Hands reach over the side to grasp my sodden collar
and pull me in. We are small, here in the vast ocean,
but we are sheltered. Inside this bobbing bottle, we tell
stories to pass the time. We relate and collect tales of
small moments making small lives, and weave them into
wind socks and nets of our own hair. We are Le Guin’s
scattered people. The people of the wild-oat patch, and
their kids. The gatherers, the snackers, the makers, the
thinkers, the singers. The ones who hold bags that hold
things like seeds, slings that hold babies. This boat holds
no Heroes, just people.

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A Carrier Bag Theory of Care
People: Tree and rock people, river people, human people
of all kinds, fur and feather people. Some of us hold
bowls brimming with Kimmerer’s strawberries2, gifted to
us by an earth who still loves us despite everything. As
Kimmerer relates, by being holders, recipients of these
gifts, we are inextricable from the land who gave them.
Some of us hold McIntosh’s invisible knapsack3, a bag
to be unpacked and sorted through. These containers
are holding things in “a particular, powerful relation to
one another and to us” (Le Guin, 34, 1988). Through our
relating to each other, holding with each other, we carry
together. Care together. In the following pages, we think
and write together and collect our stories like beads on
loops of string. We gather together and pour words like
cupped hands holding water. This small collaborative
effort emerges as one of many in “this vast sack, this belly
of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of
things that were, this unending story” (Le Guin, 37, 1988).
Suddenly, the boat doesn’t seem so small, nor so lost.
1 Le Guin’s (1988) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction offers
an alternative way of being human to the usual story of prehistoric hunters and weapon-wielders. This one theorizes
that before “the luxury” of sharp tools and weapons, humans
quite possibly had already been using containers for storing
food, valuables, children and even themselves (via houses)
for a very long time. This is important to allow space for
humans to be collectors and sharers as well as (and perhaps
before) killers and consumers, a space we need now possibly
more than ever.
2 From the chapter entitled “The Gift of Strawberries” in
Kimmerer’s (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,
Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. The chapter
invites us to consider the relationships produced through the
practice of gift-giving (and receiving). For example, when we
receive wild strawberries from the giving earth, and understand them for the gifts they are, we are entangled in ongoing
relations of reciprocity that requires us to in turn care for
the earth.

3 McIntosh’s (1988) “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible
Knapsack” metaphorically describes white privilege as a
knapsack filled with ‘tools’ ready to be used at any moment of
need—“special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas,
clothes, tools, and blank checks”. McIntosh asks those of us
that carry this bag to be accountable to the unearned advantages we carry with us.

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MICRO-CARE

BEADS ON STRING
TEX TS ON CARE FROM OUR OWN
COLLECTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS,
STRUNG TOGETHER

mousy mouse
avi farber
“Mousy Mouse!” “Mousy Mouse!”
It’s Maya’s way of saying don’t come out of your hiding
places as she walks through the kitchen. Either the mice
have taken over my house, or I have intruded on theirs.
Hard to tell. They like it above the decorative wood
poles that make up the ceiling. It must remind them of
the fields of brush that surround the house as far as you
can see, though more welcoming of course. I hear them
moving around up there at night snuggling into their
beds of insulation. During the daytime they sprint out of
the cozy nook behind the oven making Maya jump back
and scream “AH! Jesus!”
They leave hantavirus poop bombs around my tooth
brush that stain the tile grout brown as they dissolve
under my sprays of disinfectant. It’s pretty gross actually. I don’t like to kill things but they got used to the
ultrasonic pest deterrents I bought on Amazon after two
weeks. I start trapping them. Seven in three days. I put on
my respirator and rubber gloves. These aren’t just mice.
They are Deer Mice, and potentially carry Hantavirus
in a region of Northern New Mexico close to where the
virus originated. Hantavirus, though rare, is similar to
Covid-19 in both pathology and presentation. Though it
cannot be transmitted between humans, it has a fatality
rate of 36%, and starts with a fever and body aches that
can progress to respiratory failure.

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These mice are walking manifestations of the danger we
all feel surrounded by Covid-19 and I can kill them. But
should I? The act doesn’t kill my fear, nor change the
fact that I now assume all Deer Mice are guilty carriers.
Mouse 8 was partially trapped and ran across the room
the other night. I wait to dispose of the trap until the next
afternoon because I hate doing it so much. Balancing on
one leg, my other one is broken, I bend over to pick up
the trap and notice the mouse is still alive. Their leg has
been broken by the trap. Pain shoots through my calf as
the bones twist, I feel nauseous. I’m losing my balance.
Avi Farber is a multimedia artist working with woodfired ceramics,
documentary photography, 3D Printing, and new media/sound, based
in New Mexico, USA. Drawn to the moments that break through the
distractions of daily life, Avi documents people in environmental
frontiers. His projects explore human relationships with the natural
phenomenon of our changing climate, and explore alternative modes
of production deeply connected to place. He is currently working on a
Masters in Interdisciplinary Design at Emily Carr University.

growing things
je an chisholm
april . balcony
The first week was scary. I’m trying to remember now, but
I think the second week was scary too. Panic attacks over
every scratch in the throat. Searching daily for reassurances in news and social media streams. Bracing myself
for this great upheaval and trying to prepare for its wholly
transformative potential. I want to be flexible, but it feels
like whiplash.
Image – Avi Farber

By the third week I feel okay. Guilty, over how quickly
I seemed to adjust. Settling into the comforts of my
domestic space, I worry about how these privileges are
entombing me. But there is also a tremendous calm. I feel
untethered from meetings and emails and expectations. I
find liberation in the limitations, and I can move slowly,

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simply, and closely. My partner and I wake up at 6 am
and sit on the balcony, waiting for the sun to round the
corner as we figure out how to spend whole days together.
I buy a bag of dirt and carry it home in my arms. We
plant seeds—parsley, dill, lupin, peas and bean—and take
time-lapse videos of sprouts emerging. Sheltering-in-place
seems to imply a hunkering down and tucking in, but this
feels a bit like dissolving. I’m not sure in what way exactly,
but the edges are getting fuzzy and porous.
may . katie’s garden
An impressive block of community gardens grows across
the street from our apartment. There’s a notoriously long
waitlist for a plot, and we never felt like we’d have the time
or skills to do it justice, so we were content to just admire
them. Now that we suddenly find ourselves with more time
and motivation, we regret not putting our names down
sometime in the last 9 years.

Image – Jean Chisholm

My friend Katie is subletting a plot in Mount Pleasant,
and I ride my bike over and help her tie up trestles and
plant beans and peas and radishes. We harvest kale and
she shares half with me. We talk to her garden neighbours,
and discuss growing strategies. Katie has carefully put
together a spreadsheet of what vegetables grow best beside
each other, and we try to take ideal partnerships into
consideration as we plant. Back at home, my partner and I
carefully wade through emergency benefit forms and read
books about trees and make music for friends and place
baskets in front of the sprouts so our cat doesn’t eat them.
june . janine’s garden
Katie and I bike over to Janine’s new garden plot in
Hastings Sunrise, in a small make-shift community
garden a block away from her apartment. We sketch
possible growing arrangements and meet her neighbours and figure out how to turn the hose on. We talk
about the protests and anti-racist reading lists and social
media missteps and how to hold each other close and
accountable.

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Beads on String
The world is trying to open up, and it seems like the foot
keeps slipping off the peddle, catching on movements
and momentum. The weight of expectation is pressing
back down again; we’ve stopped waking up at 6 am. I’m
trying to hold onto those dissolving edges, but it might
be a matter of tuning my attention to them now. All my
balcony seeds have sprouted, now the tricky part: keeping
them going.
Jean Chisholm (BA, BDes, MDes) is a communication designer, design
researcher, and educator. Her interest in community building, local
identities, and transitions towards socially sustainable ways of living
informs her research and design practice. In 2020, she completed her
Master’s in Design from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, exploring
relational, place-based practices in her hometown of Prince George, BC.

westbridge, b.c.
julie van oyen
I am back where the world began. Sunk into an old couch,
gazing out of the house my brother built with his own
hands, on the land my father and mothers and those
before them worked with their own hands. I close my eyes
and hear the voices I must have heard still in the womb,
grasshoppers and magpies and mosquitoes (it’s been a
wet June in the valley). From here, I can see the ponderosa
pines who raised me, and wonder who raised them. I do
not know their names, but I feel close to them in our love
for the pines.

Image – Julie Van Oyen

I can see the forest-fire-scarred face of the mountain.
Unexpectedly, the awareness of an age-old cycle of destruction and renewal is soothing; it eases me into a reassuring
feeling of being very small. Maybe it isn’t shocking that
being reminded of my own insignificance is supremely
comforting, while the world burns with fires set by people
that are also like me. We are breaking things, and some
will be lost forever. But the thing about natural disasters
(the mountain seems to say), whether they be fires or

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certain human cultures, is that eventually they burn out.
“I am still here,” the mountain says, “and I will be long
after you are gone, a soft human animal returned to dirt
under the pines.”
Julie Van Oyen is a Vancouver-based designer and graduate student.
She grew up on a farm in the Kootenay Boundary region of the Southern
Interior of BC, but has lived in the city now for 13 years. Mid-way through
a Masters in Interaction Design at Emily Carr University, her practice
involves investigations and propositions towards an opening-up of
interaction design perspectives and processes through embodied
experiential practices and interspecies collaborations, such as with
fermentation. Other ways of making, such as writing, place-based
embodied actions, and digital/non-digital visualization and prototyping
inform her work as well.

moms
l aur a koz ak
April 2020. In these weeks as my circles of travel and
contact have shrunk, I’ve been paying attention to how
deeply and reciprocally reliant I am on other moms in
my neighbourhood. Most of the ways we are accustomed
to helping each other have been put on hold: we all
notice that absence, but have also been finding new ways
to support each other. We laugh and struggle our way
through the days with different and the same worries in
our heads. We are so tired together. On any given day I
might witness 100 extensions of kindness—a moment
of childminding while a forgotten thing is retrieved, an
offer to pick something up from the grocery store, the
loaning of a quiet place to work outside a crowded house,
the sharing of riches from a garden plot. These women
work so hard and so invisibly, yet, I feel we are making
something together, also an invisible thing.
I was reading some of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard’s
research about mother trees the other day—the oldest
trees in the forest with complex fungal root systems
underground. Through this unseen network, the trees

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Beads on String
can communicate, adapt to threats or changing conditions, recognize their seedlings, and store massive
amounts of carbon. They do all this while staying in
just one place.
In the bike room of my apartment building, we have an
old stroller that’s filled with a few different sizes of bikes
and trikes and scooters. Most of these have arrived at
just the right time from another family nearby, or are
waiting to be passed on to the next-biggest kid. There
is nothing transactional about these neighbourhood
bikes—they’re all old and seem to just move when and
where they’re needed. I wish more objects in the world
could be this way—distributed locally to where they’re
needed, without cost, and without needing to make or
buy anything new.

Image – Laura Kozak

For all its elasticity and adaptability, I am so aware of
how many conditions need to be intact for this network
of moms to work the way it does: families able to stay
where they are, without displacement; safe and peaceful
streets and parks where we see and come to know each
other; working conditions that allow us the time to make
friends and build trust; children whose basic needs are
not under threat. This way of being together—of helping
out no questions asked, of pooling our knowledge and
methods and points of view—is so simple, but it’s also an
indicator of things much more complex. The amplifying
forces of climate change, racism and inequity feel louder
than ever, and I really hope that some version of these
place-based networks of care will continue to exist for
my kids to participate in as they grow up.
Laura Kozak is a design researcher and community organizer. Since
2005 she has built partnerships and collaborated on projects with local
and international artists, designers and community organizations. A
core interest in relationality and collaborative design of the urban
environment informs her research and teaching practice. She is on the
Board of Directors at 221A Artist Run Centre Society and teaches in the
Jake Kerr Faculty of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr
University of Art + Design.

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Beads on String
unsung heroes
jess sung
East West Market is a small locally owned grocery store
serving the heart of Vancouver’s Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood since 1996. Located on 26th and Main, they pride
themselves in carrying a unique and carefully curated
variety of groceries that reflect and represent the needs of
their multicultural customers. Providing diverse, healthy
and affordable options for the community is their main
focus. It’s the place to go for all those hard to find ingredients, even going so far as tracking down customers’
requests for international delicacies. Their aim is to
accessibly offer the seamless blending of all cultures
through quality food.

Image – Jess Sung

David Lee Kwen, a Chinese-Trinidadian Canadian biologist and foraged mushrooms wholesaler decided to take
over the business in 2018 after the original owner retired.
He immigrated to Canada with his parents and eight
siblings at the age of 14. Having previously grown up
running a grocery store with his family back in Trinidad
and Tobago, he felt it was a natural full circle orbit back
to his familial roots. Family, both genetic and found, are
very dear to the core of David’s life philosophy–treating
everyone like family, and in turn creating an environment that breeds unity and connectedness with those
around us. He strives to enrich the community by giving
back in any way he can, whether through environmental
awareness and sustainability or charitable donations
to local food banks and organizations. The success
and comradery on display at the Main street location
encouraged David to open a second East West Market
in Kerrisdale. He hoped to perpetuate the message of
conscious consumption, that knowing where your food
comes from and how ethically it is sourced will uplift
sustainable choices and recycle wealth, in all its forms,
back through the local community.

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Covid-19 has been a challenging time for many, and
this little market has been a guiding light in the process.
Upon entry, there is a dedicated staff member to provide social distancing education and wellness protocol
along with free masks and hand sanitizer. The head of
the produce department, Eric Sung, a wholesale produce
vet with 50+ years experience, has taken on the task of
helping local farms, like Barnston Island, whose sole
purveyors were restaurants. When the closures occurred,
many farms whose business models relied wholly on
restaurants were left stranded with thousands of pounds
of perishable produce and no distribution channels. A
recipe for bankruptcy. Mr. Sung worked for two months
straight during Covid to ensure that their products
found its way into customers hands. Assuring that their
customers would have access to a fresh and consistent
abundance of organic produce. At the same time, East
West started doing online purchases and delivery to
maintain access for all ages during quarantine, as many
big box retailers were unable to fulfill online purchases.
Once every week a seniors home received a direct order
fulfilled with next day delivery service.
Environmental sustainability and reducing their carbon
footprint are important tenets in the East West ethos.
Partnering with a local design firm to create cheekily
branded, sustainable canvas totes, as well as pledging to
do away with single use plastics. They are a market on a
mission to make life more personal, health more attainable and food more excitable.
Jess Sung is an analog film photographer based in Vancouver, BC. Her
mission in life is to help humans, more specifically, BIPOC feel less alone
in their experience by opening up the dialogue through conceptual art
and journalism. Wrestling with her own identity as a fourth generation
Chinese Canadian womxn, she examines the entangled influence
between East and West in her photography. Seeking to lay the
foundation to help those who grapple with their place in this world.

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spellbound syrups
monique s. carr
Spellbound Syrups, my beverage company, happened by
accident. It started when a friend gifted me a book from
the Downtown Albuquerque Public Library. The book
included recipes, history, and etymology-sort of all of the
areas of study I was then fascinated with. During this
time, I was finishing my undergrad studies in Speech
Language Pathology and Linguistics at the University of
New Mexico. I was not interested in a graduate degree in
either of these studies at the time, and decided to explore
small business in beverage. I’ve always been a very
sensory person. I grew up dancing ballet and loved the
idea of digesting every feeling the music inspired in me
and becoming one with it. I love hobbies and work that
are meticulous and slow—they feel gentle to me. I love
stumbling upon magic, joy, beauty, creation, and delight
in Albuquerque and Northern New Mexico’s desert,
forest, and aquatic landscape—this is what Spellbound
embodies for me.

Image – Monique S. Carr

I harvest fruit by hand, I process fruit by hand. I macerate melons, currants, green and copper apricots,
magenta cactus fruit. I love to watch them melt, open up,
spill, merge into one another. These fruits are available to
me by foraging or via my generous community. Strangers
will contact me and offer fruits from their properties that
would otherwise go to waste. If I’m honest this is one of
the less comfortable parts of making. I’m a bit of a hermit
and like my time with fruit to be uninterrupted. This
does not mean I do not appreciate the time and efforts
shared by these strangers; it simply takes more emotional
labor than any other part of my making process. These
small acts of kindness certainly accumulate in my heart
and some strangers have become dear friends, some
even teachers.

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It is an immense privilege to find peace and make a living
as a maker. For the majority of the time, since the beginning of Spellbound, I struggled with feeling like it was
“enough” to work and make sustainably. I felt as though
it was only a small lens of a larger and overlooked story.
I began to ask myself “who benefits from me making
sustainably, from my handcrafted, carefully made, consumable product”? As a minority—a Black-mixed woman
of color and someone who is not originally from New
Mexico—I started to look at my very own privilege and
found that a lot of people who shared similar cultural
traits did not have the same access to food and education
as me. Once I began to donate time and money in supporting food sovereignty, access to clean water on Navajo
Nation, Food Banks for Tohali School on Navajo Nation,
NDNCollective, and advocating for Black and Indigenous
People’s rights in Albuquerque, did I feel like my work
and my interest in creating from the land was more than
extraction or appropriation.
I’m honored to continue to learn from and build with the
Indigenous communities of New Mexico-Diné and Pueblo
Peoples. I’ve learned to work from a timeline of trust, of
self-reflection, of healing, and reciprocity. Over time I
have disengaged with ideas that value urgency, production,
consumerism, and appropriation. In doing so, I have successfully streamlined my business into making and selling
the way that I want which allows me to engage more
thoughtfully and actively with my community.
Monique S. Carr Is an Afro-Mexican maker, land steward, and business
owner based in Albuquerque, NM. Spellbound Syrups, her beverage
company, is about creating with food that might otherwise go to waste
and celebrating the richness of our harvest seasonally. She is asked
to pick fruits from properties where the fruit will not be used. With these
fruits she makes cold-processed or raw botanical syrups for soft drinks
and cocktails. When she’s not foraging, harvesting, and processing
edibles she is redistributing foods and resources to communities who
have little or no access.

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i care
oluwasol a olowo -ake
As I am reminded that my skin is a threat by the news
and social media,
As I bury my black brothers and sisters in hashtags,
poetry and black canvas,
As I mourn their deaths and ask when this will be over,
I care,
I care as I write out my bottomless frustrations at the situation, at Trump, at the excruciating experience to trying
to explain to white people that white privilege is real so
that they can be convinced of my argument that people
like me deserve to live.
I care by talking,
Talking to other black friends like me who cannot seem
to process the time we’re in.
It’s been happening for a while but somehow this time it
feels heavy.

‘Oya show me your power' by Oluwasola Olowo-Ake

I care to dance away my frustrations because embodied
practice relieves me of my pain.
I care to dance in definition because words don’t
punch the same.
I care to sit with friends, socially distanced at a park and
have dinner while we watch the sunset
We don’t all look the same but the care is in the friendship. And they get it.
I care by having movie nights with friends every Saturday.
For me the care is in the little steps I take to Reconciliation everyday.
Another poem, another song,
another dance, another talk
As laughter fills our bellies for good
tears fill our eyes for bad
and we repeat this cycle of emotions day and night.

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Oluwasola Olowo-Ake is a Nigerian from the Yoruba tribe, born in
Lagos State. She grew up in Nigeria and left to study Fashion Design
at the age of seventeen in the UK and is currently doing her Masters in
Interdisciplinary Design at Emily Carr University. Her practice is centred
around expressing her Yoruba culture in order to restructure black race
narratives the diasporic environment holds by presenting alternative
epistemologies that can sit in the diaspora and contribute to decolonizing
ways of being. Story-telling is also heavily foundational to her work as she
uses mediums like dance, poetry and music to share these narratives.

adapted from instagram stories
june 5 2020
jacquie shaw
Just got out of therapy. My therapist asked me before we
logged off what was the one thing I’m going to do today
to support myself in the work we did today. It seems
simple, but today I’m just making sure I drink enough
water; to keep myself hydrated and healthy in the western
science way but also to flush out whatever got uprooted
in our session—whatever is getting uprooted on the daily.
So for today’s sharing time for resistance, I’m going to
share with you how drinking enough water is indeed a
resilience practice, based in social justice.
First, I/we must acknowledge and reflect: Safe accessible
drinking water is not a given. In what is currently Canada
100+ boil water advisories exist for Indigeous communities. Being able to go to the tap, fill a bottle, glass, or ice
cube tray, isn’t as simple as it sounds; I’m privileged to be
able to do it.
Our bodies are holding a lot right now: excess endorphins,
muscle tensions, waste in your blood system—science-y
things I don’t know off the top of my head linked to this
if you’re super invested in western “modern” medicine.
With these there are other things, like trauma (personal
and intergenerational), energy, hurt, and feelings. Things
that you know are real and feel. Your body is processing
them even if you don’t know, give your body a way to

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flush it out of the system. Allow yourself to feel nourished
by the water you drink. Your little dried out cells. Your
blood is around 90% water, keep your insides slippery!
Allow things to move around easier. Things like feelings,
but also things like oxygen.
Make sure you drink water in the ways you like it. Make
it a little treat. I’m lazy today so I’m just drinking some
cold water from the fridge, but usually I don’t like just
plain water. If you know me, you know I love sparkling
water. I have a Sodastream—a problematic fave—but I
also haven’t had a working CO2 canister since pre-pandemic so I’m drinking my water flat. When I need some
extra water encouragement I like to keep lemons, limes,
cucumber, mint, and lately frozen watermelon/mango on
hand to pop in. Don’t forget ice cubes, I often overlook
the effectiveness of adding some ice.
I’ll keep saying it: The work starts with yourself. Which
means learning how to take care of yourself, your whole
self, during these times.
Drink your water out of habit but also if you need to take
a little time it’s an easy little practice to dedicate a glass or
a few sips to mindfully hydrating and nourishing yourself. Think of each sip as an act of self love and care and
then that love goes into your bloodstream, and then into
every little nook and cranny. It goes through your heart,
and your brain, essential to both.
How does the water feel going down your throat? In your
belly? Is it a trickle or did you take a big gulp? What is the
temperature? Did you use a straw? What parts of you is it
feeding? Can you feel it enter your blood and then everywhere else? Are you putting intentions into your sips? Did
you know you can do that?! Where did the water come
from? Do you think a dinosaur drank that water? Do you
think it travelled far in the air to get to you, or maybe it
was still somewhere for eons and is out here now being
liquidy? When the water leaves your body (sweat, tears,

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urine) what is it taking with it? What does the water in
you carry? What is flushed out? A time for science, but
have you checked your urine colour? It’s a good indicator
if you’re drinking rough water, and remember to re-up on
your expelled water.
There’s a lot of upheaval happening inside and outside.
With my therapist I always use the metaphor of a jar
filled with different sediments and water. This upheaval
is jostling the sediments, and as they’re reorganizing and
resettling they float/sink in the water. This new organization sometimes brings new things to the surface but also
the things that get buried at least we can see the levels. I
think about that and my body as the jar and when I keep
myself with enough water it helps give more space for
those sedimentary bits inside me to move around when
I’m jostled. Again, keep your insides slippery.
Jacquie Shaw is a strategic futurist, and design anthropologist, with
a hybrid practice that combines design, research, education, and
consulting. Their work is grounded in and supports critical explorations
of design’s role and use in creating the future. Inspired by understanding
their own lived experience as a Filipinx-Bermudian settler in what is
currently Canada, their work orients towards inclusive, equitable, and
liberatory futures informed by decolonial, feminist, respectful design,
design justice, anti-oppressive oriented praxis. Jacquie holds a MDes
in strategic foresight and innovation from OCAD University and a BDes
in communication design from Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
They are currently based in Tkaronto/Toronto.

Image – Jean Chisholm

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41

M ES H
A NETWORK OF EMERGENT FRAGMENTS,
MOMENTS OF RESPITE, AND POINTS
OF NAVIGATION TO NEW PLACES

NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / JULY 7 2020
APPROXIMATING FORMULAS FOR ACTS OF CARE

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MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 1

focus on small
personal
observational

daunting
intimidating
impossible

MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 2

(fractals)
“the micro reflects the macro + vice versa”
— adrienne maree brown + Kat Aaron

vs

paternalistic
(caring for)

nuanced
(caring with,
being cared for)

an invitation to look in your direct vicinity

accountability to a small group vs.
“bigger is better” capitalist mentality

“doing small things in my small life”

paralysis of trauma and the ‘bigger and bigger’
The ‘bigger and bigger’ problems compound and
ask for bigger and bigger actions / small
actions and spaces of care and resilience are
resistance to paralysis

water + the body: elemental self-care
feeling your cells “plumping up” and being
able to use the combination of imagination
and actual nourishment to feed and
fill and expand yourself
keep your insides
slippery

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MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 4

MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 3
trauma and triggers turn us back into the
‘animal of the body;’ activation of the nervous system
prevents us from being able to care for one another

am I feeling...

H

A

L

T

hungry

angry

lonely

tired

self care
if I’m feeling better, what does that do
and/or allow me to do?
YOUR BODY AS A COMPLEX HOUSEPLANT*
sun

serving a community < > care centered on the self
food
hungry in an existential/ philosophical sense;
or the animal of your body is hungry and needs to
be cared for

water
air

bringing us
back home into the
systems we belong
within and are
actively damaging
*counter to the
thought of “human
exceptionalism”

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MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 5

“the conditions have to be right for
healing to happen”

MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 6

bombardment of social
media and news cycle is
distracting/surface

a minefield
of potentially
triggering images

a stale pool

visible and invisible forms of care:
healing in the background (broken leg)

Newtonian physics (predictable) vs.
Quantum physics (“out there”)
/ laws defy each other /

do those
connections
exist when
you log off?

Places of refuge,
respite and connection
(social media) can also
revolve into spaces for
work and change

social media as a place
of connection to place
and grassroots news

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MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 7

INEQUITIES OF VULNERABILITY

things that only
matter when
something that’s
at stake for people
in power

(i.e. concerns
about how does
this map to
climate change?)

MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 8

front-line workers and generations
that go through the most hardship
are inevitably the most selfless

“essential services”
being suddenly
praised, but without
actionables or
financial reward

how they give so effortlessly
as a mould for how we might
want to live as well?
WHAT IS TRUE ACCOUNTABILITY TO COMMUNITIES?

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MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 9
don’t be afraid
to tell people that it’s
okay to change

MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / NO. 10

aim or purpose

people pushing down monuments >
turning your system on its side
to see it differently

CHANGE IS FEARED

the need to step outside a
status quo system in order to
make meaningful change

the process of changing to fit some
purpose or situation

what are our strategiets for making change?

massive amounts of performativity //
how to get underneath that and really focus?
a constantly exercise

“what is easy is sustainable.
birds coast when they can.”
— adrienne maree brown

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MESH / NOTES FROM A CONVERSATION / CREDITS

TEXT ADAPTED FROM
TRANSCRIPT WITH
Jean Chisholm
Hélène Day Fraser
Avi Farber
Laura Kozak
Oluwasola Olowo-Ake
Jacquie Shaw
Jess Sung
Julie Van Oyen

NOTE NO. 2 and NO. 10 quote
Emergent Strategy:
Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
by adrienne maree brown

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MESSAGES IN BOTTLES
READINGS

Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum
Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping
Change, Changing Worlds. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.
Jain, Anab. “Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics – A Field Guide that can help us move towards
the practice of a More-Than-Human Politics,” Superflux, March 23, 2020, https://superflux.in/index.php/
calling-for-a-more-than-human-politics/#
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous
Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.
London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2015.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “People Can’t Understand the
World as a Gift Unless Someone Shows Them How.”
Interview by James Yeh. The Guardian. May 23, 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/23/
robin-wall-kimmerer-people-cant-understand-the-worldas-a-gift-unless-someone-shows-them-how
Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.”
In Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words,
Women, Places, 149–55. New York: Grove Press, 2006.
https://www.deveron-projects.com/site_media/uploads/
leguin.pdf
Mark, Sabrina Orah. “Fuck the Bread. The Bread
Is Over,” the Paris Review, May 7, 2020, https://
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/07/
fuck-the-bread-the-bread-is-over/?fbclid=IwAR2rei5yPWL05oHoLTLAA-pl1o57FwUFOpfcw2_ghmSD74eh-tuX4uhW5xY

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Messages in Bottles
McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the
Invisible Knapsack,” Excerpted from Working Paper
189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal
Account of Coming To See Correspondences through
Work in Women’s Studies,” 1988.
Policy Horizons Canada. “The Next Generation of Emerging Global Challenges,” October
19, 2018. https://horizons.gc.ca/en/2018/10/19/
the-next-generation-of-emerging-global-challenges/
Popescu, Adam. “How Will We Remember the Pandemic? Museums Are Already Deciding,” The New
York Times, May 25, 2020. https://www.nytimes.
com/2020/05/25/arts/design/museums-covid-19collecting.html?action=click&module=Top%20
Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Simard, Suzanne. “Why ‘Mother Trees’ are Crucial in
Fighting Climate Change,” CBC.ca, May, 2020. https://
www.cbc.ca/player/play/1737690179731
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always
Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
White, Rowen. “Reseeding the Food System –
An interview with Rowen White.” Interview by
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. Emergence Magazine,
Audio, 48:07, https://emergencemagazine.org/story/
reseeding-the-food-system/
Williams, Terry Tempest. Refuge: an Unnatural
History of Family and Place. New York: Vintage
Books, 2018.

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