The First Thing We Make is the Conditions of our Meeting: A gathering on gathering

Abstract

When we gather to or for something, the first thing we make is the gathering itself. How can we approach that making of gathering as a creative and expansive endeavour? From diverse perspectives, the artists here offer new shapes, forms, maps, diagrams, rituals, scores, and protocols of attending to the conditions within which we meet – and the conditions that we make in meeting. When we are in attendance with others, how can we broaden not only what we are attending to, but also how we are attending? How can we arrive together, in ways that recognize and invite the diversity of experiences from which we come together, that name and acknowledge place and relation, that identify and de-invisibilize power relations, that bring creativity and intentionality to our actions, and that de-individualize and re-distribute relationship? As a mix of practical and poetic suggestions, they are offerings for readers to take and to try in future meetings of their own.