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SYSTEM CHANGE HIVE
︎ A VIRTUAL REALITY MUSEUM FOR FUTURES IN THE MAKING ︎
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photo credit
I C I M A G E
I C I M A G E
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︎INFO
Welcome to the Museum of Hidden Paths
Everything that could have happened,
and many things that did,
are cast into shadow
as one path is chosen...
and many things that did,
are cast into shadow
as one path is chosen...
The Museum for Hidden Paths is a virtual and physical installation for experiencing alternative futures.
This Mixed Reality project emerged from the SYSTEMS CHANGE HIVE, a community art collective dedicated to sharing knowledge about futures based on wellbeing and Systems Change. The Hive collective created Hidden Paths with community activists as a space of solidarity and a way of experiencing the futures they worked for. Virtual Reality was used for its relational qualities: as a way to share an embodied vision, to listent deeply to the voice and dreams of another.
Activism and forms of world-changing creativity is most often precarious. Change is driven by the tireless work of folk who live on the edge, who may be ill-supported, but who refuse to back down. Contemporary society has precious little room for supporting radical imagination and creative action. The Hive’s Museum for Hidden Paths experiments with how virtual spaces may provide much needed solidarity, reflection and incubation for communities to be together and shape radical alternatives.
Together, a group of artists created a spacious world of colour and poetics, designed to share knowledge, protect the new, and encourage transformative creativity to keep growing into the real world.
- Extract from collective statement, the HIVE collective
This Mixed Reality project emerged from the SYSTEMS CHANGE HIVE, a community art collective dedicated to sharing knowledge about futures based on wellbeing and Systems Change. The Hive collective created Hidden Paths with community activists as a space of solidarity and a way of experiencing the futures they worked for. Virtual Reality was used for its relational qualities: as a way to share an embodied vision, to listent deeply to the voice and dreams of another.
Activism and forms of world-changing creativity is most often precarious. Change is driven by the tireless work of folk who live on the edge, who may be ill-supported, but who refuse to back down. Contemporary society has precious little room for supporting radical imagination and creative action. The Hive’s Museum for Hidden Paths experiments with how virtual spaces may provide much needed solidarity, reflection and incubation for communities to be together and shape radical alternatives.
Together, a group of artists created a spacious world of colour and poetics, designed to share knowledge, protect the new, and encourage transformative creativity to keep growing into the real world.
- Extract from collective statement, the HIVE collective
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License, 2019 (Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike)
All individual artworks and recorded or written testimonies on this site are the sole property of the individual creators. The distribution rights remain the sole property of the artist.
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All individual artworks and recorded or written testimonies on this site are the sole property of the individual creators. The distribution rights remain the sole property of the artist.
INSIDE THE MUSEUM
VISUAL WORLD OF THE EXPERIENCE
︎INFO
Welcome to the Museum of Hidden Paths
“We learned to look at things differently
to see objects not in isolation,
but as part of the systems that brought them to us,
and to glimpse how they were interrelated.
We learnt to find the people making new systems
and we listened to what they had to say.
Their voices, marginalised in culture at large,
are hidden in this experience.
We imagined their values accepted as wisdom
by a possible future.”
- The Museum of Hidden Paths
In 2019 Systems Change awareness entered the mainstream as public protest broke out in countries all across the planet declaring:
SYSTEMS CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE
During months of creative development in Brighton UK researchers from the STEPS Centre at University of Sussex and Swarm Dynamics shared research with the Hive collective to critically explore specific pathways for change.
We then created a Virtual Museum to explore the Hidden Paths to futures of greater wellbeing for all.
︎The Team
In our VR Museum some of the life-giving paths ahead are spoken by real people working for real changes.
Currently the VR Museum holds the spoken word of three community activists: Faumuina Felolini Tafunai, Otter Lieffe and Charlotte Pulver.
The Museum of Hidden Paths is potentially infinite. The project is designed to welcome more voices of activists and artists sharing their experience and real hopes for the future.
Currently the VR Museum holds the spoken word of three community activists: Faumuina Felolini Tafunai, Otter Lieffe and Charlotte Pulver.
The Museum of Hidden Paths is potentially infinite. The project is designed to welcome more voices of activists and artists sharing their experience and real hopes for the future.
We hold that both virtual and material objects can powerfully hold traces of what may come.
Material objects were presented in the physical space of the gallery exhibition to accompany the spoken word testimonies.
These exhibits are presented as precious seeds that can be nurtured and nourished for a more sustainable reality on this planet.
🌍️
Material objects were presented in the physical space of the gallery exhibition to accompany the spoken word testimonies.
These exhibits are presented as precious seeds that can be nurtured and nourished for a more sustainable reality on this planet.
🌍️
Please enjoy exploring this site ︎
︎#HEALTHY EXCHANGE SYSTEMS
︎#Activism, COMMUNITY BUILDING
︎#Water Rights, ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY
︎#HEALTHY EXCHANGE SYSTEMS
︎#Activism, COMMUNITY BUILDING
︎#Water Rights, ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY
HIDDEN PATH
Alternative Currencies and HEALTHY EXCHANGE SYSTEMS
with spoken word from Faumuina Felolini Tafunai
photo credit
Furtherarts
Future exhibit #1: WOVEN HARAKEKE (flax) STAR
This is a harakeke whetū - a woven flax star - a gift and decoration from the celebrations of Puanga, the Māori New Year celebration in Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Encoded in the weave is a practice of working with harakeke that stretches across the Pacific islands. Woven mats for example were forms of ancient currency in some Pacific communities: crafted alternatives to consumerist and profit-driven exchange systems. Woven mats are used as a way of exchanging value in some Pacific island communities. Mats are gifted on an occasions like a wedding or a death. Unique mats are woven by hand, passing on a history of craftsmanship and innovation. The weave expresses the craft and intention of the individual maker.
L I S T E N
The voice you hear in the Museum of Hidden Paths is Faumuina Felolini Tafunai. She speaks of her experience growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand with Samoan parents and the embodied understanding of the value of honouring creative relations between peoples. Faumuina speaks an embodied understanding of true wealth as distribution, reciprocity and relationship. Healthy exchange systems are not invoked as something new, or a speculative idea, but rather thay are lived realities connecting families and communities across the Pacific.
I M A G I N E
Consider yourself in a future of healthy creative reciprocity. What conditions are needed for possibilities of reciprocity to thrive?
Can you imagine a future possible in which the the local Councils and Government Agencies of the world are guided by awareness of the repair and reparations needed for communities harmed by colonialism. Can you imagine if the policies of Museums and Cultural Institutions were guided by understanding of and respect for justice: justice for people and planet, and the more than human beings,
Can you imagine if mainstream public understanding could simply recognise the responsibility to work to heal the painful legacy of Empire and violence against Indigenous peoples? If people knew the sad truth that extractive capitalism costs the world itself, as simply as they know they know who won last night’s big football match? A future in which continual concerted effort is made to face the injustices of history, and grow a greater understanding of healthy alternatives,
The paths towards this future might include young people educated about the plurality of cultures and the varieties of ways of knowing and craft practices on this wide shared earth.
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Faumuina Felolini Tafunai is an award-winning journalist and a Fellow with the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. She is the Chairperson of Further Arts and involved in projects recording alternative money practices on the Pacific islands of Vanuatu. Her work in the world is a celebration of the power of creativity to transform, nurture and heal culture.
Faumuina leads workshops teaching her wayfinding model as a lens for design work. She created this model through guiding conversations with navigator Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr from Aotearoa New Zealand and by voyaging on the ocean aboard Haunui sail boats. She has applied her wayfinding practice to her work all over the world with organisations like Bretton Woods 75 and Further Arts.
Faumuina’s websites:
www.flyinggeesepro.nz
www.furtherarts.org