nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

exerciseMapping your care network –exercise for one or severalpeopleThis is a mapping exercise to visualise some of the caring relations that holdyou together with the people close to you. It can be nice to do this in a groupand find a way to talk about it together, but it’s also interesting to do it alone. Inany case, establish a respectful space and give yourself time (an hour or so).1. Take a big piece of paper and write down 8-10 ways of relating that youthink define care (as a group or alone, depending on if you’re one or many).Care is very multidimensional and consists of many kinds of interactionswhich often overlap (this is also why care work is said to be a matter of multitasking!),so take time to discuss this also. You may want to consider manykinds of relations, for instance mutual dependency, conviviality, cohabitation,friendship, intimacy, love/eroticism, bodily care, learning together, sharing resources,lending each other money, collaborating...Find your 8-10 categories and assign each of these kinds of relations acolour: this will be the ‘key’ of your map.2. Now each get yourself a big piece of paper (ideally A3) and make surethere is a pen for all the different coloured categoies available to everyone.Write the names of people that are close to you all over the map, includingyour own name somewhere near the middle (you can encode names, if youwant them to remain secret).3. Now, for each participant on their own piece of paper, it’s about tracingconnections between you and your friends and family: choose the appropriatecolours. If you live with someone, for example, draw ‘cohabitation’ line betweenyou and them; draw the same between other people on your map who live196