These notes to self, written and drawn as reflections of/for personal experiences over the last year (2023–2024) imagine and fabulate the notion of “non”[1] as a means to feeling free(dom). They convey the non in a way that one can attune with in order to find their own non-s. Through a series of digital artworks inspired by Firelei Baez’s[2] (2022) works created by juxtaposing found images on Canva to make no/one/thing concrete, but any/one/thing fluid. My contribution complicates ideas of negation and/or absence as excess. In contexts of freedom and unfreedom, it provides insights into an articulation of freedom that flows through the gaps of the cages that hold us. Non is no/one/thing and every/one/thing simultaneously, allowing an experience of freedom that is both positively overwhelming and discomforting. This work fabulates freedom by non-following empirical rules of academic writing[3]. Content Warning: This piece talks about death.
[1] I propose non as a counter-concept of sorts that doesn’t fit into the idea of concept because it cannot be defined. It is felt. Therefore, it is multiple and incomplete. It resists completion. Thus, working with it as a fluid, ever flowing event, growing and de-growing conceptually with the strength of speculation, non encourages us to co-explore freedom within ourselves, from years of colonial conditioning, trauma, and capitalist containment, as we explore ways to reclaim freedom for the collective. Non is therefore, deliberately not defined, but rather allowed to be excessive and speculative in its multiple expressions. That deliberate choice is a reclamation of freedom of expression in academic contexts, with hopes to then let it seep through other aspects of human experience—though not limited to it. This contribution attempts to part with established rules of writing, because within those rules, non cannot be articulated.
[2] Baez, F. and Hessel, K. (2024, March 8). Museums Without Men. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/katy-hessel-audio-tour-firelei-baez-transcript