Woodbine on facing disaster together

02/02/21 • 44 min

Andreas Petrossiants speaks to Woodbine members Matt Peterson and Laura McAdams. Woodbine is a volunteer-run experimental hub in Ridgewood, Queens for developing the practices, skills, and tools needed to build autonomy. Since March 2020 they have run a food pantry in partnership with Hungry Monk that serves thousands of families per week.

“We came together out of our experiences in Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy, after having lived through a New York City forever changed by 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis. Trump and Covid are only the latest in a series of disasters we have had to face together, and community resilience and collective autonomy remain our answer and horizon. In the fall of 2013 Woodbine was conceived as an organizing framework to rethink how to inhabit a city and neighborhood together. Now it is time to begin a new chapter and phase, and expand our collective capacities.” Quote from Woodbine’s website.

Support the fundraiser discussed in this episode here.

Support the fundraiser discussed in this episode here.

Previous Episode

Letters Against Separation

Furqat Palvan-Zade, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Irmgard Emmelhainz, Carol Yinghua Lu, Keti Chukhrov, and Kasia Wolinska read excerpts from their Letters Against Separation correspondence. The letters were published in series on e-flux conversations as the Covid-19 pandemic spread around the world. Other contributors included Claire Fontaine in Italy, Bahar Noorizadeh in London, Hanmin Kim in Seoul, Oxana Timofeeva in rural Russia, and Pelin Tan on an Island.

The idea for the project was initiated by Hito Steyerl and developed by e-flux conversations editor Mike Andrews. The following announcement concluded the project:

Dear friends,

Our correspondence project “Letters against Separation,” hosted on e-flux conversations, was launched as the Covid-19 pandemic forced most of the world to retreat into isolation. The aim was to have writers from different parts of the globe, who were facing different phases and manifestations of the pandemic, reflect on what was going on around them, in the hope of creating connections amidst the new conditions of separation. From places like Guangzhou and Tashkent, Mexico City and Moscow, our writers have posted a series of open letters describing the acute anxieties and unexpected delights of self-isolation, the structural injustices revealed by the pandemic, and the slow, fraught return to something resembling “normal” life. We hope these letters have brought some measure of relief from your own extended confinement—or at least some distraction from the constant nagging of your dog wanting to play (...)

Excerpts in this episode from:Furqat Palvan-Zade in Tashkent—August 17, 2020Nikita Yingqian Cai in Guangzhou—July 6Irmgard Emmelhainz in Mexico City—June 18Liu Ding, Liu Qingshuo, and Carol Yinghua Lu as a family in Beijing—June 7Keti Chukhrov in Moscow—May 1 Kasia Wolinska in Berlin—April 13

Next Episode

Wet-Togetherness [1]—Menstruating: Cecilia Vicuña presented by Shanghai Biennale

Bodies exceed humanity. They remind us that we are part of something vaster—and smaller—more complex, more connected than our mere existence as an atomized species. Our bodies, and bodies in general, are composed out of heterogeneity and multitudes. All bodies are wet collective bodies, defined by how they link to other bodies, places, environments, technologies. Think of breathing, clogging, decomposing, discharging, flushing, lubricating, melting, menstruating, transfusing. Bodies exist as trans- and extra-territorial beings. They live in hybridity. This porous condition produces a planetary wet-togetherness, a “commoning” force that constitutes all bodies as collective hydro-subjects.

Wet-Togetherness is a collaboration between e-flux and the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water, curated by Andrés Jaque, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos and YOU Mi, and organized and promoted by the Power Station of Art. It consists of 9 sound pieces in which 21 artists, activists and researchers enact aqueousness through sound. The series has been edited by José Luis Espejo and Rubén Coll with the sound design of Tomoko Sauvage, coordination by Roberto González García, and locutions by Yang Yang.

Episode 1. Menstruating: Cecilia Vicuña Menstrual fluids are carriers of taboos, gender stereotypes, social behaviours, notions of life and death, purity and uncleanliness. Their symbolism connects bodies to the moon, mountains, rivers, and goddesses. Menstruating involves both synchronicity with the cosmos and forms of earthly solidarity.

Image: Paula Vilaplana de Miguel.