Impossible Projects was formed in 2016 out of a desire for interdisciplinary discussions about the ethical and political challenges of working on issues related to violence, inequality and social justice. The name “Impossible Projects” reflects recognition that any efforts to redress marginalization or injustice through academic, artistic, and activist work may inevitably be limited and incomplete. And yet these projects are undertaken nonetheless, suggesting something “possible” at the heart of the impossible.
The April 2025 symposium of the Impossible Projects Working Group centers on creative experimentation and embodied knowledge as strategies for care and foundations for resistance and possibility. We aim to create space to rest and think together, to embark on open-ended experiments and interactions that prioritize process above outcomes. We strive to explore the potential of relational and creative ways of thinking and doing. In thinking about care, we are drawing on feminist theory, Black Lives Matter and anti-racist activism, while at the same time thinking about the inequities around caregiving that have become ever more visible since 2020. Care can mean many things, including care for others, care for oneself, care for our work, care for the stories we hear, tell, shape, analyze, and support. At the heart of care is the recognition that we are bound to one another. We invite participants to explore the uses and limits of these modes of engagement as sites of possibility and resistance in a world of continued crisis.
We hope to explore the following questions, among others:
- When and how can we embrace open-endedness and uncertainty as strategies for making change?
- How can we acknowledge and value embodied knowledge?
- How can we explore relational, playful, process-oriented approaches in our institutions and our work?
- How can we find spaces for play when circumstances are difficult, painful, or overwhelming?
- What counts as work, and how can we challenge transactional and disciplinary structures that devalue relational forms of work?
- How might care, play and embodied knowledge function as resistance?
- How do we create an ethics of care in our pedagogy and practice in a moment of mass burnout, grief and multifaceted crises?
- How can we critique ways in which care is coopted or corporatized and workplace demands for caregiving that exploit workers and reproduce neoliberal hierarchies?
For this April 2025 symposium, we encourage people to contribute as creatively or traditionally as they would like. From formal papers to art workshops to open discussions to contemplative urban walks, we hope to host wide-ranging explorations of creative experimentation as a strategy for care and resistance. Our intention is to create space both for critical reflection and for collaborative creative interventions. Contributions can include, but are not limited to, presenting a project you’re working on and the ways it engages with some of the above questions; sharing pedagogical practices and challenges; reflecting on the roles of institutions in social and resistance movements; and offering self-reflexive contemplations that connect personal, political, and professional lives. We strongly encourage participants to engage with the conference as fully as possible, recognizing that for some this engagement may be necessarily limited by time and distance.