The Tale and the Tongue: You Never Know What You Are Creating Space For

You Never Know What You Are Creating Space For—episode 14 of the Tale and the Tongue series—arises from a conversation with Teesa Bahana, the director of 32° East, an independent non-profit organisation focused on supporting, creating, and exploring contemporary art in Uganda, and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of the Tale and the Tongue podcast series. Music would appear at the beginning of their conversation, sharing together impressions of music’s sensory ability to touch our emotions by bodily listening. The sensory dimension is something that music shares with artistic practices. However, there is a tendency to privilege its conceptual dimension, to locate art in the mind and not in the entire body. Being inspired by talking to other people is a kind of gift we receive, often without looking for it. In friendly conversations, ideas often come up that help us to shape or follow directions. They are part of a network that includes serendipities, spontaneity, and the pleasure in encountering each other. To borrow Teesa Bahana’s words, the possibility of creating a community involves a common language and knowing how to relate to each other across differences. Another common term in the art context is “professional.” It refers to a way of doing or not doing, but it is also an ideological subject with different, sometimes contradictory, perspectives. As Teesa Bahana points out, the critique of the term must take into account who is professional by default and who is not, who can ignore prescribed conventions and who cannot. The title of this podcast, You Never Know What You Are Creating Space For, is inspired by a comment from Teesa Bahana during the conversation that brings up unintentional yet essential situations when working: making space for the unexpected and paying attention to things that happen and we can sense without planning them.