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FRIENDSHIP AS A TRANSINDIVIDUAL FIELD



Friendship for us is not just a theme, but an emotional, mental and physical field where we can grow and nurture together across our differences,

a necessary condition to survive the individualistic regimes˙ and realize the power of the space between us,

a method for horizontal systems based on reciprocity, mutuality, plurality and relationality.

We perceive art-making as a space where society can be examined and rethought, one that allows alternatives to be actualized and shared. In line with our urgency for keeping the connection strong between art and everyday life, and in times where the world becomes exponentially more hostile, friendship has emerged as a necessary frame through which to reflect on existing conditions of working, creating and living. Relationality, support, heterogeneity and mutuality of commitment are among the key pillars we explore by being together, writing, visualizing, reading, talking, philosophizing, moving, embodying.

Our inquiry into friendship has also raised questions around the relationship between privacy and public, (en)closed systems and accessibility, aesthetics in which friendship is represented.

How can we work on and through friendship without exploiting it?
How can friendship be practiced as a transindividual field - where individuality and collectivity are shaped together in real time?
How can friendship become a practice to create cracks in systems that isolate and commodify relations?
Can presence remain non-commodified in public space?

This is a continuous archive of these processes.



Friendship is an extra kin  Against isolation As love care and reciprocity cannot flourish in  An extra skin against oppression an interdependent interconnected body A sticky body With horns wings claws teeth and oversized hearts A monster an anomaly a circus freak Amid the sea of male tradition Rust spreading on the sterilized gears of our overworked machines
Anti-sovereign
Anti-individualistic
Anti-essentialist
Anti-possessive
Anti-instrumental
Anti-productive
A metastable zone where difference persists without domination.
It is movement
It is ontological openness
It is morphology
It is topology


a look, a shrug, a sigh, a smile, the smooth tension in some parts of my face, that is enough.
                                    learning each other comes naturally and lovingly.
to lose the fear that they will leave because they have stayed so far. to hold each other accountable, and to stay. to stay because we hold each other accountable.
                                                                                                 I am learning that friends are the ones who you learn to build boundaries with.
I find friendship as if finding a whole new world behind a raging waterfall.














MANIFESTOS ON FRIENDSHIP, STIFF NECKS (2026)


        



Condorelli, C. (2014) Too Close to See: Notes on Friendship, a Conversation with Johan Frederik Hartle. Berlin: Sternberg Press.






Derrida, J. (1993) Politics of friendship. American Imago, vol. 50.
Han, B. (2014) Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power. London: Verso Books.
Condorelli, C. (2009) Support Structures. Berlin: Sternberg Press.








       


    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            




PREVIOUS                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        NEXT
 





                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
 

            © Stiff Necks Collective 2026