nika on a/3 year/s

Everyone sums up the year. Joining in.

The last three years for many and for me too, a complete black stripe. Death, disease, wars, violence, refugees.

It all began with the deaths of David, who threw me out of a fabulous and seemingly stable life, in a house with a garden on Portabello Road, with fireworks of projects and friends into a tiny studio overlooking the bridge where a homeless Nigerian stayed – almost the only constant acquaintance I had in that lonely Covid year.

david graeber

For three years, a significant part of my life has been linked to David’s archive. Taking care of the deceased husband’s inheritance, the corpse of his works (corpse – corpse or collection of works translated from Lat) is the traditional fate of widows.

I would love to cheat my own destiny and live my life my own way. I would like to stay free.

The hope is that David’s archive, like David himself, unlike many celebrity “corpses” is a sudden and rebellious project designed to open spaces of freedom and complicity, not to enslave, manipulate and mediate in the redistribution of power.

david and nika on museum of care

I began to think about some unexpected move – a move to a new world, a complete shift in the paradigm of all relationships. At the beginning of the leaving year, I started looking for information about Madagascar. David worked there for two years, he wrote his favorite book, “Magic and Slavery in Madagascar,” which then built all his reflections. We owe the appearance of David’s texts to the Chicago School of Anthropology, Russian-Jewish-American anarchist tradition, Dostoevsky and Bakhtin and Madagascar.

It seemed fair to return to Madagascar or at least to the global south what they once gave all of us.

What if we tried to repeat what David once did – to see our own world through the eyes of another and, by doing so, reinvent ourselves?

I even started emailing a few people discussing a possible move to Madagascar.

madagascar.. madagascar love.. mad love take 2

year ? – a people experiment .. suggested cities.. et al

However, the Madagascar project turned out to be too large and dangerous: French language, a huge country with a complex colonial past and present.

By chance, I found myself on St. Vincent’s island in the Caribbean Sea. This is a very small country with a population of 100,000 people living on 30 islands. There are no useful fossils and great government interests here. It’s in the Global South but it’s part of the Commonwealth.

st vincent

There are already several universities on the island where students from the U.S. and Canada study because it is cheaper, the weather is nice, and the diplomas are the same as back home.

I started the process of getting a license and organizing workshops and summer schools.

university of dgi

This is my third time coming here and I’m thinking of partially moving and living on the island. For this I need to find a very good house sitter.

Please message me if you know anyone or if you would be interested in trying.

Here’s what you need to know:

– The infrastructure is bad here and you can only get anywhere by car (and I don’t know and I don’t want to learn to drive).

– Any living in a new place, especially in the countries of the Global South, requires brute manpower: something always breaks and needs to be fixed, arranged, organized, and so on. Either you need to be able to negotiate quickly with the locals or be possessing brute man power yourself.

– There are many beautiful things on the island – tennis courts, coral reefs, horseback riding and boating, flowers and fruit, fresh fish and a film festival. As everywhere else, to adapt to local life requires patience and tact.

– The working language is English

– Visa and financial issues can be resolved

________

nika on a/5 year/s

________

be you.

a quiet revolution

nika on a/3 year/s

doing detox (self-talk)..