What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?

The Emergence Network is a research inquiry into the otherwise.

We are a constellation of humans and nonhumans working together trans-locally to curate projects, rituals, conversations and events that nurture senses of the otherwise via practices that trouble the traditional boundaries of agency and possibility.

We seek to shock outmoded modes of perception and action. We want to show how human bodies are changing, how whales and discarded pieces of gum are also ‘activists’, how remembering ancestry has political consequences, how thought is not a human feature, how bodies secrete time, and how slowing down in times of urgency makes sense in specific circumstances – especially now.

The Emergence Network surfaces at a time when there seems to be a felt need for ‘alternative’ modes of engaging with our more troubling realities. What we offer are ways of diving into the cracks in our skins, processes that allow us notice that there are other items on the menu. That there are other places of power.

Art by:
David Scott Myers
@red_wizard_collage

Our work is to make more room available for movement – to emancipate action and responsiveness from its narrow humanist confines. Our approach takes for granted the fact that humans can no longer be centralized in our conceptions of change – and that, instead, we must begin to take into consideration the eco-cultural environments that are the conditions for our acting.
Our work is to facilitate conversations, curate assemblies, foster trans-disciplinary and trans-professional interactions, convene events that mobilize people into exploring the occluded and the invisible, and nurture regenerative practices that allow for other compelling questions and values to be articulated in the face of crisis.

Join the Mushroom

Mushroom is our newsletter keeping you in touch with what is unfolding with The Emergence Network, the state of our projects, and essays and stories from the edges. Sign up to join us on our adventures to the otherwise.

A Compelling Call to Action:

The times we abide in invite us to notice our usual patterns of responding to the world around us. Our curators are artists who understand that the ways we frame our problems are often the problem. We seek to act as ‘death doulas’ of the familiar, to help open up new modes of perception, engagement and responsiveness in a time of crisis. With your support, we are creating a broad coalition of ‘postactivists’ who are listening to the troubling call for other ways of acting with the world.
Please support TEN and our project curators to open up places of power in these times.

Events & Announcements:

Open Call for Artists

MAy 18 - june 22, 2023

Everywhere

TEN is embarking on a journey to reinvent our aesthetic presence in the world and we want you – beloved community – to join us in co-creating the new look! We are seeking offers of graphical art forms that emerge from the unconventional, rhizomatic, fugitive, organic, and experimental to represent and express what and who TEN is. We offer this invitation in the spirit of the Gift, with a recognition of the many ways we are imbricated and entangled with one another, outside of the transactional confines of modernity. This is not a competition; rather an opportunity for this thriving, wriggling, and fugitive community to dream together and support what is with us now in service of what is to come. Feel free to submit pieces that are either original responses to this call and/or work done previously that you feel responds to these kinds of questions:

How does TEN move? What does it smell like? What is the rhythm of its pulse? Where does it go? How does it connect? What’s its texture and temperature?

To participate, we invite you to get acquainted with the work of Bayo Akomolafe, and postactivism.

Curators:

Sofia Batalha and Aerin Dunford

Three Black Men

JUNE 24 - 25, 20233

Los Angeles, U.S.A. & Live-streamed

The Three Black Men project brings together three visionary Black leaders – Resmaa Menakem, Bayo Akomolafe and Orland Bishop. These three will share space as they visit three cities across three continents, tracing a diasporic route in reverse. Our first stop is Los Angeles, USA, then Salvador, Brazil, and Accra, Ghana. These are not one-off events, but each is part of a continuous unfolding conversation.

These three Black men are inviting us into a radical re/imagination of how we might respond to the crises of our time. They will sense into emergent possibilities that speak to what we need now, triangulating toward a synthesis of new forms, new magic, and new directions. Along with offering reflections and teachings, this will be a traveling village that incorporates and celebrates Black art, music, dance and food, engaging participants’ whole selves.

There are two ways to take part in this journey. You can join us in-person, if possible, or via live-stream (via Science and Nonduality). Registration for the LA event is now open.

What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?

The Emergence Network is a research inquiry into the otherwise.

We are a constellation of humans and nonhumans working together trans-locally to curate projects, rituals, conversations and events that nurture senses of the otherwise via practices that trouble the traditional boundaries of agency and possibility.

Join the Mushroom

A Compelling Call to Action:

Events & Announcements:

Open Call for Artists

MAy 18 - june 22, 2023

Everywhere

Curators:

Sofia Batalha and Aerin Dunford

Three Black Men

JUNE 24 - 25, 20233

Los Angeles, U.S.A. & Live-streamed

Curators:

TEN Partners and Bayo Akomolafe

Projects:

While the central structures of The Emergence Network are resting this year, the projects continue to grow and learn in the world.

steal a way

fellowship - fugitivity - shabBat - sanctuary

Vulture

Courting the Other/wise in a Time of Breakdown

Kairos

We are in this Together

Vunja

Indaba for the Otherwise