"What is Community?" questionnaire and Nico Vassilakis' response

I generated the following questionnaire for facilitating a writing workshop last spring at SVA, for my course about "intense autobiography." Afterwards we discussed Bruce Boone's Century of Clouds. This past weekend I gave the questionnaire as a hand out at the Poetics of Healing mini-symposium. Nico Vassilakis responded and his response is also posted below:

What is Community? (a Questionnaire)

1. To what communities do you belong? Name them. What are the defining features of these communities?

2. What distinguishes these communities from other communities? What limits and unites their members?

3. How would you characterize the politics of these communities? Illustrate with an anecdote or series of images. How would you describe your relationship to the

politics of these communities?

4. How do you enact your political beliefs through a daily practice? Provide a soundtrack or series of sounds rather than description to express this enaction of belief.

5. How do you enact your beliefs through an art practice?

6. Describe a time when you rebelled or provided a challenge against your community? How did this make you feel? How would/do you make art based on this experience—to channel or mediate it?

7. To what communities do you belong in your dreams?

Exercise: Read over your responses and select language that is interesting to you.

Use this language to compose a poem.

If you wish to share, mail your responses to wildhorsesoffire [at] gmail [dot] com

A visual one

Looking at seeing

Using alphabet to make objects

Using alphabet visually as language for seeing

The eyes and the eyes

Open

The ego of the eyes

I like what the eye likes

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There is no power structure

We all see what needs seeing

We create so as to replicate and enhance the fascination visual alphabet holds for us

U, U, double U, double, double, double U

By getting it and getting it right

It continues by honing your intentional mark

We chose work

Chosen for its lack of repetition

To toss it far enough that nothing relates at such a distance

A community of happenstance

A confederacy of surprise