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Tender is the blur. Tender is the hum. Tender is the gateway. To witness the above and below lifeworlds of Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika and Zoë Guthrie's practice is to understand their artistic practice as inseparable from a spiritual practice, which is inseparable from a method of curiosity; supported by wonderment, the erotics of animation and the conviction to amplify the chorus of the forever Black life. Tender, as method, becomes the root, bassline and threshold through which to thread the textures of discernment, presence and attunement; to the way Tumika's practice prefigures the litany for survival, mobilising one's whole being toward the foretelling of otherwise.
With its variants of tain and tin, the Latin root word ten assumes many meanings > to hold, keep or possess < and also of tendere, which is > to stretch. To tender, or to inhabit tenderness, suggests an attunement with the embodied registers of what is felt. There is an erotic precision and cellular depth to listening to, with, alongside the sometimes subtle signals and appearances of desire, memory and pain. To keep, hold, possess or amplify a moment; to stretch time and organic material in response to what can be an aching call; is the daily act of preserving a life. Isolated readings of tender can reduce its quality to fragility or capitulation, excising the steely conviction required to breathe deeply into a point of strain, to decide to inhabit the pits of discomfort, to allow the smile that teases your cheeks to form, or to sway with the pleasure of doing something for yourself just because. In conversation, Tumika articulates the dream toward which aweys gaun reaches:
Like, for me, the sickest thing would absolutely be is, like, anybody — anybody [that’s] seein the show — and then, at some point after, just doing something because that's actually what they wanted to do. Or to try it out, or to follow a curiosity. Simple as, like, how you've just decided to arrange something. You put down your stuff to eat and you decided that you're going to have the napkin, you're going to fold it because it looks nice, it feels nice — that type of thing. I guess as [it] comes up a lot around conversation, is that thing around the agency and — that's why acknowledging that you have it. And the responsibilities that might come with that.