8th July 2014 – A Month After the Burglary

Dear Supporters,

You are one of the 39 people we have bought adragon plant for. £1 each in IKEA. It might notseem like much, but for us, these plants are thebusiness.

Back in 2004, when we lived in Livingston Court near Sefton Park in L17, we bought a dragon plant, in IKEA. This was around the time we got our frst Apple computer, from Lena's frst ACE grant. Our dragon plant has grown over the years, it's huge now – touched the ceiling, sustained by a few drops of water, little bit of extra soil, replanting into a larger pot and, most importantly, lots of neglect. Our Apple computers kept breaking, or becoming too slow, or being stolen! It seems that dragon plants last signifcantly longer than computers. Our dragon plant, which Gary, for years, mistakenly, called a Yucca Yucca plant, is, next to the humans that live with it, the most resilient thing we, the Institute, has. It just won't stop. We've been away for months at a time, or have forgot to water it, or have knocked it over, spilt its soil, left it in the corner abandoned; kids have swung on it, put coins, buried plastic toys in its soil. Nothing has managed to stop it. Nothing. We want you to have that too. Something unstoppable. If that is from IKEA, well, then, what's to be done?

Your kind donations have enabled us to purchase a new iMac – one of those new, cheaper ones with a dodgy processor (our teenage son is annoyed by, we never even knew). We are thrilled. We need a computer for sorting out fles, word processing, artist talks presentations, web surfng, blogging, and some video editing... We believe we will be fne without a state of the art speedy processor. However, we also believe that these dragon plants will outlive the iMac.

Over the past month, we have had lots of conversations about this project. Was it too easily conceived? Was it cheeky? Has it got integrity or is it only an impulsive, petulant outcry? Did we feel a little bit too sorry for ourselves? Should we have known better not to follow the crowd funding trends and ask for money from our friends and colleagues? Are we too privileged for donations? Are we too privileged for art commissions, or ACE funding? Should we not leave all art funding applications to artists who need it, to those, unlike us, who are employed by universities? Is the temporary situation of Lena being on maternity leave a good enough excuse? Do we have a right to complain about our domestic sorrows? Who is really poor here? Us? People who donated? People who didn't donate? People who didn't answer? The burglar? Who is the Institute's community? What truly happened here? What have we lost in addition to laptops, iPad, stolen memories of photos and diary, a special anniversary gift? What does Home mean to us? What does the Institute mean to us in this new Home?

The Institute has felt a little bit activated over this past month. We thank our burglar there and the chain of events that left us activated. We felt good enough to have sent out an email asking to start a new reading group kicking off with Iris Marion Young's essay 'Home and House: Feminist Variations on a Theme'; we have committed ourselves to reading War and Peace; we have created a new energy in the space through plants and technology. We are organizing folders, we are rearranging the archive, we are rethinking who we are, with no laptops, with no extensions of ourselves.... It's scary and at times, full of insomnia. Baby James doesn't help! Shhhhhh. Enough.

Come and pay us a visit. Pick up your dragon plant. Until then, we'll grow it for you, we'll nurture it into the ways of unstoppability. Let's see whether it lasts longer than our iMac.

Love

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home