Skills for resurgence is a short film created through a participatory method developed by Klelija Zhivkovikj, in collaboration with visual artists Hristina Krsteska and Krsto Gligorjadis, dancer Nikola Ignovski and fashion designer Magdalena Tanevska. It is a queer-led project that centers aliveness as an inviolable animating force which can be our strongest asset in resisting oppression and injustice.

The title “Skills for resurgence” is a play on skills for survival, the knowledge encompassing the ability to adapt, endure, and thrive in the face of adversity by drawing upon instinct, ingenuity, and perseverance. According to Anna Tsing, resurgence is an inherent ability of all living beings, a life force which, when available to us, we can experience as a fountain, the most powerful and tender one streaming through our whole world.

As Audre Lorde put it in her seminal work “Uses of the erotic”, in order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. Therefore, we are not simply interested in aliveness for aliveness’ sake. We are interested in how our own animating force is entangled with that of our world, how it can be liberated and channeled into fueling not just our own lives, but all the ways in which we take care of each other and the systems and technologies we create.

Our starting point are all the ways in which we extinguish, disrupt, block or numb our aliveness in order to maintain the oppressive systems that we inhabit: families, religions, nations etc.

By developing a method based on knowledge from performing disciplines, each artist has  created their own skill for resurgence, which encompasses the decisions, permissions, boundaries and choices we make in service of our aliveness. Through this process, the skills for resurgence emerged as scalable and adaptable steps towards a rebellious aliveness that anyone can practice individually or collectively to mitigate the consequences of marginalization and discrimination, and prevent the further multiplication of oppressive structures.

Rejecting the misconception that to be alive is to only feel good, we support ourselves and each other to feel everything, in the safety of our caring community.