The Underground Description

Sometimes the shortest shortcut to a destination is to walk in the other direction.

In 2020, The Emergence Network gained a lot of visibility as we moved our conversations to the crosscurrents of the public eye. We convened over a thousand people for The Wilds Beyond Climate Justice to explore what conversations and work can lie at the end of hope, pushing ourselves into the cracks that the mainstream discourse on climate change would rather close. ten curator, Suélen Brito, created art and revived cultural memories through her project Rolê Holi, making the favelas of our immediate surroundings a cultural moment of departure and co/unlearning. We ran a six-month series, Meet at the Crossroads, in which we gathered in the digital living rooms of our friends for intimate conversations on postactivism, fugitivity, and being alive in these times.

Given growing interest in our work and the promise of more collaborations and possibilities, in 2021 we did the opposite of what our growth-minded society tells us is obvious and natural.  In 2021… we went underground. 

After years of fertile, strange and experimental ‘work’, the folks at ten took some time to reflect together on those familiar questions of “what now?”. We sensed that something wanted to be born, something exceeding design and conscientious thinking; something that challenged the recognizable modes of action and intertwined our bodies with forces we don’t yet have names for. We didn’t feel that having lots of calls, strategic planning processes, and measurable goals was the way to cultivate the necessary receptivity to ‘become pregnant’.

So in April 2021, we decided to give the centre of ten some good sweet time for resting, sighing, surrendering, and listening. Time to allow the entity that is ten to visit us in ways that may have been prohibited because of the logic of business-as-usual. We were largely still and silent for around seven months. Yet we were still here, in the wilder margins, the compost heaps, the places not yet codified on the maps we have so far. 

As we entered The Underground, ten’s Visionary Founder and Chief Curator, Báyò Akómoláfé, offered us a reminder of why this queer network exists. He asked, “In the midst of a dying planet, what is our location in the trans-cultural field of activism, responsivity and movement? What is ten about?”

Here were his responses:

1. The vision of TEN is to proliferate/nurture projects of sensitization: to cultivate and invite openings in dominant habits of responding to shared troubles. Psychologists often speak about desensitization as the moments when repeated exposure to a stimulus diminishes our responsiveness to that stimulus. It’s like being in a room with a foul smell so long that you can’t smell it anymore. It would take someone coming into the room to remind us that something awful is afoot.

2. At the rhizomatic heart of  ten’s quests is the idea that the way we see / respond to / conceptualize / articulate our problems is part of the problem. Sensitization is like opening the door, a crack in the atmosphere of things, and saying (much like the fictionalized Harriet Tubman in my head): “Pssst! Over here!” Within the cultures of solutions that we are surrounded by, subcultures of giant conferences and photo-ops and big funding and glittery logos and performative wokeness, there is a need for wilder coalitions of acting. This is what postactivism is about. We may never be able to solve our most pressing challenges as a species; however, we may not need to.

3. The vision of ten is assemblage. Chasing cracks in the edifices of agency and responsivity might be the playful and spiritual heart of our shared quests but constellating these cracks so that they speak to the moments we are in… so that they meet those seeking it halfway… is a vital objective of ten.

4. The vision of ten is inquiry. Trouble needs research.

In the fall of 2021, TEN slowly began to stir. The imaginal cells began doing their thing, though still deep within the cocoon. We started to dream into what could be. 

From November 2021–January 2022, the Custodians of The Underground, Toni Spencer, Aerin Dunford and Karen Leu, hosted a series of seven ‘listening sessions’ with over 30 people (including the ten family, Earthworms (the equivalent of the ten ‘Board of Directors’ at that time), funders, participants in the Wilds Beyond Climate Justice and We Will Dance with Mountains, former curators and general fans of our work). We spent time together reflecting, dreaming, critiquing, sharing our ideas, and getting feedback. Our intention was to listen to the other, to each other, to ourselves, to the more-than-human, to the dreams and the spaces in-between as a way of sensing what may be wishing to emerge.

We harvested patterns we heard during the listening sessions, burning questions and quotes about what ten has meant for those who have been involved in its offerings, as well as some of the shadows, contradictions and doubts about ten’s past and future. Through this process, we were able to name some concrete next steps as a network and seek out support for the next phase of our unfolding. 

The Underground Custodians were Karen Leu, Toni Spencer and Aerin Dunford.