nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

learning about power, learning while making, learning about more than stateviolence, learning – by doing – what we can do).We shared our stories of encounters and non-encounters in the protests,the distances that separate us from each other in the movement and whatbrings us together. We tried to map out the composition of the movement,the differences in age, class and of so-called ethnicity (which the Britishstate measures with such solicitude), the different backgrounds, experiences,thoughts and concepts that brought people into the movement, and did sodifferently. We mapped out the different collectives and campaigns. Who wasat the centre (student activists, unions and networks...), who was at the margins(teenagers, unemployed graduates...), and who was perhaps afraid to befound there (migrants, minors). And we posed the question that is always socentral: what angers and desires are in the movement beyond the immediateunifying agendas, the official slogan, such as opposing the restructuring ofthe university system and the raising of the fees, and how can we deepen andbroaden the struggle without simply proposing new official lines?On 12th March 2011, we ran a workshop on ‘How to engage at the marginsof a demo: games, formats, tools. A workshop using SOMA, Theatre ofthe Oppressed and other methodologies to explore, understand and activatethe margins of our protests.’ As part of a big convergence at the London StudentUnion, we practiced ways of connecting and moving, getting to knownew people with a similar desire to inhabit otherwise the often rigid and boringspaces of demonstrations.Later, with our experiences from the student movement in mind, andbased on our debriefing sessions after other mobilisations, we felt the needto make some of our ludic, theatrical and choreographic tools available. Wemade a collaborative treasure hunt map for a big upcoming mobilisation onthe 26th of March: ‘a map of some treasures we may find as we protest: games,flirts, dances, toilets...’. This was developed in a workshop and incorporatedinformation on basic infrastructures as well as meeting points at the march.Our session for the day after March 26th had to be cancelled due to absolutedispersion, exhaustion and many arrests: ‘Our protest: resonances, impressions,processes. A workshop to tell of experiences, reflect and imagine,using our resonant bodies in various ways’. Not the first time that we didn’tfind the time to debrief, discuss and process, or didn’t manage to meet inpreparation of things to come: time runs, politics runs, we run after it, or weget carried along by it. With spring came political burnout for many. Nanopoliticsduring this period was a constant space for us to process experiencesfrom the movement and to share intimate and playful moments to distract usfrom the violence of it all for a bit. A nice warm space indeed, to pause and153