To care, with care, for care

To care for someone is to allow yourself to be touched.

In recent years my practice coincides more and more with care sector and the topic of care in general. Sometimes as observer and documenter of other artists’ practices, sometimes as creator and guide of events or activities in care facilities, sometimes as researcher investigating what artistic tools are suitable to work with elderly or terminally ill, and sometimes as a friend accompanying someone on the last passage of life.

Working in care and with care makes me another kind of artist. It brings different things to my attention. It teaches me new concepts, notions, and perspectives of looking at and seeing the world and people in it.

It teaches me...

many levels of kindness,

limits in my own flexibility,

active openness: to be able to jump into action at any given moment

presence (sometimes all that’s needed from you is just to be there),

depth and concentration,

verbal and nonverbal communication,

noticing and understanding other people’s perspectives and realities,

how to go about time? repetitiveness of it, finding myself in between fragmentation and flow, following different schedules, being fast and being slow,

tiredness, softness, and patience,

listening and hearing,

focusing on the minor details but not letting the bigger picture disappear out of sight

did I mention patience already? and the pleasant boredom that might come with it?

how to touch and comfort someone in pain? how to deal with exhaustion?

how to embrace failures and mistakes?

Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.
—-Ursula K. Le Guin

This text is featured as part of FoAM's Anarchive