A lot of visitors came around this evening to join us for a party and see what we’ve created this week. Many of them are Spanish, but I also met a Polish girl, a Belgian woman, a French man, and several others.

It’s an interesting step to take, from creating art within our small group to displaying it to people we don’t know. It makes you take a step back and consider how to explain what you’ve been doing to someone who might know nothing about it, or might not even speak your language. It’s an important step in the creative process, and one that takes a bit of courage I think. I hope our visitors have enjoyed themselves here tonight.

I am surprised that the projects I have watched forming over the course of the week seem so fresh to me tonight. After all the finishing touches and connecting the dots, they really have come together. It’s possible to watch every component be created and still be struck by the finished product. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I feel like that statement could apply to us and our group as well.

I am sad to think about leaving tomorrow. It took me time to hit my stride here, and now that I have it’s time to go. But I will take so much with me – not only the jumpstart to my creativity and food for thought about my own process and challenges, but more importantly the connections I have made with people. It’s connections and collaborations that give me the most inspiration.

Using the Nowhere (non-related… just a nice little burst of synchronicity) book that Cara brought on tapping into and exploring creativity we decided that if we had a question that epitomizes our quest for this week it was:

” How can we inspire and realize creativity in a balanced and sustainable way in ourselves, our group and the wider community?”

I like how all these things that are arising in us as a group, things to do with our purpose here are things that I have felt very drawn to and been exploring myself in recent months. Makes me think about things like collective consciousness. Makes me happy.

…………..time lapse of several hours……………………

Wow. I just gave a tour in Spanish to a few local girls. One of them breeds chickens that are a specific breed to this area. I hate, hate, hate being on camera and leading things like that but in a way I can kind of do it and I feel grateful to be pushed into it. Tis a good thing to have ones confidence in oneself increased.

What else?

Been thinking about the differences between creativity here and at Nowhere… Nowhere, being a desert like Black Rock in Nevada is like a blank canvas where we have to build or create something from scratch. We are in a way somewhat detached from our environment – and it often feels like there is a battle there too – against the heat, the dust, the mosquitoes etc. Here at Pipirimosca however we can wonder around the farm, explore the heaps of junk, climb trees, and find ourselves with all these ways to interact with and engage with our environment. New ideas arise, spontaneous inspirations, collaborations  unfold and gradually manifest…

…so I felt somewhat sad this week that I had a such a concrete idea for my project and it involved using materials I had brought with me and not really interacting with people or the outside world… a pretty familiar feeling for me. Watching everyone around me engaging with the outside world and all the creativity and spontaneity really heightened my awareness of  being closed and being trapped in my own little world. I had many moments of feeling very sad over the past week because of this.

So what  a beautiful end to the week to be able to participate in a sweat lodge with my two moon sisters (Fuck, this is so cringeworthy writing this but damn it they are moon sisters), which was Tessaś project and use the transformative power of fire and heat, of connecting with female friends and energy to fuel intentions for change.  We sat for hours in our little cocoon, or womb as it began to feel like while Chris and our French friends tended the fire and gave us more hot bricks when we asked. Naked, dripping in sweat, sitting on the bare earth, slowly getting more and more filthy and primal and hot and reveling in it. It was the most beautiful and raw and funny and intimate and transformative experience.

And so today is different. I am collecting things from people, exploring materials that are around here and making a patch for the  quilt with memories from this week… I got Massimo to destroy some fabric I found with his angle grinder and then tried to get the dog to chew it but it looked up at me with a docile expression and ignored my demonstration… Oli used the ink he was drawing with to write something on some denim I found and also donated a button. Thereś fabric from Alannaś tentacle creations and Coco, one of the French guys wwoofing here just gave me something too…

I find myself volunteering to organize the greeters this evening at our event/party thing so it appears that today, my last day, is all about exploring and engaging with the outside world. Which dear reader, makes a very happy Ruby indeed.

Basically, as Pere said, permaculture is a technique aimed to design and create self-sufficient spaces where to live in harmony with nature. The philosophy behind permaculture is to “work with” instead of “working against“, helping nature closing its cycles.

The difference between organic farming and permaculture is that permaculture cares about the impact on the environment, promoting also the balance between man and animals, insects and more biodiversity. Another focus of permaculture is also the attention to re-use resources that, if not used, will contaminate the environment, minimizing the global impact through local action.

Thanks Pere! Not only for telling us about permaculture, but also for hosting Growing Nowhere at Pipirimosca!

I did hear one of my compatriots say something along the lines that he does like a bit of roughage; and the compost toilets are (currently) coping admirably. Everyone is going well at Growing Nowhere.

Easier drawn than built...

To be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. When I sat down and actually started planning out the construction of the creature, the more I thought about it the more impossible it seemed. What had I gotten myself into? Why had I volunteered for all this stress? There were moments when I really considered giving up.

The most intimidating thing is a blank canvas or a blank sheet of paper. The sheer vastness of possibilities can overwhelm you. But here at Growing Nowhere, I am surrounded by creative people who take all different approaches. Once I actually got my hands dirty, it started to take shape. I made important discoveries about what worked and what didn’t, and adjusted the plan accordingly. Once I had some clarity, I also found support from the community here and people stepped up to take on specific aspects of the project they were drawn to.

Now I feel incredibly optimistic. The project has morphed somewhat from what I originally conceived, but I think it’s for the better. Trial and error forced me to figure out what aspects were essential to the concept for me, and what could be adjusted.The essence is still there, and in the current form is even more pure.

We did an interesting exercise today plotting our creative flow and mindset over the course of the week on a graph. Mine went down, down, down until the breakthrough moment when I hit a very low place, then shot up to a euphoric high. It occurred to me that the space between those highs and lows is potent potential energy for creativity, and I need to embrace the cycle as part of the creative process, not be afraid of it. I needed to dive in to come out the other side. And once I did, I looked around and found wonderful piles of materials, ideas, and sunshine, and everything seems possible.

Following the failure of the original Growing Nowhere organisation to maintain order, an atmosphere of louche decadence was fomented by subversive creatives whose values were not in accordance with the aims of the project.

The Repùblic of Nowhere (RoN) has therefore been declared, by forces loyal to the original aims of the project. Due to provocations by those who would seek to undermine its success, a perimeter has been established to protect all the artists from this external threat.

All members of the collective were successfully inducted this evening, and are as one in the artistic struggle for a glorious future in the Republic of Nowhere. All have agreed to quadruple their artistic output to meet quotas.

Worker artists were also taken to the shopping mall, where all the latest consumer durables are on show; then to the industrial sites where the new nation will be built; and finally they were taken to the border area to see the barrier which protects them from unhealthy outside influences.

A small number of individuals who attempted to assert their own selfish private agendas were re-educated and learned the error of their ways. They are sorry for their thought crimes and were re-assimilated (under surveillance, naturally) to RoN society where they joined in the anthem with the other workers:
“We do RoN, RoN; and we do RoN RoN”.

And so, through shared values of Unity, Strength and Power, we will build an artistic utopia that will last a thousand years*

Communique ends

* or till Sunday, at least

I painted a door frame brown, to resemble a machine-gun (though when I look at it I think: “That is a door frame, painted brown – and badly too.”) I also made a vehicle checkpoint barrier.

Well, I put a girder between a couple of large paint pots and painted “Halt” on it. But this basic approach speaks strongly of the honest simplicity that will mark the glorious Republic of Nowhere.

Only a decadent capitalist would paint stripes on a barrier, or give it a rope to be pulled up with, when there are workers who are perfectly happy to fulfil their patriotic duty to the Republic by shifting it themselves.

However, despite all this progress in the glorious new artistic utopia that is being built; despite searching high and low, looking under every rock and making tens of woodlice homeless, I am having no success sourcing the following crucial – and fairly mundane, I think – elements:

10 T-62 tanks (T-34s would have done, I´m not a perfectionist)
1 1960s-style Berlin skyline
1 JFK lookalike (for “Ich bin ein Berliner” moments etc)

So, for now, the pile of tyres that was already there and a few painted blocks of wood that I have decorated will have to do.

But luxury and surfeit is for the weak. Onwards comrades, towards the bold future that we will build together in the Republic of Nowhere!