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What is a Slow Ritual of Care?

Speakers:

Bio: "I am a Creative Facilitator and Public Engagement specialist. My research focuses around the cultural relations and ethical obligations that society creates by collaborating with non-human life in pursuit of health and wellbeing. I aim to make people a little less comfortable with the familiar, known and connected, and a little more comfortable with that which feels unfamiliar, different and other. I design collaborative interventions around everyday objects and experiences that make participants complicit in the consequences of their interactions. I have particular interests in queer things, monstrous things, performative roles and the ethics of participation, living technologies and the human/non-human bond."

Blending mail-art; crafting circles and consequences; A Slow Ritual of Care brought small groups together; over two interactive workshops; to make felt research mice and to collectively decide upon their fates. This experimental encounter created space to critically consider the difference between being careful and care-full in engaged; participatory research; the vulnerabilities of bodies and what lingers after encounters.

This session will provide: Critical reflections on care as infrastructure - when perceived burdens of care may stop us exploring difficult conversation; pre and post care; caring at a distance.  An examination of participation - when does participation begin and end; what are the boundaries of responsibility; what needs to be resolved and what might we wish to leave unfinished. Adapting work to digital spaces