My work develops Relational Fieldwork as a practice and training methodology for studying how participation organizes power inside groups, institutions, and collaborative systems.

where this work began

My work began as a question about change. Not ideological change or personal transformation but something more uncomfortable:

Why do dominant relational fields come to feel like reality, even when people sense something is wrong?

Over time, it became clear that most attempts at change fail because they intervene too late. By the time disagreement or critique becomes possible, participation has already been trained. Bodies have adjusted; responsibility has landed unevenly. Some actions feel possible, others unthinkable.

I began working at that earlier layer, underneath explanation, where relational habits are shaped through timing, attention, proximity, and pressure.

how the work took shape

Deep Puppetry™ emerged from this inquiry as a material training practice. Working with simple materials revealed dynamics that were difficult to access through conversation alone: how quickly care becomes control, how urgency enters our hands, and how responsibility concentrates without consent.

The puppet is not a metaphor. It is a site of relational consequence.

Over time, I began observing these same participation patterns reproduce themselves across group, educational, artistic, and organizational environments, including spaces with strong ethical commitments and explicit equity frameworks.

This recognition expanded the work beyond object practice into what is now Relational Fieldwork: a broader methodology for studying participation as a structuring force inside relational systems.

How the work evolved

As the practice developed, I began designing training environments that place participants inside relational conditions where participation patterns become perceptible through experience rather than interpretation.

The work now includes material relational practice, interpersonal field laboratories, and facilitation training focused on ethical participation and intervention timing.

What I’ve learned to refuse

I no longer work primarily at the level of explanation, alignment, or resolution as strategies for change. When those arrive too quickly, they often stabilize the very dynamics people intend to interrupt.

This has required giving up certain comforts: being liked, being clear, being seen as helpful. It has also required staying present when things do not resolve, including my own impulse to smooth, rescue, or move on.

I am not outside the systems this work addresses. I am implicated in them. The practice continues to reorganize how I participate as a facilitator, practitioner, and teacher.

Why this work is political

This work is political not because it advocates positions but because it addresses how domination is reproduced through relational habit. Colonial modernity relies less on ideology than on trained reflexes (speed, efficiency, clarity, control) that live in bodies and groups long before they become arguments.

Relational Fieldwork stays with those reflexes long enough for them to become perceptible and interruptible.

If you’re interested in practicing another way of staying human inside powerful systems, you’re welcome here.

For those who want to trace the lineages and trainings that inform this work, you can read more here.