Felipe G. Gil
Humor is a way to foster bonds in a community
It is not easy to send a message to the future, especially when you would like to represent a collective voice, which is my case because I am part of ZEMOS98. But I have been thinking a lot, and I had two ideas in mind. The first one is that I didn’t want to use any word from any language, that’s why it is a drawing. It is not a good one because I’m not a good painter or drawer, but I think it’s good to have something which needs to be deconstructed or read for the future generations. The other thing I had in mind is how can I represent something which is universal? And I know it may sound naive, but I’m going to explain why I put a smile on it. So basically what I would like to be saved and preserved is humor as a way to foster bonds in a community. One of the things we have been doing as ZEMOS98 is trying to include everyone in the room. So I know humor can be used to be mean and cruel to other people. I know humor is also a tool to prevail privileges. But the humor I would like to save for the future is the one which is deconstructing privileges, the one which is inviting everyone to take part in the conversation. The one which helps us to make spaces, shared spaces, public spaces as common as we can and as shared as we can.
Imagination is a collective process
I think for so long creativity was a tricky word for us because there are agents who are commodifying many of these experimental practices, especially when it comes to activist and social movements […] we do think at ZEMOS98 that we need imagination to improve our democracies and our societies. That imagination is a collective process that you don’t create alone. This romantic notion of authorship has been really bad for everyone.
To be alive, it’s already to be engaged
We have realized in this whole journey that we can’t do it alone, that’s for sure. And I’m thinking about Marina Garcés, who is a Spanish philosopher who says, “to be alive, it’s already to be engaged.” So one of the things we have been working on which connects care with engagement is recognising the interdependence of all of us as an organization, but also with all the different agents, or even if we think of individuals or citizens. And also sharing your vulnerabilities.
Care normally means sacrifice
Sometimes I think care it’s been commodified. It’s portrayed as something nice and cool, but care normally means sacrifice and it has to do with the dirty job you need to do to maintain someone alive or a community alive. So in that sense, I think engagement is connected to care and to the collective side of being together in a room—because, who cleans the room?
About Felipe G. Gil
Felipe G. Gil works at ZEMOS98, a 24 years old non-profit organization dedicated to cultural mediation. Felipe currently coordinates Commonspoly: an open source board game that fosters a culture of cooperation. He also coordinates Concomitentes UCIPediátrica, a 4 years project on how arts can help in an Intensive Care Unit for Children in a hospital. He also writes at elDiario.es about Internet culture and digital and socially engaged creativity. He plays any sport which implies using a racquet and he is a Star Wars fan.
CreaTures resources
Gil, F. (2022) Commonspoly [Festival Pechakucha presentation]. CreaTures Festival, Sevilla, Spain.
Dolejšová, M., Wilde, D. Choi, J.H., Botero, A., Zamuruieva, I., Light, A., Gi, F.G.l & Miller, M. (2022). The Feral Gift Exchange [Festival presentation]. Uroboros 2022 Festival.
Gil, F. (2021). CreaTures – Creative Practices for Transformational Futures. [Presentation]. Global Sustainability Transformations course, Utrecht University.
Ampatzidou, C., Choi, J. & Gil, F. (2021). Mapping instances of Co-evolution in the Commonspoly game actor network. [Conference presentation]. Transformations conference 2021.
Gil, Felipe G. (2020). Citizenry and Culture [Symposium presentation]. Cultura y Ciudadanía, Ministry of Culture of Spain.
Gil, Felipe G. (2020). Commonspoly [Festival presentation]. Gaming for Commons festival organised by ZEMOS98.
Dolejšová, M., Ampatzidou, C., Houston, L., Light, A., Botero, A., Choi, J. H-j., Wilde, D., Altarriba Bertran, F., Davis, H., Gil, F., and Catlow, R. (2021). Designing for Transformative Futures: Creative Practice, Social Change and Climate Emergency. In Creativity and Cognition (C&C ’21), June 22, 23, 2021, Virtual Event, Italy. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3450741.3465242