Sights & Sounds: Rachel Chak

Common Discourse is a project designed to help others (and ourselves) think through creativity, focus, and intentional work—from Alex Tan & Alice Otieno.

Every Tuesday we share words from a few ideas, a quote from somebody else, and links worth sharing. On Fridays we invite a guest to share images from their camera roll and a sound that resonates with them. Words from the journal will come at least twice a month.

Rachel Chak is a designer and researcher currently living in London. Her practice is rooted in topics surrounding slow living, collaboration, indigenous knowledge and communal world building.

She currently runs Malaya.world, which is an on-going project that features open-source research for reimagining new systems where humans, technology and nature can co-exist harmoniously.

Alex and I have been mutuals with Rachel for a while and are always inspired by her thoughtfulness and care when it comes to collecting and assembling research.

Here’s what she sent us this week!

— Alice

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Sights —

realizing this exercise came at the right time ~ there’s been so much movement in my life (internally and externally), but recently stepped into a more stable place and it’s felt like the perfect time to retrace and reflect. now seeing that a lot of the big jumps i made the past couple of years were worth it. so thank you <3

— Rachel

really drawn to spiral symbols, and found this while browsing a book about graffiti in a bookstore. it gave me language to something i was experiencing internally.

found a similar spiral symbol about a month later while on a walk in ny ~

one of my favorite thai artists, gongkan. stumbled across his exhibition while on a walk in la, and it felt like a sign during a time i was torn on whether to move back to philippines indefinitely.

re-experiencing manila as an adult — probably the most chaotic year of my life, but also the year that rooted me to what matters to me most.

reminder to self: pay attention to the patterns, signs, and presences that show up in your life. the external world also follows a natural rhythm, and all is revealed with time.

Sounds —

a scene from a favorite movie (After Yang). been returning to this scene mentally quite a lot recently.

(should probably give a spoiler alert ehe)

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Thanks for consuming!

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