ARTHOUSE ASTROLOGY: NOTES FROM SUMMER SCHOOL
“I start a school called how can I live.” – Lisa Robertson, 3 Summers
I accidentally started a school.
How can we live?
When life under quarantine struck, I made a class called COSMIC EDGES. It was a primal response to what was happening in the world. We needed to be together. But how? And, about what? For four days, we learned about hidden or “quarantined” spaces in astrology.
Art is how I make astrology (and myself) feel alive and such was the vibe of Cosmic Edges. Prince, contemporary poets, philosophers, and ancient myths were our guides. This was back in late March. I thought it would be a one-time thing. A fling.
ARTHOUSE ASTROLOGY LIBRARY: DOWNLOADS & COSMOS
Arthouse Astrology School was birthed. It’s sort of a self-proclaimed “school of dropouts and edge-dwellers” which maybe means those of us who are interested in many things, in thinking about culture but also how (Lisa Robertson, again): “We don’t belong to culture. We’re sunsets.” And anyone and everyone is invited. There are many entrances. Classes are donation-based.
More than a school, it’s a mood. Or: It’s a school in the sense that everything is a school. There’s always an amalgamation of art and astrology – and we make relations between the stars and daily life, pop culture, whatever we’re reading and thinking about. In short: it’s a rigorous and leisurely community of curious folks. But I almost don’t want to do it the disservice of a quick description or a tagline.
Remember yearbook signing? “Never change!” “YOU ROCK!” “WHAT WOULD I DO WITHOUT YOU?” Yeah. Difficult not to gush about the brilliant people I’ve met through these ongoing experimental workshops.
The final day of VENUS DAZE. Pictured: Me, Steph, and Oscar. The Arthouse team.
Here’s the library of past classes.
Here’s what we’re currently up to.
A community is very different from an audience.
From (MOON)WRITING.
These forums (zoom, social media, even blog writing) favor guru-ization. It takes labor to center community – to keep insisting on the many, not the one.
From VENUS DAZE.
Sticking to “the point” is not that important. We’ve talked about everything from the revolution to RuPaul to Roland Barthes to screenshots as still lives to hauntings (our own, our collective) to our own charts to how to unhook the cosmos from capitalism.
Slide shows can be boring or they can be wild trips.
“Lozenges” = an arthouse astrology term for an idea that we keep coming back to, that we hold in our minds for the whole class as it flavors the experience. A lozenge can be a planetary aspect, a poem, or a quote.
Critical thinking is a way to care and to love. It’s labor. It’s not a spectator sport.
When we spend time learning about and making connections with planets, we develop deep, lifelong relationships with them (and likewise, with the people around us).
When we treat the planets (or other people) like resources or things to be used for our own gain, we lose again and again.
Laughter is everything. We are living in dark and fucked up times where art and humor are not optional. Astrology is also art.
Still from VENUS DAZE, Ana Mendieta.
Planets, like people, have complicated relationships with each other.
Everything has a mood. Tending to the mood is vital. Music helps.
Class playlists make a mood. Here’s the (MOON)WRITING one.
Workshops and zoom rooms can, like the alchemical process itself, be “vessels for holding confusion.” Supportive, malleable, alchemizing and reckoning with the major debris that we accumulate as we traverse life, dynamic containers for revolutions and pains and relating.
Classes are art projects. Planets are poets. Poets are planets. A community is not made of capital. Zoom doesn’t have to feel like zoom. Actual friendships and critical discourse can form inside the chat box.
I am changed from leading these workshops.
Not knowing feels true. I don’t think it’s knowledge or certainty we’re after. It’s something more intimate than that, something more unknowable, ineffable, messy….
I start a school called how can I live.
In my school called how can I live
in my theory of appearing
I lay out my costume.
We don’t belong to culture. We’re sunsets.
We simplify thought
until it resembles
stripes.
Our skin itches.
I beg you – show me something unknowable.
I don’t believe in this possibility of knowing.