Autumn 2018. A dinner table in a school bus parked near the beach. Vancouver. Leah, grinning, cuts another slice of cake. I can tell she is relieved. She’s decided to sell the bus, which she ran as a mobile gallery called SiteFactory for the past few years. Across from me, Anne is describing a residency she participated in, tanning moose hide, describing how to use brain-matter to soften the hide, what she calls a process of “radical softening.” I’ve been thinking about applying to grad school. This moment is poignant, because this time next year I might be somewhere far from this beautiful place and these beautiful people Leah has collected to celebrate the end of SiteFactory.
Autumn 2019. A picnic table outside a cabin in a forest. Oslo. An hour ago I was at another beautiful communal table, talking about food, writing, collectivity, urgency and the benefits and losses that come with prompts and keywords with my classmates. I keep returning to this other table, a year and an ocean ago, to Anne and radical softness. Flour sifting through your fingers, becoming bread, skin becoming hide. There is something to these tactile processes. Like forming a collective, these processes ask something of you, take something from you, but give you something much more in return.