{ żywicowanie }
“A sweaty concept might come out of a bodily experience that is trying. The task is to stay with the difficulty, to keep exploring and exposing this difficulty.” Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (2017), p13.
Resinous is the adjective of the noun resin, which derives from the Latin word rēsīnōsus, dating back to 1640–50. Synonyms for this word include sticky, clinging, gelatinous, gooey, glutinous, attaching, clingy, amongst many others. It pertains to resin as the organic material which oozes out of pine trees, healing and protecting the plant against cuts, invaders and scarring.
This material may take many different forms: fluid like resin or solid like amber. It heals and preserves, but it can also be sticky and troublesome. For our group activities as resina collective, could we describe our activities as resinous? We are gooey, gluey and sticky – we produce and leave an excess behind which is hard to define, a surplus value difficult to categorise.
I would like to mobilise the concept of being ‘resinous’ as a working methodology. How does one work in a resinous manner? We have created a network connected by sticky tendrils; activating healing environments in which we have been able to discuss life infrastructures under necrocapitalist conditions. Thinking through the concept of being resinous, how do we inhabit this interstice of being both a solid and fluid organisation, gloopy yet smooth?
Bringing the term resinous closer to my own tongue, mother-tongue, I wonder what it tastes like? Żywicowanie emerges as a verb – to make resinous, to extract resin. Żywicowanie also bears likeness to the words życie (life) and żywić (to feed, support, cherish). Could this concept come to signify a collective life-making practice, a practice which feeds rather than extracts?
* resina is a multi-disciplinary cultural association formed in 2017.
