Third Cycle

The third Sweat Season cycle invites the collective to spend time building a shared while divergent ecology of knowledge. Inviting members to explore what if Sweat Season was an action, an occurrence, or a state of being? 

 Inviting practicing ‘sweat-seasonally’ as an opportunity to utilise the aesthetics of the build-up and the wet in relation to the creative enquiry. Drawing on a growing Sweat Season glossary made up of terms that evoke the sensations and experiences of Sweat Season.

Chaffing: going against the grain – rub – prickle – irritate – soothe 
Damp: lingering – annoyance – acceptance – musty 
Deluge: release – outpouring – catharsis – soaking   
Green: vibrant – abundant – canopy – intensified by the backdrop of charcoal clouds 
Hibernate: anti-social - retreat – decompress – restorative – recharge – recovery 
Humidity: condensation – breath – anticipation – stillness – damp 
Light: diffused – golden hour – dimly 
Lighting: clap – flash – electric – goosebump – fear – wonder 
Monsoon: low pressure – sinking – trough 
Mould: between – spore – proliferate – destruction – alive – growth 
Mud: stickiness – viscosity – tacky – between – sodden – thick 
Rotting: decomposition – regeneration – composting – fermentation 
Shelter: temporary – precarious – permanent – home – discovered – makeshift 
Sweat: salt – cooling – reactive – responsive - collective   
Thunder: clap – rumble – tremble 
Tide: cycle – tempestuous – frothing – destructive – inviting – wave – churning 
Time: anticipation – waiting – pause – languish – melancholy – slowing – productivity 
Wet: moist – damaged – cool – petrichor

Asking the collective as they are guided through the cycle: What do they summon up in you and how might they translate into ways of thinking and making? What terms would you add and how might you use them?  

For example:

• How do we create spaces for shelter?

• How might movement be informed by lightning's thunderous clap?

• How can an idea chafe?  

• What is a mouldy remix?  

• How do we know when community change needs a deluge or hibernating response?

• Can a text decompose through the act of rotting-writing?  

• What would a tidal approach to drawing look like, and what might it wash up onto the page?

• Can a sound hibernate? Can it sweat?  

• How can a thought linger like the persistent damp, or diffuse like the bouncing twilight rays of golden hour?  

• What happens when ethics get wet and churned into the dust by the seasonal rains. What can be done with that mud?  

The cycle’s sweat seasonal has already begun and is continuing as ongoing grounds for creative practice and inquiry through:

Residency: Feb – June

• Undertake self-guided individual/collective enquiry collecting samples, artifacts, experiments, and ideas.  

• Come together for dinners where the collective will:

  • Share food and drink.

  • Engage in a curated program exploring the following topics over the three nights:

    • Capturing curiosity: collective archiving and community knowledge

    • Urgency: movement and rest

    • Gesturing and nourishing locally

  • Share insights from self-guided enquiry.  

  • Listen, respond, collaborate with each other.

Dry Season: June – August

• Attendance at collective and collaborator’s events, programs, discussions, experiences, conversations etc.

• Rest

Sweat Season: September – February

• Undertake an arts lab

• Develop and present a program of community engaged activities

 The residency phase will  re/connect the collectives’ friendships within a space with collaborative potential. The program will allow for the collective to build a shared while divergent ecology of knowledge, with the hope of creating fertile ground for deeper experimentation with form. Form in the shape of the creative process and output, but also for the system/s of configuring the archive and living knowledges ongoingly produced within and around the generative processes and outputs. With the hope that the work of the Sweat Collective becomes ‘viral response-ability’ (Haraway (2016) in van Dooren, 2018, p. 92) creating knowledge that can infect other/s on Larrakia Country.

Raising questions of when mapping a process how do you:

• highlight multiplicity?

• acknowledge creation/ curation? (Harley (1989) in Kitchin and Dodge, 2007, p. 332)

• create room for ritual and repetition?

• observe pace?