Inspiration

This is a library of activities and readings.

Please share your own favourite tools for creative inspiration, but keep in mind that all listings should be sympathetic to the ethos of this site. Only share content that you have created, or that you have permission to share from the creator.

Here's a guide on how to add your own activities and readings, to help you get started.

If you're feeling very stuck and want to speak directly to the caretaker, email Esther at mesh.caretaker@gmail.com (account checked every monday).

Artist Assignments
Derived from Chisenhale Studios' artist development program, Into The Wild's Artist Assignments are designed to help you develop your own practice and reflect on your specific context. Created by Esther McManus.

Staying In Touch
Share a sketch book with your pals to stay in touch in a non-virtual-non-verbal-but-still-connected way! Get a blank sketchbook and draw/write/glue/staple something you find interesting on that day onto a page and post it to a friend. If your friend agrees they can do the same thing on the next page. Circulate it between you for however long you want and fill it up with things u like! This could work with a group any scale, or just between two people.

Collective discussion and thought
If you are; working on a project, part of a group, developing something I've found it very useful to have a shared google doc in which each member of the org/group takes turn to reflect on the experiences and/or progress you are having. This creates a nice record of your project, and allows for slower reflection and response. Its kinda similar to an email chain or a group diary. List the order of who writes when and just add text at the bottom of the doc. and let it go on for as long as you wish!

Writing your artist’s statement
A storytelling assignment by Gilda Williams, which was presented during the year's Into the Wild.

Click to download:

Thing-walks
A thing walk can be useful if you want to find a reason to be outside and feel "productive" with your work still.

1. Leave your house or whatever indoor space you might be in 2. Do not bring a phone, watch or map 3. Walk where ur gut takes you and look for things that interest you. 4. Pick them up and bring them home if you are able to - if not - memorise them and make a note/drawing of what this was 5. Make a space in your studio/home to store and display your findings.

Bruno Latour's Covid-19 Homework
''Let’s take advantage of the enforced suspension of most activities to set out the inventory of those among them we would like to see not coming back, and those, on the other hand, that we would like to see develop. Reply first individually, then collectively, to the following questions'' :

1) What are some suspended activities that you would like to see not coming back ?

2) Describe why this activity seems to you to be noxious/superfluous/dangerous/incoherent and how its disappearance/putting on hold/substitution might render other acttivities that you prefer easier/more coherent. (Write a separate paragraph for each of the activities listed under 1).

3) What kinds of measures do you advocate so that workers/employees/agents/entrepreneurs, who can no longer continue in the activities that you have eliminated, are able to facilitate the transition to other activities ?

4) What are the activities, now suspended, that you hope might develop/begin again, or even be created from scratch ?

5) Describe how this activity appears to be positive to you, and how it makes other activities easier/more harmonious/coherent that you prefer and can fight against those that you judge to be inappropriate. (Write a separate paragraph for each of the activities listed under 4).

6) What kinds of measures do you advocate to help workers/employees/agents/entrepreneurs to acquire capacities/means/finances/instruments allowing for restarting/development/creation of this activity ?

''Now find a way to compare your description with that of other participants. By tabling and then superimposing the answers, you should start to build up a picture composed of conflicting lines, alliances, controversies and oppositions.''

(Full article found here)

Readings
Please add readings that have inspired you practice and a short introduction to why they’ve been important to you.

'''The Wild Beyond: With and For the Undercommons by Jack Halberstam. Introduction to The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten'''

"Moten and Harney want to gesture to another place, a wild place that is not simply the left over space that limns real and regulated zones of polite society; rather, it is a wild place that continuously produces its own unregulated wildness..." p.7

Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert. By Hamja Ahsan

"This anti-systemic manifesto, a quiet and thoughtful polemic, is a satire that uses anti-colonial theory to build a critique of dominant culture and the rising tide of Islamophobia." Thought provoking satire which fundamentally examines and reject of extrovert-supremacy. Speculates how to make change without "screaming louder than everyone else".

Gender Capitalism by Hava Carvajal and Maz Murray "The Right Lube"

Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age by Kenneth Goldsmith

Gender Capitalism by Hava Carvajal and Maz Murray "The Right Lube"

Writings by Ultra Red on art/sound/politics/public

 The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K Le Guin

Recipes for Resistance by Raju Rage + others'''

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