IDOCDE Virtual Meetings starting soon!

Dear Members of the IDOCDE Community,

With this Editorial, Team IDOCDE would like to reflect on the challenges presented by the ongoing crisis and present a new plan of action regarding the organisation of the 2020 IDOCDE residency and symposium.

With the world’s inability to predict what the coming months will bring, the likelihood that the annual IDOCDE Symposium will take place in the same (physical) form it takes every year is diminishing by the hour. Even if all of the travel bans that are currently active are lifted in time and borders open, even if the eagerness to pack a bag overwhelms, there is no way to anticipate how many of us will be able to cover the expense of international travel with lodging following life in-quarantine. 

The thought of responding to this crisis by cancelling the IDOCDE symposium, which had to be considered, feels counter-intuitive. It also feels like hitting the switch on IDOCDE’s heartbeat and extinguishing one of the stars shining in the night’s sky of hope. The IDOCDE symposium is, after all, the single IDOCDE activity that has kept appearing on the horizon of IDOCDE’s year since 2013. It is the activity we at IDOCDE measure our year by. It is our anchor, our lighthouse, and our guiding star.

Challenged by the changing-if-not-growing uncertainty, we–the members of Team IDOCDE–realised that maintaining a commitment to this year’s residency and symposium has a sobering effect; the commitment gives a sense of purpose, and maintains a promise of context larger than a living room, larger than a computer screen. This is why we’ve decided to continue working towards the 2020 IDOCDE residency and symposium.

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You are here!

HOW DO WE PREPARE FOR THE UNKNOWN?

TAKING SPACE MAKING PLACE

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The reality of the situation we find ourselves in at the moment is such that we cannot anticipate what form, physical or otherwise, this residency and symposium will be able to take. The place that is currently the only available place where social gatherings of variable size can take space is no other than “the other great outdoors,” also known as the internet.

Seeing the title of this year’s symposium as a score, and acknowledging that we cannot anticipate what form the future will take, we thought of foregoing the future and focusing on today by establishing, opening, and offering an IDOCDE run Virtual Place for Taking Space, a weekly event made available for the IDOCDE community to come together and share stories of the present tense.

Where are you? How are you meeting the unknown? Did you lose work? Did you succeed in maintaining your engagements by moving the action–your teaching, your dancing, your performing–on-line? What strategies are emerging from the way you’re engaging with all the challenges that you are facing? … How are you?

Each meeting will be hosted by different members of the IDOCDE Team, always announced in advance. With this decision, we’d like to calm our fight-or-flight response and join in with the dreaming, orienting, observing capacities, meet the community, and start from right here. Right now. Where we are at the moment. Start by taking space and making place for threading into the future, together, one step at a time.

Would you like to join?

The first IDOCDE Virtual Meeting will take place the week of Easter Monday. Please check in with our homepage and our social media for details!

Hoping this letter finds you well,
pavleheidler for Team IDOCDE

PS you can now sign-up to attend the Virtual Place of Taking Space HERE.