“Tools are fundamental to action, and through our actions we generate the world”

 

- Arturo Escobar

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Using the Observing A Year Library as a platform for investigation, this second workshop will explore more broadly the idea of the tool and its importance in world making. Typically we think of tools as physical objects created with our hands. But they can also be something abstract — like poetry, song, dance, or ritual. Ultimately, they are mediums through which we connect, influence, and control the world (McLuhan, 32). As the effects of the anthropocene are becoming more deadly, we must reinvestigate our relationship to existing and outdated tools that are driving the Sixth Mass Extinction. Building stronger relationships with the planet will steer our path towards a sustainable course, but this will take new and forgotten tools alike— be these physical or immaterial. In this workshop we will dive into how immaterial tools, like rituals or attention practices, can illuminate our entanglement with the world and cultivate care. These connective actions can be thought of as a type of technology that functions to nurture our relationship with other beings, the surrounding landscape, and the invisible (Somé, 60). 

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Through re-approaching the tool, we seek to address the following questions during the workshop:

• Can we use the lessons held in mythology to imagine new tools that address contemporary problems? 

• What might new tools look like that cultivate more just, engaged, and sustainable futures?

• How can collective imagination play an integral role in the development of new tools and their uses?

 

Workshop

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The workshop will begin with an introduction to the Library, its genesis, and highlight some of the submissions, themes, and ideas. After, we will lead a session that engages our sense perception as a tool for uncovering reciprocity between humans and nonhumans. Culminating the workshop, participants will utilize their experience and imagination to design their own tool with the goal of generating or illuminating deeper connections to their world. The session may engage walking, listening, drawing, and writing as tools that aid in reflection. Facilitating this workshop and larger discussions is an invitation to learn new and evolving languages that enable greater participation in the world around us.