Sam writes: Once, quite some time ago now, I offhandedly mentioned an interest in watching birds to Ted. I didn't mention any expertise in ornithology, or even a passing habit of amateur birding. Regardless, Ted took this as an invitation to consider me a fellow watcher. Someone who was considerately looking at birds in the world. As with so many of my interactions with Ted over the years, this presumption was heavy with working social metaphor. Interest, for Ted, was invitation. A door towards possible other ways of understanding what it means to be here and to be here together. Our shared interests in the publics around punk music and all its tributaries, utopian visions and the systems and subtleties they helped manifest, and the lives of birds all coalesced into a simple edict: we should be looking, and responding with consideration and, importantly, joy and enthusiasm.

 

For the perceptive, there are many clues to Ted and his interests in the drawing on this shirt. Some are obvious. But, tactically, I hope they are not that obvious. Abstraction is a gift. It allows us space to see better. I feel confident Ted would agree, or at the very least we would have a good and long conversation about it as he missed one meeting and became late for the next. Since Ted's passing I comfort myself in thinking that he is, as always, being difficult to get ahold of, and that I will, of course, see him at some point. How could I not?

 

Sam Gould's most current platform, Beyond Repair, functions as a site of questioning within the 9th Ward of Minneapolis. Beyond Repair is a publication of Tools in Common, the expanded publishing house of which Gould is the founder and editor.. Gould was also the co-founder and editor of Red76, an expanded publication that materialized in Portland, Oregon, in the early 2000s. Instrumentalizing ideas around publication as an act of public making, Gould's work manifests publics through the implementation of ad-hoc educational structures and discursive gatherings. While these actions are often situated in what is called “public space,”—such as street corners, laundromats, taverns, and the like—the pedagogy of their construction is meant to call into question the relationships, codes, and hierarchies embedded within these landscapes from one incident of publication to the next. Gould has taught social practice at many schools, including with Ted at California College of the Arts. He has written and lectured extensively within the United States and abroad, on issues of sociality, education, and encountering the political within daily life. http://thisisbeyondrepair.com/