We met Katy in Chapter 2 with her near boiling over pans and the risk of having to clean up the mess. For her masters degree she created a space some 7metres square laid out as a map of a Village. I played an mute amateur archiologist with a tray of bones on my lap. For 90 minutes artists, players and visitors (including Tui, see below) made what we could of the experience. Her installation epitomised becoming human. Later I saw the wonder of it - that we are innately social animals; then why so timid, so inhibited?

The Paradigm of Nowhere - An Installation

by Katy Howkins

St. Martin's College, Back Hill, London EC1

In a congenial environment we find it easy to realise the potential of our basic human needs. If it's tough going we're probably encountering their qualified satisfaction.

 

video awaited


photo awaited

but Tui, aged four was having nothing of all this superficiality with mute adults. With the spontineity of the child she insisted on a connexion with me. She has bones in her feet and I must have them too; and so on.

On Sunday at a Palestine Solidarity BBQ, a congenial situation, Raquel and I had a real encounter. She finds adults difficult, yet we had a whale of a time. We spoke of things that mattered to her. She was eight, her mother forty and her father fifty. He is a farmer and sometimes she helps him feed the calves. Old people have wrinkles. And so on, and on. We took each other seriously and it worked, making sense of each other and the situation.


Here's an idea taking shape: that relating is nothing other than connecting with each other. No connecting - no relating, and essentially nothing to say to each other. This happens when we make small talk or if it leaves us feeling depressed. But when we connect we affect each other, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, as in sickness and in health.

Seems too simple

Over time and in space Katy's installation offered Tui and I the chance to connect and relate. So too the BBQ for Raquel and I. These are precious moments of connexion. We can't store hoard them yet they are as real as real can be. Each time we do it we become confident that we are social animals and as such, in Seneca's words, prone to frendship.

Maybe after a lifetime of knowing who matters most or who comes first or who owns who we can, with a new confidence that we are loveable and viable, dump the usual old fearful stuff of promising to love for ever and of deferring to those who teach us or employ us. We can see this old stuff belongs to the time when we took qualified satisfaction of our needs by default.

Abyssinia Court is a contemporary adventure in multi cultural sheltered housing. It was the brain child of and was originally managed by Michele and Haroon Jogee. Kamila, their daughter, brought her own spontaniety. Another installation.

The Katy installation anticipates a Connexion (see next) when two or three people watch the Manfred Max-Neef video and assess their own life experience against their needs by using the map much as I do on the video with Manfred's friends.

We bring each other something of that understanding. Most of what's said is not remembered but a nugget of what really matters may connect to and enlighten what's bothering us.

The can happen in any conversation but in a Max-Neef connexion with realising the potential our basic human needs something more might be said which might free us up from whatever's bugging us.

Here's to your next connexion; you may not see it coming nor prepare a speech or behave as you ought but stay with and act on your feelings. Know you are loveable and what you bring to life is good, enough.


Response, what's on your mind
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