Field Notes on Repair: 1
Annotatsiya
Repair and release may seem locked in opposition — one focused on holding things (places, buildings, objects) together and the other focused on relinquishing our hold on things, and allowing them to become something else. I sense, though, that we will need to cultivate both sets of skills in the years to come. As resources become even more strained than they already are, the responsibility for repair and recovery will, increasingly, fall to individuals and communities, rather than institutions and governments. People will need to find new ways (or rediscover old ways) of sustaining lives and livelihoods in place. Where this is not possible, repair may need to be reconfigured as a cultural capacity, oriented towards helping people carry their past into the future even as the places that anchor that past are — gradually or abruptly — released.