I cannot recall when or how my fascination with apocalypse began, but I can describe imagining the end of the world and what comes after as liberating and invigorating. The anxiety of anticipation is over and possibility fills the air. I no longer fear obliteration; instead, I welcome resurgence.

Our current world presents us with many apocalyptic sights almost daily. Imagining the end of the world, while safe and healthy, seems like a form of privileged optimism too riddled with blind spots to be of any service. 

However, as a queer woman, living and working in the Balkans, I find the story of collapse equal parts terrifying and hopeful, encapsulating both the inevitability of our responsibility to the world and access to its inviolable aliveness.

Imagining the collapse of normativity is euphoric, clearing space for our true human nature to emerge (Solnit, 2009).

Isolation requires tremendous effort of escaping, severing and resisting, whereas collapse is a form of release, a decision to relinquish, to let go, which is not effortless,

There is an abundance of data in support of that which we already know: our species is depleted and alienated, as is much of our world. We’ve been shaping our physical, social and digital environments through massive and unjust extraction, which is inextricably related to the application of the discipline of design. However, so is the essentially human need, skill and capacity to co-create our world, and to do so while in deep connection with it.

In lieu of it, consumption is always within our reach as a substitute for our truer needs: solidarity, communion, care. As a transdisciplinary designer, I purposefully entangle my work with this complex reciprocity between humans and their world (environment), mediated by design.

Despite my work fitting the broad field of visual art, I insist on using the language of design, as I believe that contemporary design practices have elevated the eco-social and political relevance of this discipline and unlocked a potential which I am thrilled to explore further.

My work is materialized through objects such as installations, drawings, digital media, text and collaborative pedagogic situations, in a process akin to prototyping - developing models for embodiment and speculation, in pursuit of insights into the way humans relate to the more than human world. The format of prototyping allows unformed ideas to be tested, focusing on the core concepts or principles that they give shape to, instead of their finished form.

Born out of a very personal and intimate place, I am currently following a deep interest in, and drive towards, aliveness. Originating inside of ourselves, aliveness can feel like a fountain; the strongest, most tender thread which runs through all of our world.

Yet, assuming that aliveness is inherently joyful has been the low-hanging fruit in this process. In following this interest I have found a powerful aliveness in grief, care and effort too. I have experienced my heart break only to open my eyes to a newer, more vibrant landscape.

Tracing the footsteps of Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the erotic”, I am not simply interested in aliveness for aliveness’ sake. I am 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.

For this purpose I am looking for “skills for aliveness”, a play on “skills for survival”, as the decisions, permissions, boundaries and choices that queer people make in service of their own aliveness. Following the principle of “put your own oxygen mask on first”, I am primarily interested in how these individuals, whose aliveness has been systemically harmed and oppressed, have grown to embody and multiply it.

I’d like to document and make visible the ways in which our individual aliveness and that of our world feed each other. I believe that this process will allow for practices of care to emerge as replicable, scalable acts of solidarity and service, which mitigate the effects and consequences of marginalization and discrimination, and disrupt the further multiplication of oppressive structures.