Week 3/What's on your mind/Toolkit

What's on your mind?

Oh boy. Things I care about.

The first thing that comes to mind is sex worker’s rights. Not only is this an extremely current issue under our legislation, but is also a personal issue in my family. Constrictive, punishing laws based on community ignorance drive SWers into dangerous situations with little support or safe options. I think the topic is ripe for discussion as sex workers are not only present in every community but are economic pillars. Often public dialogue speaks of sex workers as if they are not community members involved in the conversation, but this “invisibility” is because of the danger that visibility threatens.

Another topic I’m very passionate about is healthcare in America. A startling amount of Americans die every year due to inability to afford the care they need, often from conditions that could’ve been prevented by more substantial preventative health services that would ensure safe environments and nutritionally sound food. If society does not even help keep us alive, why do we even live in one?

And lastly, I think most fitting would be Climate Change and it’s effects—right now. Not in 20 years, 30 years, but right now. How are communities affected by hurricanes? Droughts? Unruly seasons? Ecosystem collapse? All of these things are happening right now as the direct effect of industrialization. How does western activism and dialogue surrounding Climate Change acknowledge this?

Toolkit

I chose the Beautiful Trouble toolkit. The first thing to be acknowledged is the very unique format that this toolkit is presented. After a little exploration, I found that the method is described as “Monadic Exploration”. This is defined as a “new approach to interacting with relational information… that expands the possibility for creating meaning in navigation.”, which brings to consciousness not only the contents of the toolkit itself, but what it means to interact with the toolkit as a whole. Beautiful Trouble appears to be a toolkit exploring the concept of Change through Art, listing terminology divided into 5 sections: tactics, principles, theories, case studies, and practitioners. The element of the Toolkit I found the most intriguing was tactics because of the large variety of creative methods. There were several I had never heard defined, such as a Light Brigade (utilizing overlooked public nighttime spaces as platforms to spell out messages in lights) or Electoral Guerilla Theatre (to run for public office not with the intent to win, but as an active public critique). It’s inspiring to be reminded of the many different ways to perform social dissent outside of what comes to mind when thinking the word “protest”. Though the toolkit’s content was very thorough and robust, I did find the platform of the toolkit frustrating at times. It is very interesting but sacrificing accessibility/clear reading for aesthetic gain is a great risk that can alienate many people.