Walking all day through industrial estates in the rain; Napping on a berm to the cackling of weed smokers in a nearby house; Zoning out in front of a stew of beans. These trance-like states are the viscous fluid which greases our everydays. They quieten the chatter in our heads, make space for unexpected connections and fuzzy digressions that we have seen reappear in our subsequent work and collaborations.

To value such trance-like states is to be open to the ‘generative and provocative’ reframing power of the experiential (e.g. Kilbourn, 2013:70) and to follow Oreton’s example and ‘…revel in our fieldwork as an activity saturated with sensory, corporeal experiences…’ (quoted in Bain and Nash, 2006:100). In light of the psycho-cognitive mutations and mental suffering that Berardi (2009) delineates this aspect may be one of the most important. It opens a crack in our worklives for deceleration, demobilizing productive energy, and thus savouring the pleasure and meaning in work experience. A viscous fluid cannot connect. Rather it is a caress and envelopment that seeps into cracks and seams, providing a mucus terrain for the uncertain conjunction and thus collaboration of stuff.

References

Bain, A.L. and Nash, C.J. (2006) Undressing the researcher: feminism, embodiment and sexuality at a queer bathhouse event. Area. 38 (1). p.99–106.

Berardi, F. (2009). Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the pathologies of post-alpha generation. EMPSON, E. and SHUKAITIS, S. (eds.). Semiotext(e).

Kilbourn, K. (2013). Tools and movements of engagement: design anthropology’s style of knowing. In Gunn, W., Otto, T., and Smith, R.C. (eds.). Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice. New York/London:Bloomsbury.