Kaleidoscopic: from Berlin to Brooklyn
on longing and belongings...
When I started Kaleidoscopic Projects a year ago after a move to Berlin from California, it was a moment of both uncertainty and tremendous opportunity. Berlin had called itself into my consciousness from very early on and from my earliest memories. Having grown up in a small town in the remoteness of the south of Chile, my idea of place, my sense of belonging, and my emotional compass was shaped by an environment directly enmeshed with the depth and density of the natural world, surrounded by forests, lakes, and rivers. It was also a place that have been opened up to German and European immigrants at the end of the 1800’s. Araucania being the only Indigenous territory that had remained basically independent from the Spanish conquest as the Mapuche people were the sole group of South American indigenous inhabitants to successfully fend off the invading threats of the Spanish empire. This created a distinct cultural imprint in Valdivia that helped affirm a certain hybridity of identity, a mestizaje that embedded distinct strands of identity and consciousness. The place itself was a confluence of German protestant values, the violence of the Spanish conquest, and the sacredness of ancient Mapuche indigenous knowledge and values embodied by the land and nature that enveloped this region. This confluence manifested through my own consciousness, one embodying the tension between the ruptures of the European conquest and the deep resonance of my indigenous ancestors. The feeling as a child of being deeply attuned to the power of the natural world and the fluidity of the various cultures around me shaped my understanding of place and belonging.
Being in Berlin this last year reawakened many of these distant feelings from long ago. Being in a place where memory, history, and remembrance are deeply woven into it’s fabric, Berlin can be haunting and phantasmagoric. The weight of the past speaks at every moment but it also can recalibrate your sense of being; one that is pointed towards fluidity, hybridity, liberation, fissures. It’s a fascinating set of tensions that steered me back to the awe and wonder I felt as a child. It also tapped into my unique facility as both immigrant and person of color to exist in liminal spaces, to occupy the in-between, the non-binary within a deep sense of observation about the qualities of identity, place, and culture.
Much of this experience was the spark for starting the conversation series with Kaleidoscopic. A longing to understand what it means to live among others, other people, other subjectivities, other ways of being. This project has been a catalyst for featuring the voices and actions of participants that celebrate in manifold ways the many ways in which the in-between spaces can give us richer understandings of how our experience of place and identity is shaped. It’s also become a way to build creative communities by elevating non-binary, underrepresented, and distinct voices to create spaces where people can connect, inspire, and motivate one another with a belief in the power of the human imagination. An ineffable sense of belonging.
Alas, this sojourn in Berlin is coming to a pause towards new openings and dimensions on the east coast. Openings that will bring new stories rife with the tensions and complexities of our current moment, but also with stories that celebrate our ability to imagine unique world making opportunities that are rich with ancestral knowledges towards new cosmologies of being.
As this journey continues, I invite you to support the work of Kaleidoscopic Projects by signing up for a paid subscription. The impact and growth of this platform is dependent upon your support and each donation meaningfully helps. Thank you in advance for your generosity!
Herzlich,
Leonardo Bravo