Update: July 2, 2020
Change and the path to mental & physical wellbeing always starts with oneself. We hold the autonomy to shape and gain ownership over ourselves (safe conditions provided).
It requires self-awareness, self-cultivation and finally self-mastery to establish new thoughts, actions, behaviours. Therefore, self-interrogation, self-knowledge and intuition are at the core of a deeper and potentially transformative practice.
Taking care of oneself is a complex and personal process that needs to be upheld.
It is built on rigorous repetition, reflection, continuation. An invested self-care is not about optimising and accomplishing a more productive and successful version of oneself, but a pursuit of establishing (inner) connection and being well for the sake of being okay in life, perhaps working through trauma on the way to recovery. It is about survival, coping, belonging, and creating meaning. It is not about becoming better adjusted to a systemic exploitation of the self.
Ideally our work of self-attendance turns into an emancipatory weapon that cultivates resistance and creates alternatives to (neoliberal) power structures. Ideally it has collective agency, creating the conditions for a society in which everybody is able to practice care for the self. To be of political value, our self-care must be congruent with the values we want to see in the world, it should move towards how we organise society and relationships, not just be self-serving. We are not separate from the whole, as historical and societal narratives are integral to the construct of the self to begin with. We are therefore embedded and interdependent by nature.
Talking about a wider sense of care that transcends beyond the self, it must be rooted in community that is hands-on specific, not abstracted. Independent collectives and micro initiatives that support a diversity of communities are favourable. Let’s be wary of institutional hashtag #care. This type of care is reductionist in its approach and rarely goes beyond yet another symposium or exhibition. Notions of care are being processed like any other subject matter that institutional guardians move through. One-off institutional events and curatorial projects on the theme at best raise awareness that real care is needed, but do they offer practical application or guidance? Truth is your liberal institution is sCAREd of a real dismantling and hides behind their fake care offerings.
What does it mean to practice care in a real way? Care takes place on an intimate level and through regular interaction. Real care requires presence, time and patience to listen. As a life-long commitment it is impossible to quantify caring, and therefore difficult to justify to funders and other support structures. It is a seemingly unviable but deeply necessary practice. How do we care? Care comes from a place of love, and is directed at one’s own or somebody else’s needs. This directed focus of love to improve their (or one’s own) wellbeing is at the heart of any (self)care. To not only care for ourselves but for each other, we must come together in a non-egoic state of selfhood that is not about winning or gaining superiority, and is therefore by nature anti-capitalist.
Self-work is also collective work. Only if everyone is able to develop self-care, can we create a society that flourishes.
Introducing 3 departments of Caribic Care
Department of Land sets the Foundation. It addresses the work that takes places on a physical material level.
Department of Eye is about insight, perspective and outlook. Looking closely at the role of mindset.
Department of Tree takes action towards (creative) expression, connection, community.
All departments overlap and are activated simultaneously, introducing participants to a holistic set of ideas on how to improve personal and collective wellbeing.
Caribic Care available very soon (currently hosting trials)
Update: May 31, 2020
Caribic Care - GP (2020)
Drum meditation on fascia, trauma, chronic pain, stuff with no name, the infinite complexity of the body, pain as an emotion, bio-psycho-social treatment, medical self-empowerment, biology of belief, caring for oneself and relating to each other in non-neoliberal ways
1 hour radio piece for Mostyn, Wales and Montez Press Radio, NYC
(aired 31 May NYC 11am on radio.montezpress.com)
Update: May 7, 2020
CARIBIC CARE TRIALS
Running free trials*, fill in form for application details
https://docs.google.com/…/1s1QZM9JvAKrljKz3_UzMz1Opubr…/edit
What is it?
Caribic Care is a health care method created by artists. We focus on how the artist’s work translates into a space of healing and care, exploring the potential of art as a service. The method involves mental, physical, spiritual training, looking at the mind-body at dis-ease beyond the medical context, and placing attention where it is needed
Who is it for?
Anyone who seeks change. CC aims to facilitate care relationships to help ourselves and our communities. For the trials we encourage art workers to apply
COVID
Caribic Care started before the onset of COVID. We are devising ways to do trials under current conditions, without taking it all online
* small commitment fee applies
Update: March 27, 2020
To directly support artists who have lost gigs and income due to COVID19, please consider to donate. We are able to issue tax-deductable donation receipts and will forward the money to creatives who so generously share their work, knowledge, research and are in need right now!
Helping Yourself 2020
A resource of self-help materials by artists, feat. contributions by Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Dean Blunt, Bonnie Camplin, Nina Cristante, Filip Gilissen & Elke Lente, Satya Hinduja, Stef Kamaris, Nik Kosmas, Nissa Nishikawa, Nina Power, Jennifer Teets, Matthew Thomas Voor, Joseph Walsh, Holly White, Anna Susanna Woof, (continuing)
Update: March 26, 2020
Update: March 9, 2020
This information is intended for anyone who is interested in it. Anyone who is not interested should not read it. It's about choosing for ourselves
‘In the last few years, due to a health condition in my own body, I've been researching self-help methodologies and ways of coping with chronic pain in relation to stress. In the process, I found standard self-care practices to be merely aiding self-exploitative mechanisms in the guise of well-being, targeted at optimizing performance and productivity, whilst deliberately isolating personal issues. In the cult of self-improvement, the individual is held accountable to better themselves whilst covert suffering and being unwell are normalised. I believe that caring for ourselves needs to be learned. It is a practice of self-knowing that is not separate from the changing and complex realities we live in. Being unwell requires us to re-think our assumptions about health. The desire to improve must be scrutinzed.’
- Jas
It will feel like art. It will function like a practice. Art and Practice.
Caribic Care is an independent method developed by artists, not doctors. We address and learn from what makes us sick, recognising the transformational potential of the mind/body at dis-ease. Identifying alterity and resistance in being unwell, we create prevention and coping alternatives that are empowering. CC is a concise programme, encompassing foundational, creative and developmental aspects, based on self-exploration and experiential knowledge. Our research is integral to the method, comparing notes and sharing resources within a network of peers.
Our background as Caribic Residency (an encounter-based 2-day artist residency) has enabled us to work with immaterial subtleties at a high level commitment and attentiveness. Curating people, places and potentialities, we have been training a specific set of knowledge of the relational and its impact/consequences. Being able to draw connections and using a highly developed ability to care, we place attention where it is needed.
Running trials soon at Caribic Care
Update: Feb 12, 2020
Do you want to receive important information that could change all aspects of your life and physical and mental wellbeing?
This is not spam but insight into a discovery
Are you suffering from a chronic condition, such as pains, autoimmune or mood related illness, brain fog, stress, lack of purpose, addiction, arhtritis, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, asthma, narcissism, feeling of disconnection to name a few? Are you merely managing symptoms because the cause of your condition is ’unknown’ (idiopathic)? Do you consider your psychological and physiological response relative to environment and the pathology of your sickness as reactive to the capitalist exploitative condition?
Caribic Care is an independent method based on experiential evidence for the mind body at dis-ease. Our research inlcudes 12-years experience of radical hosting and 2-to-1 practice, exchange of knowledge with specialists, practicioners and peers. We are not doctors but artists, curious about alternative ways of practice and organising around the issue, bringing voices together.
This is not an artwork but a possible solution
Are you ready for transformation?
Running trials soon at Caribic Care