A Familiar Object

Though it can be used as an “icebreaker,” the aim of this is to create conditions for vulnerability, attentive listening, and embodied connection. Through sharing and witnessing stories, participants begin tracing threads of relation between one another, grounding collective work in intimacy, reciprocity, and situated experience.

The work of Max Liboiron teaches us that research is not simply something we do in the world, but a way of being with the world. This makes us shift our attention toward the question of how we come together. Yes… the “what for” is important too, but while research and community projects often prioritize outcomes, production, and dissemination, the School insists that the process of gathering, the relations we build, and the conditions we create for one another are equally important.

La Escuela de las Chullachaquis is concerned with unsettling extractive story-worlding. This means crafting alternative stories but also nurturing relational conditions through which stories can flourish differently. The school seeks forms of thinking-feeling-doing that overflow the confinement of sight and text into embodied, emplaced, and affective relations. In this sense, the how of gathering becomes an ethical and political question.

A Familiar Object is a proposition to deepen community processes. The activity is not intended as a quick introductory exercise, but as a practice of encounter that opens space for intimacy, vulnerability, and reciprocity. Participants bring an object that feels familiar to them — something connected to what is well-known, cared for, or held in close relation. “Family” remains intentionally open: it may refer to biological family, chosen family, ancestral relations, or more-than-human kinship.

Through storytelling and active listening, participants are invited not only to hear one another’s stories, but also to listen to their own bodily responses while witnessing another person’s memory, attachment, or experience. As stories unfold, objects often become transformed. The ordinary acquires emotional, territorial, and relational depth that can start connecting us with each other.

The activity encourages participants to recognize how stories are carried materially through everyday objects, and how relationality can arise through careful attention, listening, and care.