Let’s Find Our Kinfolk this Summer
Director and photographer Andrew Gallo is a part of the Portland-based artist collective known as Kinfolk. The Kinfolk manifesto is all about growing a community of artists around a shared interest in small gatherings. They realize that there is something intimately engaging about frequent gatherings around a table.
Many of us commune with family and friends once, twice or thrice per year to celebrate weddings, holidays or funerals. Only under the pretext of these special events do we reconnect and re-energize with the people we respect and care for. Kinfolk challenges us to be different and reflect on our human history.
Do you remember when humans ONLY knew and relied upon the close community around them? I do not, but we could if we suspended our email, text messages, social networks, satellite TVs and other contrived inter-connectivity, for a few brief moments. We could return to communication around a table.
It was in these face-to-face interactions that rich humanity was and is unveiled. Beowulf’s Comitatus, Arthur’s Round Table, Jesus’ Last Supper, Thanksgiving… We see these prominent depictions of unity around a table, in history and literature.
Give yourself a gift these summer evenings. Call your friends, family and significant others, make food together, drink wine and for just one hour per night, throw your smartphones, iPads, and laptops in a dark closet and shut the door, and share yourself with others.
I look forward to the next San Francisco gathering of Kinfolk. I can’t wait to meet new, exciting, loving, creative people that want to meet me too. Perhaps then, we can start going on adventures together, like Andrew Gallo does.
Andrew Gallo’s Adventure in Iceland
@TheShmo
