[-empyre-] Intuition as sovereignty of the senses

Fri Mar 26 06:17:51 AEDT 2021

Thank you Ann (and Renata, Tim and Arshiya),

...for these thoughts and the introduction of this theme. I have been
reading with great interest all month.
This aspect of the sensual and "touch" that Jennifer introduced, has
prompted me to share some reflections from one of the strands of my current
art practice - the ECOtarot
<https://ajenik.faculty.asu.edu/adriene-jenik-projects-ecot.html>. I spent
2 years creating an ecologically informed tarot deck (pulling from IPCC
reports and climate data along with wisdom  from environmental justice and
my own lived experience as a creature inhabiting the high desert). I use it
to tell people's "climate futures" - to connect people with the changes
going on as a result of human-driven climate disruption. My climate science
colleagues at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University have
fully embraced the project as a novel method of science communication.

I've done almost 1000 readings now in many different settings (most often
in highly trafficked pedestrian thoroughfares, but also performed readings
online since the pandemic), and have been excited by what I have learned.
Appropo of this discussion about the senses - my cards are made on handmade
paper (derived from agave plants and recycled cotton and linen) and
hand-painted with natural pigments, so when I'm offering readings in public
space the tactility is immediately apparent and often remarked upon. I
bring in other senses as well with a small blessing at the beginning of
each reading where I burn resinous plant material - interestingly, my
online participants have said they can catch a whiff of the smell! As a
longtime practitioner of telematic performance (my first internet based
performance work dates to 1994!), I've experienced the exchange of
"energetics" between humans via networks that many insist are only possible
in proximity.

In any case, offering these climate future readings has been a gift to me.
I've discovered that a practice I developed through my artist honed
intuition ends up being backed up by the latest neuroscience and
educational science related to how we learn. I've also been genuinely
surprised at the vast range of people who will sit down for a reading. I've
had biker chics and air conditioning repairmen, grandmothers and
granddaughters, farmers, engineers, climate policy makers and of course
many many young people. People sometimes just sit down and begin to weep.
I'm buoyed by all of the will to change that is shared with me, and am
working to try and capture the practice in a way that doesn't disturb the
experience, in order to share what I am learning about our cultures at this
time.

Thanks again to all who are contributing to this discussion,
Adriene

On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 4:58 AM Ann Cvetkovich <
AnnCvetkovich at cunet.carleton.ca> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> It’s already Thursday and I have so much to say!   I had thought I might
> post separately on each of our key words, but instead I will cut to the
> chase and say a few things about “intuition” as it connects to work I’ve
> been doing under the rubric of the “sovereignty of the senses” – work that
> began at Cornell when Sensation was the annual theme at the Society for the
> Humanities.  For me, the term is a way to describe forms of liberation
> (maybe “mystic liberation” to invoke the Age of Aquarius lyrics again?)
> that free body/mind/senses from the way they have been shaped by
> capitalism, racism, sexism and other forms of systemic oppression that are
> embedded in our sensory experiences, feelings, practices. " Sovereignty of
> the senses" invokes both Indigenous understandings of sovereignty that
> encompass the decolonization of mind and body – but it also carries with it
> Lauren Berlant’s notion of the non-sovereign as it pertains to the queer
> messiness of social relations – the ways that attention to felt experience
> takes us into the domain of falling apart, of not being in control.
>
>         I would suggest that practices and technologies of “intuition” are
> a forms of access to the sovereignty of the senses.  My own thinking has
> been deeply shaped by Indigenous and racialized understandings of sensation
> and feeling as guides to alternative ways of knowing; Dylan Robinson on
> “sensate sovereignty” -- and “hungry listening” as settler practice;
> Gloria Anzaldua on la facultad; Jose Munoz on feeling/sensing brown; and
> Audre Lorde’s notion of “disciplined attention to the true meaning of ‘it
> feels right to me.’”  In a workshop with Black queer writer/performance
> artist Sharon Bridgforth, we were given the prompt:  “what is it you know
> you know but you tell yourself you don’t know?”  It is work to access
> “feeling” or “intuition” – not something that just comes naturally – and we
> need tools to help us!
>
>         That’s the briefest of sketches … but I will just add that
> Jennifer’s post about touch confirms my “sense” that technologies
> (including art) for accessing intuition often involve the senses or
> embodied experience – whether the breathwork of meditation, the touching of
> the tarot cards, or the attention to the stars and moon in astrology (and
> walking practices).  I will hope to add one more post that addresses my
> relation to some of those practices – especially since they often linger in
> the shadows of my scholarly work – and this conversation seems like an
> invitation to bring them forward.
>
>
> Ann Cvetkovich (she/hers)
> www.anncvetkovich.com
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

-- 
Adriene Jenik (she/they)
adrienejenik.net <http://www.adrienejenik.net>
griefdeck.com
IG @ecotarot
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