we are you: radical friendships and relational realities

we have been thinking about our friends. <% story.showDelayed3("Q1.2"); %>

no one specifically… just about what's shared between us. <% story.showDelayed5("Q2"); %>

we are undefinable, always changing, unmanageable, relational, boundless. <% story.showDelayed6("Q2"); %>

not sure… we feel like we miss them right now. <% story.showDelayed5("Q2"); %>

do others see what we see in friends? in friendship? do others see radicality? do you? <% story.showDelayed6("Q2.2"); %>

it’s not uncommon to overlook such omnipresent forces, only to realise when they’re gone the value that they brought. <% story.showDelayed8("Q3"); %>

so you already feel it, see it. <% story.showDelayed3("Q2a2"); %>

like how we effortlessly and generously give time, attention, care, and love to our friends. that is radical. most forms of unprofitable care have been marginalised or banned. <% story.showDelayed12("Q2a3"); %>

sometimes we wonder if we will forget, like most have, where friendship can take us, what limits it can trespass. it is ungovernable in a world of control, plural in a world of division, caring in a world of apathy. <% story.showDelayed14("Q4.2"); %>

not entirely. <% story.showDelayed4("Q5"); %>

by listening to the other voices, by being other voices. recognising friendship for what it is, experiencing it for what it can be, being it. <% story.showDelayed10("Q5"); %>

maybe we are just unlucky, maybe it is different for you, but we see less and less empowering actions connected to friendship. if people really remembered, it would probably be banned. <% story.showDelayed15("Q5"); %>

a trace of time before profit, evidence of past and future at once. a gathering of actions and relations, of activity without utility. we can come together, as friends, and do and change. <% story.showDelayed12("Q5.2"); %>

you already know.. you might already be doing it. by recognising it as something more, you are a step closer towards rupturing linear narratives of time, of profit before human and non-human experience, of outcome over memory, relation, becoming. <% story.showDelayed17("Q6"); %>

we prefer not to create boundaries around such differently experienced forces, we can only offer undefined thoughts… perhaps there is some relationship between the stretching of moments and those with whom you are experiencing them, a kind of embodiment of memory and feeling. <% story.showDelayed18("Q6"); %>

there is more than one way of understanding reality. <% story.showDelayed6("Q6"); %>

we move and are moved together. we are the currents and the debris. we are always. <% story.showDelayed6("Q8.2"); %>

<% story.showDelayed2("Q8a1"); %>

that’s up to you. <% story.showDelayed4("Q9"); %>

that’s not up to you. <% story.showDelayed4("Q9"); %>

we stop seeing our bodies as boundaries of our identities. we expand in space, in the space in between, in the space within. we become our relations with the space as the space always knew, but we didn't listen. now we do. <% story.showDelayed15("Q9.2"); %>

we are you. <% story.showDelayed2("Q9a2"); %>

we hope not. <% story.showDelayed4("Q10"); %>

we are mutable and a mutation, we are change and time, we are the end of the capital and the individual. we are but also aren't, all identities and none. who are you? <% story.showDelayed12("Q10.2"); %>

<% story.showDelayed8("Outro1"); %>

<div id="intro" style="display: none">this story is about friendship and its radical potential in opposition to dominant systems. friendship as a form of system hacking, and hacking as an act of resistance, as an act of care.<br><br> friendship to us remains as a rare form of relating, organising, and being capable of escaping the bounds of legality, time, and profit. still not banned, despite its uncontrolled and disobedient nature, and only temporarily hidden under the loud linear, utilitarian, contractual, and exploitative stories we are bombarded with every day. the stories systems of control are.<br><br> this piece is part of our hope to try to destabilise and decentre those stories that have become dominant through violence and imposition, and imagine and enact other realities based on generosity, solidarity, collectivity, and relationality. as a collective of friends who learn, imagine, feel, and do together we share with you some of our current (not past or future) thoughts, and with them an invitation to dialogue, action, and radical friendship.<br><br> this is an interactive piece. please click on the answers that best suits you to continue the story. feel free to try as many times as you wish: each answer will lead to a different narrative. </div> <script type="text/javascript"> function showIt() { document.getElementById("intro").style.display = "block"; } setTimeout("showIt()", 200); </script> [[connect->start2]]

friendship stays, yet unrecognised. <% story.showDelayed4("Q3"); %>

as friends we don't owe or own, we are not owed or owned. we are the antithesis of commerce, the end of property, of our poverty. we have learnt to receive and not extract, to gift and not inflict. we only care to care, not care to control. <% story.showDelayed16("Q6.2"); %>

what do you see? <% story.showDelayed3("Q3i"); %>

you are blind. <% story.showDelayed3("Q4"); %>

we are not. <% story.showDelayed3("Q4"); %>

we see you too. <% story.showDelayed3("Q4"); %>

we do too. <% story.showDelayed3("Q4"); %>

by not being individuals but relations. <% story.showDelayed5("Q7"); %>

that's what we're trying to do. <% story.showDelayed5("Q7"); %>

care is a spectrum and so are our thoughts, differently experienced and understood. it is unapathetic, relational, open. <% story.showDelayed10("Q7"); %>

we are difference itself, microscopic and gargantuan, breathing oxygen in and breathing oxygen out. sometimes we don't breathe at all, and we are still here. underwater, in the dirt, touching concrete, in the air. fragile and resilient, intangible and tangible, surface and nucleus. <% story.showDelayed17("Q7i"); %>

yes. when you ramble the paths you already know but with eyes wide open. <% story.showDelayed6("Q8"); %>

yes. we are within, without and beyond. <% story.showDelayed5("Q8"); %>

we are you. <% story.showDelayed4("Q8"); %>

<div style="color: black; padding-bottom: 60%; padding-top: 60%;"></div> <div id="outro" style="display: none">this piece was produced by <a href="https://projektado.com/about/" target="_blank">projektado</a>, an international and transdisciplinary collective producing critical knowledge in and around the extended field of design.<br><br> find more references, material, and resources on the themes discussed in this piece <a href="https://www.are.na/projektado-collective/radicality-in-friendship" target="_blank">here</a>.</div> <script type="text/javascript"> function showItOutro() { document.getElementById("outro").style.display = "block"; } setTimeout("showItOutro()", 200); </script> <% story.showDelayed4("reconnect"); %>

[[which friends?]] [[who are you?]] [[why?]]

[[i haven't thought about it before]] [[i do, in the concept of friendship]] [[radicality? how so?]]

[[i see an image]] [[i see strangers]] [[i see you]] [[i see myself]]

[[is that what friendship is?]] [[how can we not forget?]] [[why do you say most people have forgotten it?]]

[[how so?]] [[what is time to you?]] [[what can we change?]]

[[what does ‘we’ include?]] [[am i part of you?]] [[you can’t be]]

[[how can you escape property?]] [[will you care for me too?]] [[what is care to you?]]

[[can i see you?]] [[are you here too?]] [[can you feel me?]]

[[is it too late?]] [[i do too]]

[[i am you]] [[i am me]] [[i am not]] [[we are]]

[[<a href="javascript: location.reload();">reconnect?</a>]]