A Holding Space

What would it look like if we placed care at the forefront of our creative pursuits, critical inquiries, and civic dialogues? How would it feel if care were to be taken seriously as a method of relationality and creation? What if, beyond a means, care was a goal—an endpoint inseparable from a beginning? 

CARE SYLLABUS is an experiment in creating a commons of care—a holding space for radical communal imagination. 

CARE SYLLABUS is animated by the spirit of inquiry and the synergy of collaboration. At the heart of this project is a series of spurring questions:  Amidst the public health crises of the coronavirus; systematic violence of anti-Black racism; regular and blatant abuses of governmental power; widespread disregard for the environment, we might ask, who, in fact, cares? Whose role is it to care and for whom? What are the costs, labors, and rewards of care? How are matters of access to care influenced by race, gender, class, ability, location, age, and other factors? How are cultural trends of care (of the self, as mutual aid, in the forms of protest and uprising, for instance) informed by sociopolitical, economic, and environmental realities? Where is care to be found? When might it be better to care less?

Care holds so much promise because of its multivalence. Care is an unscripted form of worldmaking that creates conditions of belonging otherwise unimaginable, and it is simply practical: a must for our survival. “We take care; we must take care, because history has sharpened their edges; sharpened our edges,” Sara Ahmed writes in Living a Feminist Life (2017). CARE SYLLABUS is an invitation to examine how our care practices are shaping and being shaped by the contours of an untenable present.

In recognition of the colonial histories and capitalist logics that undergird the museum and the academy, CARE SYLLABUS commits to an unwavering exploration of how institutionalized systems perpetuate injustice. Our project’s take on a traditional pedagogical form—the syllabus—is reimagined to harness the emancipatory potential of collaborative learning and dialogue. The content featured on the syllabus is free and open to the public; our audience includes academics, activists, artists, and extends to all of us who care. 

Victoria Papa (MCLA)
Levi Prombaum (ACLS/MASS MoCA)
Laura Thompson (MASS MoCA)
CARE SYLLABUS Co-Directors