How do you live in your imagination? Can you imagine a different world? At the end of March 2020, we – a group of women who call ourselves Mujeres errantes – started an online collective diary. Born in different parts of Europe and Latin America, we call many different places in Europe home. We speak different languages, and we live in different situations. Our group was founded in Granada in 2018, and since last spring we have been meeting and collaborating online.
Our collective diary of imagination, Imaginations during the time of quarantine (Imaginarios de cuarentena), has become a place for us to share our feelings and desires, with ourselves and with others. The diary has since developed into a larger project called Errant Imaginaries: possible utopias, which unites the diary with an inquiry into existing inspiring models and practices of change. As artists, activists, grassroots organisers, mothers, scholars, educators and citizens, we are all working for a better world in many different ways, and for almost three years, Mujeres errantes has been a space where we have supported each other in this mission. Via our collective diary, we are able to focus on the dreams that fuel our desire for change.
Why are our daydreams so important? Because what we crave, what we long for, can reveal what is truly essential. The COVID-19 pandemic of the past year has shed light on the urgent need to change our current systems – economic, political, social and affective. Radical imagination is what we need to envision a change in our society, and then to begin to take action.
Our visions begin with our desires.Audre Lorde
Our collective diary is an open and constantly growing initiative. Reaching out online through social media and personal contacts and the network of collectives, we have invited others who self-define as “errant women” to join us, and to add their own contributions. We have received inspiring individual contributions from all around the world: short stories with illustrations, poems, paintings, collages, dance videos, sounds and more.
Our online group creation workshops within the Mujeres errantes group, and the ones we hold in collaboration with other groups and collectives, always focus on an issue we feel touched by, as we use the diary as a tool for thinking out of the box:
Imagining our lives without violence
Imagining what a truly caring city would look like
Making cartographies of our bodies and explore our imagination through them.
You are warmly invited to view some contributions to our collective diary, in languages including Italian, Hungarian, Spanish and English, here, along with artwork from our contributors. You can also listen to our thoughts and feelings via an audio selection from our collective diary that we prepared for International Women’s Day on 8 March.
At its most superficial, the radical imagination is the ability to imagine the world, life, and social institutions not as they are but as they might otherwise be. It is the courage and the intelligence to recognize that the world can and should be changed. The radical imagination is not just about dreaming of different futures. It’s about bringing those possibilities back from the future to work on the present, to inspire action and new forms of solidarity today.Max Haiven and Alex Khasnaibish, from “The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity” (Zed)
In the coming months, Mujeres errantes will undertake more workshops exploring our imagination.
As part of the Errant imaginaries: possible utopias project, we are contacting other collectives that inspire us and that work on some of the desires and challenges that the collective diary expresses. Through an online encounter that we will record on video, we will create an occasion for sharing their experiences and dialogue through art.
In July, we plan to hold in-person and hybrid arts residencies in Lisbon and Budapest, and we are currently working on extending them to La Paz too, in collaboration with a local collective, drawing on a shared methodology and in collaboration with other women’s groups. (You can find out more via Instagram at @mujereserrantes, or contact us at mujereserrantes@riseup.net )
The multimodal methodology is based on the collective diary of imagination as the main format of co-creation, and will be complemented by online and offline reading sessions and meetings with inspiring activists and collectives. The methods include collective mapping, movement, painting, collage, collective writing, video and more, and will draw on our previous experiments within the Mujeres errantes groups: collective exercises of story-telling, connection and reflection. (If you are interested in undertaking similar activities, please feel free to reach out; we would be happy to share our methodologies.)
The Errant imaginaries project has been funded in part by Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, whose grant has covered communication and translations, and some costs related to residencies. In order to further facilitate participation in the forthcoming residencies and make sure that no one is excluded because of financial constraints, we have also started a crowdfunding initiative. You can help support the power of connection, imagination and dreams by offering to contribute the price of a coffee or more: ko-fi.com/mujereserrantes
Instagram: @mujereserrantes
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mujereserrantes
Manifesto: mujereserrantes.net/local-spaces/manifiesto-mujeres-errantes
Me llevan a contenerme y a contenerles Y que solo cuando estemos seguras de que este tiempo es solo una pausa Me devuelven a casa donde nuevamente cada mañana Peleamos yo, su fuerza y abundancia.Ale Fajardo, Mis cabellos
È una colazione strepitosa, lische, teste e code di pesce, con molti pezzetti di carne ancora. Ma non mi basta ancora. Mi lecco i baffi, e inizio la mia discesa solitaria verso il mare, alla ricerca di un compagno di viaggio e di un pescatore generoso.Emma Ferulano, Gatta raminga e golosa
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Kitti Baracsi
Critical Educator & Curator of Community and Cultural Initiatives
Kitti Baracsi is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, a critical educator, and a curator of community and cultural initiatives. She is Co-founder of the TuTela Learning Network, an open international collective that aims to build connections among marginalised activist experiences within education and community work.
Image credits: Blue landscape (banner image) Giulia Landonio, illustrating Emma Ferulano’s text “Gatta raminga e golosa. Feet cartographies in collaboration with Territorio Feminista Bolivia.Written text with colours by Claudia Díaz Mazanda. Mountain and sea collage by Sara Caballero Zavala, Sueños de otoño.