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BY CASSIE THORNTON
The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced by people from beds and couches around the world. It is a practice that anyone can use. Anyone? Who counts as anyone? Who else would like to use it? Is this a tool that can be used by people other than humans? By people who are more than humans, like cats or olive trees or your coffee table? In the hologram community we often say that you should experience the hologram protocol before you try to adapt it. So below you will find a manual for how to do the hologram among other humans first. After you try it, we think you can adapt it to use it with ANY one person, no matter what type of being they are.
First, how it works for humans:
The goal of the project is to produce stability for the people who use it. This protocol, when done regularly with focus, produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for, and supporting while being supported, in the long term, from people you know. When you practice it, you are part of building a network of solidarity and trust, outside of profit-driven or otherwise broken institutions. It is not mysterious, nor is it magic. This stability comes from being supported and knowing your friends are supported but not feeling that all that support is your personal responsibility or is coming from a place fuelled by capital and exploitation. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers can and will survive the very scary ends of capitalism together with their communities, and these communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us.
The Hologram comes from the work produced at the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is one of about sixty clinics that opened in Greece during their financial crisis (approximately 2008-2015) and a migrant crisis. At the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, where they were already offering free care, they were also interested in offering care that was better than you would get when you normally went to a traditional doctor, where and when the patient had very little power or agency. Specifically, some members of the clinic team were trying to experiment with how to produce care without the hierarchy that exists between caregivers and care receivers.
When a person came into the clinic, they were no longer referred to as a patient. Instead, they were called an incomer. This change in vocabulary tried to minimize the difference in power between, say, the doctor and the person receiving care. The person receiving care is simply coming in from outside, and that's the only difference.
In the Integrative Model, which was the clinic's particular experiment that most influenced The Hologram protocol, the incomer would be seen by a social worker, a therapist, and a general practitioner. All three of these people would ask the incomer questions. The doctor would ask about the body and provide a physical checkup. The social worker might ask about the incomer's financial situation, their work conditions, and their housing. The therapist might ask about the incomer's feelings, their dreams, and their ideas. Each of these care providers could see the questions and answers of the others.
Frosso Moureli, one person who helped develop the Integrative Model, told us that when she was acting as a therapist alongside a social worker and a doctor, she began to see the incomers as holograms–instead of flat pieces of paper–because she could see all their dimensions. That's where we get our unconventional title for this mutual aid project.
The Hologram is a different version of the integrative model, done among friends, without experts. We discovered this mutation many years ago in the US, when a few different groups attempted to repurpose the Integrative Model within the cut- throat conditions of the US. This meant that we needed to translate their project without money, without experts or expertise, and without physical space. What was developed is The Hologram protocol as described below.
In The Hologram, we refer to the person called the incomer in the Integrative Model in the Social Solidarity Clinic as the hologram. This person invites three people who they know to meet with them regularly and ask them questions. One person asks them questions about their mental and emotional health, including feelings and moods, ideas and anxieties, dreams and beliefs. Another friend asks them questions about their social health, including their roommates and family, their relationships, their work, their finances, their relationship to hierarchies, conflicts, and larger social systems. A third friend asks them questions about their physical health, including their body, food, medicine, their home, the planet. These three people meet with the hologram in one group, and all three ask questions in a structured ritual described below that takes between 90 minutes and two hours. It can happen in person or online.
The hologram is an expert about their own care. Nobody knows how it feels to be them. No one knows what helps or hurts but them, what they've lived through, or what makes them healthy or sick. We also see the hologram as a teacher. Asking for help, being vulnerable, and articulating needs is very unsexy in any of our societies. The hologram shows the other people around them that it's possible and beneficial to clearly ask for the support you need.
The people who ask questions are called triangle members. The triangle members' main job is to be openly curious, and to ask the types of questions that help the hologram speak about their pursuit of life. In this way, triangle members are not experts, and they never have to give advice. We think this should feel like a great relief. We know it's hard to resist the temptation to advise or present opinions within our questions. But the triangle members, over time, learn how to use their curiosity and question asking to provide empowering and supportive care to their hologram.
We also see triangle members as critical feelers. We take this idea from disability justice. In The Hologram protocol, triangle members are not trying to fix any problems. We don't see anyone as a sinking boat whose holes we need to fill or fix. We see each person as someone with wishes who we want to support with curiosity and focused attention. The job of being a critical feeler includes showing curiosity as you try to find out how the hologram feels and why, and to be with them in that without trying to change or fix them.
The triangle members also take notes. When you take notes throughout a session, you sometimes see a linguistic, conceptual, or behavioural pattern that recurs throughout a meeting. If you meet regularly over time, then you can see how certain words or ideas might reappear consistently in someone's life over time. These patterns are really important parts of the process of becoming someone's Living Medical Record.
In the larger project, all caretakers are cared for. The hologram's job is not to give back what they receive from their triangle members, but to ask each of them what kind of support they would like from others, and to help them get it. The hologram might then help one of their triangle members to invite three different people to support them. In this way, the practice spreads, and the hologram may sleep better knowing their friends are cared for, even if they (the hologram) cannot do it for all of them directly.
The hologram who receives support from the three triangle members also makes someone else a hologram. They do this by becoming a triangle member for someone else (outside of their triangle), along with two other people. This project is based on the idea that supporting somebody else's well-being is a top secret, highly effective medicine that anyone can do well.
About this guide (for people)
This guide is for people who want to become holograms and lead sessions where they receive support, based on the model put forth by The Hologram project. This guide will help you choose the people to be part of your triangle, and help you set up the group practice. We see this practice as something that comes from an oral tradition, so the best way to learn is from someone else. You can also start out by doing an online workshop, or talking to someone who is already in a Hologram about their experience (email cooperativespecies@gmail.com).
You can adapt the basic principles in this guide to suit your particular group. This guide is geared towards video conference meetings and in-person use.
MEETING BASICS
You should set aside around two hours for each meeting. In the following pages, there’s a sample agenda to help you plan for the flow, with detailed descriptions of each item. This can be done online or in person.
PART ONE
45 min
Tech checks
Introductions
Explain the Hologram Practice
Go over the agenda
Decide how to record
Experiment with pronouns
Define and determine roles
PART TWO
60 min
Stuck dance
Mark the task
Asking questions
PART THREE
35 min
Reflections
Feedback
Closing/check-ins
Follow-up
PART ONE
Tech Checks
5 min
If you are doing this by video conference or phone, make sure everyone’s technology is working. You’ll need to be able to see each participant’s whole body for later stages, so make sure each person’s camera is set up for that.
Introductions
15 min
Triangle participants may not know each other, so do a round of introductions. You can start with the basics—names, locations, pronouns, and “How are they?” You can also include an ice breaker question, “What’s the weather like (internal or external) where you are?”
Explain the Hologram Practice
10 min
In your own words, explain the history of The Hologram, how the process works, and why we are doing it.
Go over the agenda
3 min
You may go over the steps we describe below. It is not completely necessary, but it can be nice for people to know generally what is coming.
Decide how to record
3 min
Notes are a tool for the future, to remember the past. Decide as a group if someone will take notes or make drawings, or if you’ll make an audio or video recording. We recommend that each member take notes on what were the most important moments, statements, or questions for them—these will be helpful in the Reflections segment. Well-organized notes are really useful. Decide what you will do with the notes: Will they be shared with the group or kept private, will someone keep them all, under what circumstances could they be shared outside the group (or not at all)?
Experiment with pronouns
3 min
In Hologram events and workshops, we often use the pronoun “we” when we would usually say “I.” First, it causes everyone to slow down when they speak. The more we practice it, the more we observe that saying “we” instead of “I” creates a sense of solidarity in the group -- we aren’t talking about “your” health, but “our” health -- because we know that our health and liberation is bound up in one another’s! Try it and see how it affects your group dynamic.
Define and determine roles
3 min
Explain the role of the hologram and the role of the triangle members. In a triangle, one person generally asks questions about the hologram’s physical health, one about social health, and one about mental/emotional health. Decide as a group who will ask what questions. Sometimes it’s easiest for the hologram to determine the roles ahead of time, with the option for people to change their roles once things get going.
PART TWO
Stuck dance
10 min
The hologram and the triangles all participate in this, with the hologram going last. One at a time, each person positions themselves so they can be seen by the others. They imagine a situation in their life where they feel stuck. They then make a “sculpture” of that feeling with their body and hold it for five seconds. After they come back to the camera, each of the others makes a one or two sentence comment describing what they observed, without any analysis. For example, “I noticed that the sculpture was very soft on the top and very tense on the bottom.”
You can also adapt the stuck dance to meet abilities and comfort levels of your group–some people do the stuck dance with only their hand, or with sound. We are always looking for new ideas that promote intimacy, connection, and humour.
Mark the task
5 min
The hologram states what they want out of the meeting, including what type of feeling they want to produce for themselves and the group, and what situation they want to talk about. Try to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Meetings can be upbeat, fun, focused, and they can provide energy and positivity if you decide to use them that way. If you want to dive deep, or dig up something heavy, be up-front about it with your triangle team so they can prepare.
Asking questions
45 min
This is the longest segment of the meeting. The triangle members start by asking questions about what the hologram mentioned when they marked the task, or what came up in their stuck dance. This can be awkward at first—that’s okay! You can also ask basic questions to get started, because it’s hard to know what the right catalyst for conversation will be. The triangle members don’t need to rotate neatly; follow up questions are welcome. And over time, it becomes normal for the triangle members to ask questions outside of their assigned listening ‘areas’ (social, physical, mental/emotional), as long as it doesn't feel like some part of the hologram is being forgotten. (It can be so easy to narrow down a focus to one problem, like money, and forget about the body, for instance.) It’s good to ask follow-up questions, and it’s okay if the questions don’t lead to a clear conversation, or if there are no apparent solutions. Questioning simply helps participants explore the hologram's experience without having a goal of changing or fixing anything; it develops question asking skills and helps people learn more about each other.
PART THREE
Reflections
10 min
Start this segment if it feels like enough questions have been asked, or if there’s a natural pause in conversation, or if you’ve run out of time. Each member of the triangle (and the hologram as well) describes what they felt were the most important moments in the conversation. What gave you goosebumps? What felt familiar? What wouldn’t you want to forget? This is a chance to feel solidarity with the hologram, as the triangle reveals that some of the feelings and experiences described in the session are things they find familiar. It can be such a relief to feel like you are not alone!
Feedback
15 min
Take five minutes to write down some feedback for the hologram (the hologram can give themselves feedback too). Feedback is not advice. Instead, it is based on the observations that happened within the session. The feedback can include:
1. Patterns: Mention if you noticed a pattern in the language or behaviour of the hologram. Just describing the pattern is enough. No analysis necessary.
2.Wishes: Make a wish for the hologram based on what you learned. What do you hope for them? Detailed wishes are the best.
3.Provocation: Give the hologram a prompt: “what if you were to...”
Closing/Check-ins
10 min
You can create a closing ritual to make sure there is clarity, closure, and peace in the group. This could be a breathing, movement, or listening exercise. One person has invented an UNstuck dance that usually involves everyone dancing and shaking together. Afterwards, discuss how everyone is feeling after the session. What are they going to do after the call or gathering? Do we want to do this again? This may be a time to decide on next steps.
Follow-up
Decide who will write a follow-up email. This could include a summary of the meeting, an invitation to plan the next one, a list of questions to think about before then, or the start of a conversation about how the group would like to move forward.
Next, if you are a human but you want to make a hologram for a plant, animal, coffee table or other non-human person:
The Hologram is a technology made by humans, for humans who are living in late-stage capitalism on a planet that is being burned by the human addiction to capitalism. Out of desperation, regret, and boredom with the ways of most humans, many humans have begun to expand their sense of who their comrades are on the planet. I get it, humans are pretty difficult, and so it feels urgent to escape the utter loneliness of being friends and family with only other humans. In that spirit of angsty exploration and curiosity we've experimented with what it means to do Holograms with more-than-humans. When I say more than humans, I mean olive trees, glaciers and cats.
A few years ago, I was in Puglia, where a type of bacteria had spread and killed hundreds or 1000s of very old olive trees. The olive trees looked like ancient members of my family, and I spent as much time as possible walking and talking with them. I asked three of my friends who are humans, to try to do a Hologram with one of the trees, the tree that caught my eye the most.
Instead of having one human asking social questions, one human asking physical questions and one person asking mental and emotional questions, we divided our roles into the following:
One person sensed the tree through touch.
One person paid attention to the sounds around and in the tree.
One person tried to look at as much of the tree as possible.
And I watched the humans and the tree interacting.
Instead of asking questions with words, we aimed to sense things about the tree, and we did that while simultaneously moving around the tree together and then separate for about 15 minutes. After that, we sat around the tree and we reflected back to the tree what we felt, using words in the English language, thoughts, or non-verbal bodily noises and movements. We gave the feedback by sharing our bodies somewhere in and around the tree's vicinity, trying to interact with the tree in a way that might be a gift to the tree. Someone peed on the very dry ground, someone hugged the tree, and I don't remember what the last person did.
My experience doing a Hologram for an olive tree was that, as humans, we're pretty self-centered. I don't think we could really make contact with the tree on the tree's terms. And I don't think we can really do The Hologram for a tree that didn't ask us to do it, because the most basic premise of the protocol is that the one who's receiving the attention and care has requested it. This seemed like a process that was more for the humans who are offering the attention and desiring a connection, than for the tree itself. It wasn't unmagical, but I don't know if the tree experienced the magic.
Now that I'm saying this, I feel a little bit cynical. If I granted the tree more power in my imagination, I could also tell a story that the tree invited us there that day. What if, when I was walking by that tree, they had been convincing me to give them attention? I could have an even wilder premise and believe that the tree had ordered me to spend much of my life organizing The Hologram so that humans would stop being so pent up and self-centred, and finally pay attention to the trees, especially this one. I have no idea if this Hologram worked, but if I was to do this again, I would probably do it the same way.
Original Hologram text is from a forthcoming book called DO IT ANYWAY published by Thick Press.
The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced by people from beds and couches around the world. It is a practice that anyone can use. Anyone? Who counts as anyone? Who else would like to use it? Is this a tool that can be used by people other than humans? By people who are more than humans, like cats or olive trees or your coffee table? In the hologram community we often say that you should experience the hologram protocol before you try to adapt it. So below you will find a manual for how to do the hologram among other humans first. After you try it, we think you can adapt it to use it with ANY one person, no matter what type of being they are.
First, how it works for humans:
The goal of the project is to produce stability for the people who use it. This protocol, when done regularly with focus, produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for, and supporting while being supported, in the long term, from people you know. When you practice it, you are part of building a network of solidarity and trust, outside of profit-driven or otherwise broken institutions. It is not mysterious, nor is it magic. This stability comes from being supported and knowing your friends are supported but not feeling that all that support is your personal responsibility or is coming from a place fuelled by capital and exploitation. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers can and will survive the very scary ends of capitalism together with their communities, and these communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us.
The Hologram comes from the work produced at the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is one of about sixty clinics that opened in Greece during their financial crisis (approximately 2008-2015) and a migrant crisis. At the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, where they were already offering free care, they were also interested in offering care that was better than you would get when you normally went to a traditional doctor, where and when the patient had very little power or agency. Specifically, some members of the clinic team were trying to experiment with how to produce care without the hierarchy that exists between caregivers and care receivers.
When a person came into the clinic, they were no longer referred to as a patient. Instead, they were called an incomer. This change in vocabulary tried to minimize the difference in power between, say, the doctor and the person receiving care. The person receiving care is simply coming in from outside, and that's the only difference.
In the Integrative Model, which was the clinic's particular experiment that most influenced The Hologram protocol, the incomer would be seen by a social worker, a therapist, and a general practitioner. All three of these people would ask the incomer questions. The doctor would ask about the body and provide a physical checkup. The social worker might ask about the incomer's financial situation, their work conditions, and their housing. The therapist might ask about the incomer's feelings, their dreams, and their ideas. Each of these care providers could see the questions and answers of the others.
Frosso Moureli, one person who helped develop the Integrative Model, told us that when she was acting as a therapist alongside a social worker and a doctor, she began to see the incomers as holograms–instead of flat pieces of paper–because she could see all their dimensions. That's where we get our unconventional title for this mutual aid project.
The Hologram is a different version of the integrative model, done among friends, without experts. We discovered this mutation many years ago in the US, when a few different groups attempted to repurpose the Integrative Model within the cut- throat conditions of the US. This meant that we needed to translate their project without money, without experts or expertise, and without physical space. What was developed is The Hologram protocol as described below.
In The Hologram, we refer to the person called the incomer in the Integrative Model in the Social Solidarity Clinic as the hologram. This person invites three people who they know to meet with them regularly and ask them questions. One person asks them questions about their mental and emotional health, including feelings and moods, ideas and anxieties, dreams and beliefs. Another friend asks them questions about their social health, including their roommates and family, their relationships, their work, their finances, their relationship to hierarchies, conflicts, and larger social systems. A third friend asks them questions about their physical health, including their body, food, medicine, their home, the planet. These three people meet with the hologram in one group, and all three ask questions in a structured ritual described below that takes between 90 minutes and two hours. It can happen in person or online.
The hologram is an expert about their own care. Nobody knows how it feels to be them. No one knows what helps or hurts but them, what they've lived through, or what makes them healthy or sick. We also see the hologram as a teacher. Asking for help, being vulnerable, and articulating needs is very unsexy in any of our societies. The hologram shows the other people around them that it's possible and beneficial to clearly ask for the support you need.
The people who ask questions are called triangle members. The triangle members' main job is to be openly curious, and to ask the types of questions that help the hologram speak about their pursuit of life. In this way, triangle members are not experts, and they never have to give advice. We think this should feel like a great relief. We know it's hard to resist the temptation to advise or present opinions within our questions. But the triangle members, over time, learn how to use their curiosity and question asking to provide empowering and supportive care to their hologram.
We also see triangle members as critical feelers. We take this idea from disability justice. In The Hologram protocol, triangle members are not trying to fix any problems. We don't see anyone as a sinking boat whose holes we need to fill or fix. We see each person as someone with wishes who we want to support with curiosity and focused attention. The job of being a critical feeler includes showing curiosity as you try to find out how the hologram feels and why, and to be with them in that without trying to change or fix them.
The triangle members also take notes. When you take notes throughout a session, you sometimes see a linguistic, conceptual, or behavioural pattern that recurs throughout a meeting. If you meet regularly over time, then you can see how certain words or ideas might reappear consistently in someone's life over time. These patterns are really important parts of the process of becoming someone's Living Medical Record.
In the larger project, all caretakers are cared for. The hologram's job is not to give back what they receive from their triangle members, but to ask each of them what kind of support they would like from others, and to help them get it. The hologram might then help one of their triangle members to invite three different people to support them. In this way, the practice spreads, and the hologram may sleep better knowing their friends are cared for, even if they (the hologram) cannot do it for all of them directly.
The hologram who receives support from the three triangle members also makes someone else a hologram. They do this by becoming a triangle member for someone else (outside of their triangle), along with two other people. This project is based on the idea that supporting somebody else's well-being is a top secret, highly effective medicine that anyone can do well.
About this guide (for people)
This guide is for people who want to become holograms and lead sessions where they receive support, based on the model put forth by The Hologram project. This guide will help you choose the people to be part of your triangle, and help you set up the group practice. We see this practice as something that comes from an oral tradition, so the best way to learn is from someone else. You can also start out by doing an online workshop, or talking to someone who is already in a Hologram about their experience (email cooperativespecies@gmail.com).
You can adapt the basic principles in this guide to suit your particular group. This guide is geared towards video conference meetings and in-person use.
MEETING BASICS
You should set aside around two hours for each meeting. In the following pages, there’s a sample agenda to help you plan for the flow, with detailed descriptions of each item. This can be done online or in person.
PART ONE
45 min
Tech checks
Introductions
Explain the Hologram Practice
Go over the agenda
Decide how to record
Experiment with pronouns
Define and determine roles
PART TWO
60 min
Stuck dance
Mark the task
Asking questions
PART THREE
35 min
Reflections
Feedback
Closing/check-ins
Follow-up
PART ONE
Tech Checks
5 min
If you are doing this by video conference or phone, make sure everyone’s technology is working. You’ll need to be able to see each participant’s whole body for later stages, so make sure each person’s camera is set up for that.
Introductions
15 min
Triangle participants may not know each other, so do a round of introductions. You can start with the basics—names, locations, pronouns, and “How are they?” You can also include an ice breaker question, “What’s the weather like (internal or external) where you are?”
Explain the Hologram Practice
10 min
In your own words, explain the history of The Hologram, how the process works, and why we are doing it.
Go over the agenda
3 min
You may go over the steps we describe below. It is not completely necessary, but it can be nice for people to know generally what is coming.
Decide how to record
3 min
Notes are a tool for the future, to remember the past. Decide as a group if someone will take notes or make drawings, or if you’ll make an audio or video recording. We recommend that each member take notes on what were the most important moments, statements, or questions for them—these will be helpful in the Reflections segment. Well-organized notes are really useful. Decide what you will do with the notes: Will they be shared with the group or kept private, will someone keep them all, under what circumstances could they be shared outside the group (or not at all)?
Experiment with pronouns
3 min
In Hologram events and workshops, we often use the pronoun “we” when we would usually say “I.” First, it causes everyone to slow down when they speak. The more we practice it, the more we observe that saying “we” instead of “I” creates a sense of solidarity in the group -- we aren’t talking about “your” health, but “our” health -- because we know that our health and liberation is bound up in one another’s! Try it and see how it affects your group dynamic.
Define and determine roles
3 min
Explain the role of the hologram and the role of the triangle members. In a triangle, one person generally asks questions about the hologram’s physical health, one about social health, and one about mental/emotional health. Decide as a group who will ask what questions. Sometimes it’s easiest for the hologram to determine the roles ahead of time, with the option for people to change their roles once things get going.
PART TWO
Stuck dance
10 min
The hologram and the triangles all participate in this, with the hologram going last. One at a time, each person positions themselves so they can be seen by the others. They imagine a situation in their life where they feel stuck. They then make a “sculpture” of that feeling with their body and hold it for five seconds. After they come back to the camera, each of the others makes a one or two sentence comment describing what they observed, without any analysis. For example, “I noticed that the sculpture was very soft on the top and very tense on the bottom.”
You can also adapt the stuck dance to meet abilities and comfort levels of your group–some people do the stuck dance with only their hand, or with sound. We are always looking for new ideas that promote intimacy, connection, and humour.
Mark the task
5 min
The hologram states what they want out of the meeting, including what type of feeling they want to produce for themselves and the group, and what situation they want to talk about. Try to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Meetings can be upbeat, fun, focused, and they can provide energy and positivity if you decide to use them that way. If you want to dive deep, or dig up something heavy, be up-front about it with your triangle team so they can prepare.
Asking questions
45 min
This is the longest segment of the meeting. The triangle members start by asking questions about what the hologram mentioned when they marked the task, or what came up in their stuck dance. This can be awkward at first—that’s okay! You can also ask basic questions to get started, because it’s hard to know what the right catalyst for conversation will be. The triangle members don’t need to rotate neatly; follow up questions are welcome. And over time, it becomes normal for the triangle members to ask questions outside of their assigned listening ‘areas’ (social, physical, mental/emotional), as long as it doesn't feel like some part of the hologram is being forgotten. (It can be so easy to narrow down a focus to one problem, like money, and forget about the body, for instance.) It’s good to ask follow-up questions, and it’s okay if the questions don’t lead to a clear conversation, or if there are no apparent solutions. Questioning simply helps participants explore the hologram's experience without having a goal of changing or fixing anything; it develops question asking skills and helps people learn more about each other.
PART THREE
Reflections
10 min
Start this segment if it feels like enough questions have been asked, or if there’s a natural pause in conversation, or if you’ve run out of time. Each member of the triangle (and the hologram as well) describes what they felt were the most important moments in the conversation. What gave you goosebumps? What felt familiar? What wouldn’t you want to forget? This is a chance to feel solidarity with the hologram, as the triangle reveals that some of the feelings and experiences described in the session are things they find familiar. It can be such a relief to feel like you are not alone!
Feedback
15 min
Take five minutes to write down some feedback for the hologram (the hologram can give themselves feedback too). Feedback is not advice. Instead, it is based on the observations that happened within the session. The feedback can include:
1. Patterns: Mention if you noticed a pattern in the language or behaviour of the hologram. Just describing the pattern is enough. No analysis necessary.
2.Wishes: Make a wish for the hologram based on what you learned. What do you hope for them? Detailed wishes are the best.
3.Provocation: Give the hologram a prompt: “what if you were to...”
Closing/Check-ins
10 min
You can create a closing ritual to make sure there is clarity, closure, and peace in the group. This could be a breathing, movement, or listening exercise. One person has invented an UNstuck dance that usually involves everyone dancing and shaking together. Afterwards, discuss how everyone is feeling after the session. What are they going to do after the call or gathering? Do we want to do this again? This may be a time to decide on next steps.
Follow-up
Decide who will write a follow-up email. This could include a summary of the meeting, an invitation to plan the next one, a list of questions to think about before then, or the start of a conversation about how the group would like to move forward.
Next, if you are a human but you want to make a hologram for a plant, animal, coffee table or other non-human person:
The Hologram is a technology made by humans, for humans who are living in late-stage capitalism on a planet that is being burned by the human addiction to capitalism. Out of desperation, regret, and boredom with the ways of most humans, many humans have begun to expand their sense of who their comrades are on the planet. I get it, humans are pretty difficult, and so it feels urgent to escape the utter loneliness of being friends and family with only other humans. In that spirit of angsty exploration and curiosity we've experimented with what it means to do Holograms with more-than-humans. When I say more than humans, I mean olive trees, glaciers and cats.
A few years ago, I was in Puglia, where a type of bacteria had spread and killed hundreds or 1000s of very old olive trees. The olive trees looked like ancient members of my family, and I spent as much time as possible walking and talking with them. I asked three of my friends who are humans, to try to do a Hologram with one of the trees, the tree that caught my eye the most.
Instead of having one human asking social questions, one human asking physical questions and one person asking mental and emotional questions, we divided our roles into the following:
One person sensed the tree through touch.
One person paid attention to the sounds around and in the tree.
One person tried to look at as much of the tree as possible.
And I watched the humans and the tree interacting.
Instead of asking questions with words, we aimed to sense things about the tree, and we did that while simultaneously moving around the tree together and then separate for about 15 minutes. After that, we sat around the tree and we reflected back to the tree what we felt, using words in the English language, thoughts, or non-verbal bodily noises and movements. We gave the feedback by sharing our bodies somewhere in and around the tree's vicinity, trying to interact with the tree in a way that might be a gift to the tree. Someone peed on the very dry ground, someone hugged the tree, and I don't remember what the last person did.
My experience doing a Hologram for an olive tree was that, as humans, we're pretty self-centered. I don't think we could really make contact with the tree on the tree's terms. And I don't think we can really do The Hologram for a tree that didn't ask us to do it, because the most basic premise of the protocol is that the one who's receiving the attention and care has requested it. This seemed like a process that was more for the humans who are offering the attention and desiring a connection, than for the tree itself. It wasn't unmagical, but I don't know if the tree experienced the magic.
Now that I'm saying this, I feel a little bit cynical. If I granted the tree more power in my imagination, I could also tell a story that the tree invited us there that day. What if, when I was walking by that tree, they had been convincing me to give them attention? I could have an even wilder premise and believe that the tree had ordered me to spend much of my life organizing The Hologram so that humans would stop being so pent up and self-centred, and finally pay attention to the trees, especially this one. I have no idea if this Hologram worked, but if I was to do this again, I would probably do it the same way.
Original Hologram text is from a forthcoming book called DO IT ANYWAY published by Thick Press.
Cassie Thornton is an artist and recovering individualist who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity with her friends. For work and for fun Cassie and crew has started an international conspiracy of anti-capitalist care, opened a social clinic disguised as a bar in Berlin, invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service, hypnotized hedge fund managers, dressed up as an elder to attend tech conferences. She is the author of The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, (Vagabonds, 2020).
BY CASSIE THORNTON
The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced by people from beds and couches around the world. It is a practice that anyone can use. Anyone? Who counts as anyone? Who else would like to use it? Is this a tool that can be used by people other than humans? By people who are more than humans, like cats or olive trees or your coffee table? In the hologram community we often say that you should experience the hologram protocol before you try to adapt it. So below you will find a manual for how to do the hologram among other humans first. After you try it, we think you can adapt it to use it with ANY one person, no matter what type of being they are.
First, how it works for humans:
The goal of the project is to produce stability for the people who use it. This protocol, when done regularly with focus, produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for, and supporting while being supported, in the long term, from people you know. When you practice it, you are part of building a network of solidarity and trust, outside of profit-driven or otherwise broken institutions. It is not mysterious, nor is it magic. This stability comes from being supported and knowing your friends are supported but not feeling that all that support is your personal responsibility or is coming from a place fuelled by capital and exploitation. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers can and will survive the very scary ends of capitalism together with their communities, and these communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us.
The Hologram comes from the work produced at the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is one of about sixty clinics that opened in Greece during their financial crisis (approximately 2008-2015) and a migrant crisis. At the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, where they were already offering free care, they were also interested in offering care that was better than you would get when you normally went to a traditional doctor, where and when the patient had very little power or agency. Specifically, some members of the clinic team were trying to experiment with how to produce care without the hierarchy that exists between caregivers and care receivers.
When a person came into the clinic, they were no longer referred to as a patient. Instead, they were called an incomer. This change in vocabulary tried to minimize the difference in power between, say, the doctor and the person receiving care. The person receiving care is simply coming in from outside, and that's the only difference.
In the Integrative Model, which was the clinic's particular experiment that most influenced The Hologram protocol, the incomer would be seen by a social worker, a therapist, and a general practitioner. All three of these people would ask the incomer questions. The doctor would ask about the body and provide a physical checkup. The social worker might ask about the incomer's financial situation, their work conditions, and their housing. The therapist might ask about the incomer's feelings, their dreams, and their ideas. Each of these care providers could see the questions and answers of the others.
Frosso Moureli, one person who helped develop the Integrative Model, told us that when she was acting as a therapist alongside a social worker and a doctor, she began to see the incomers as holograms–instead of flat pieces of paper–because she could see all their dimensions. That's where we get our unconventional title for this mutual aid project.
The Hologram is a different version of the integrative model, done among friends, without experts. We discovered this mutation many years ago in the US, when a few different groups attempted to repurpose the Integrative Model within the cut- throat conditions of the US. This meant that we needed to translate their project without money, without experts or expertise, and without physical space. What was developed is The Hologram protocol as described below.
In The Hologram, we refer to the person called the incomer in the Integrative Model in the Social Solidarity Clinic as the hologram. This person invites three people who they know to meet with them regularly and ask them questions. One person asks them questions about their mental and emotional health, including feelings and moods, ideas and anxieties, dreams and beliefs. Another friend asks them questions about their social health, including their roommates and family, their relationships, their work, their finances, their relationship to hierarchies, conflicts, and larger social systems. A third friend asks them questions about their physical health, including their body, food, medicine, their home, the planet. These three people meet with the hologram in one group, and all three ask questions in a structured ritual described below that takes between 90 minutes and two hours. It can happen in person or online.
The hologram is an expert about their own care. Nobody knows how it feels to be them. No one knows what helps or hurts but them, what they've lived through, or what makes them healthy or sick. We also see the hologram as a teacher. Asking for help, being vulnerable, and articulating needs is very unsexy in any of our societies. The hologram shows the other people around them that it's possible and beneficial to clearly ask for the support you need.
The people who ask questions are called triangle members. The triangle members' main job is to be openly curious, and to ask the types of questions that help the hologram speak about their pursuit of life. In this way, triangle members are not experts, and they never have to give advice. We think this should feel like a great relief. We know it's hard to resist the temptation to advise or present opinions within our questions. But the triangle members, over time, learn how to use their curiosity and question asking to provide empowering and supportive care to their hologram.
We also see triangle members as critical feelers. We take this idea from disability justice. In The Hologram protocol, triangle members are not trying to fix any problems. We don't see anyone as a sinking boat whose holes we need to fill or fix. We see each person as someone with wishes who we want to support with curiosity and focused attention. The job of being a critical feeler includes showing curiosity as you try to find out how the hologram feels and why, and to be with them in that without trying to change or fix them.
The triangle members also take notes. When you take notes throughout a session, you sometimes see a linguistic, conceptual, or behavioural pattern that recurs throughout a meeting. If you meet regularly over time, then you can see how certain words or ideas might reappear consistently in someone's life over time. These patterns are really important parts of the process of becoming someone's Living Medical Record.
In the larger project, all caretakers are cared for. The hologram's job is not to give back what they receive from their triangle members, but to ask each of them what kind of support they would like from others, and to help them get it. The hologram might then help one of their triangle members to invite three different people to support them. In this way, the practice spreads, and the hologram may sleep better knowing their friends are cared for, even if they (the hologram) cannot do it for all of them directly.
The hologram who receives support from the three triangle members also makes someone else a hologram. They do this by becoming a triangle member for someone else (outside of their triangle), along with two other people. This project is based on the idea that supporting somebody else's well-being is a top secret, highly effective medicine that anyone can do well.
About this guide (for people)
This guide is for people who want to become holograms and lead sessions where they receive support, based on the model put forth by The Hologram project. This guide will help you choose the people to be part of your triangle, and help you set up the group practice. We see this practice as something that comes from an oral tradition, so the best way to learn is from someone else. You can also start out by doing an online workshop, or talking to someone who is already in a Hologram about their experience (email cooperativespecies@gmail.com).
You can adapt the basic principles in this guide to suit your particular group. This guide is geared towards video conference meetings and in-person use.
MEETING BASICS
You should set aside around two hours for each meeting. In the following pages, there’s a sample agenda to help you plan for the flow, with detailed descriptions of each item. This can be done online or in person.
PART ONE
45 min
Tech checks
Introductions
Explain the Hologram Practice
Go over the agenda
Decide how to record
Experiment with pronouns
Define and determine roles
PART TWO
60 min
Stuck dance
Mark the task
Asking questions
PART THREE
35 min
Reflections
Feedback
Closing/check-ins
Follow-up
PART ONE
Tech Checks
5 min
If you are doing this by video conference or phone, make sure everyone’s technology is working. You’ll need to be able to see each participant’s whole body for later stages, so make sure each person’s camera is set up for that.
Introductions
15 min
Triangle participants may not know each other, so do a round of introductions. You can start with the basics—names, locations, pronouns, and “How are they?” You can also include an ice breaker question, “What’s the weather like (internal or external) where you are?”
Explain the Hologram Practice
10 min
In your own words, explain the history of The Hologram, how the process works, and why we are doing it.
Go over the agenda
3 min
You may go over the steps we describe below. It is not completely necessary, but it can be nice for people to know generally what is coming.
Decide how to record
3 min
Notes are a tool for the future, to remember the past. Decide as a group if someone will take notes or make drawings, or if you’ll make an audio or video recording. We recommend that each member take notes on what were the most important moments, statements, or questions for them—these will be helpful in the Reflections segment. Well-organized notes are really useful. Decide what you will do with the notes: Will they be shared with the group or kept private, will someone keep them all, under what circumstances could they be shared outside the group (or not at all)?
Experiment with pronouns
3 min
In Hologram events and workshops, we often use the pronoun “we” when we would usually say “I.” First, it causes everyone to slow down when they speak. The more we practice it, the more we observe that saying “we” instead of “I” creates a sense of solidarity in the group -- we aren’t talking about “your” health, but “our” health -- because we know that our health and liberation is bound up in one another’s! Try it and see how it affects your group dynamic.
Define and determine roles
3 min
Explain the role of the hologram and the role of the triangle members. In a triangle, one person generally asks questions about the hologram’s physical health, one about social health, and one about mental/emotional health. Decide as a group who will ask what questions. Sometimes it’s easiest for the hologram to determine the roles ahead of time, with the option for people to change their roles once things get going.
PART TWO
Stuck dance
10 min
The hologram and the triangles all participate in this, with the hologram going last. One at a time, each person positions themselves so they can be seen by the others. They imagine a situation in their life where they feel stuck. They then make a “sculpture” of that feeling with their body and hold it for five seconds. After they come back to the camera, each of the others makes a one or two sentence comment describing what they observed, without any analysis. For example, “I noticed that the sculpture was very soft on the top and very tense on the bottom.”
You can also adapt the stuck dance to meet abilities and comfort levels of your group–some people do the stuck dance with only their hand, or with sound. We are always looking for new ideas that promote intimacy, connection, and humour.
Mark the task
5 min
The hologram states what they want out of the meeting, including what type of feeling they want to produce for themselves and the group, and what situation they want to talk about. Try to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Meetings can be upbeat, fun, focused, and they can provide energy and positivity if you decide to use them that way. If you want to dive deep, or dig up something heavy, be up-front about it with your triangle team so they can prepare.
Asking questions
45 min
This is the longest segment of the meeting. The triangle members start by asking questions about what the hologram mentioned when they marked the task, or what came up in their stuck dance. This can be awkward at first—that’s okay! You can also ask basic questions to get started, because it’s hard to know what the right catalyst for conversation will be. The triangle members don’t need to rotate neatly; follow up questions are welcome. And over time, it becomes normal for the triangle members to ask questions outside of their assigned listening ‘areas’ (social, physical, mental/emotional), as long as it doesn't feel like some part of the hologram is being forgotten. (It can be so easy to narrow down a focus to one problem, like money, and forget about the body, for instance.) It’s good to ask follow-up questions, and it’s okay if the questions don’t lead to a clear conversation, or if there are no apparent solutions. Questioning simply helps participants explore the hologram's experience without having a goal of changing or fixing anything; it develops question asking skills and helps people learn more about each other.
PART THREE
Reflections
10 min
Start this segment if it feels like enough questions have been asked, or if there’s a natural pause in conversation, or if you’ve run out of time. Each member of the triangle (and the hologram as well) describes what they felt were the most important moments in the conversation. What gave you goosebumps? What felt familiar? What wouldn’t you want to forget? This is a chance to feel solidarity with the hologram, as the triangle reveals that some of the feelings and experiences described in the session are things they find familiar. It can be such a relief to feel like you are not alone!
Feedback
15 min
Take five minutes to write down some feedback for the hologram (the hologram can give themselves feedback too). Feedback is not advice. Instead, it is based on the observations that happened within the session. The feedback can include:
1. Patterns: Mention if you noticed a pattern in the language or behaviour of the hologram. Just describing the pattern is enough. No analysis necessary.
2.Wishes: Make a wish for the hologram based on what you learned. What do you hope for them? Detailed wishes are the best.
3.Provocation: Give the hologram a prompt: “what if you were to...”
Closing/Check-ins
10 min
You can create a closing ritual to make sure there is clarity, closure, and peace in the group. This could be a breathing, movement, or listening exercise. One person has invented an UNstuck dance that usually involves everyone dancing and shaking together. Afterwards, discuss how everyone is feeling after the session. What are they going to do after the call or gathering? Do we want to do this again? This may be a time to decide on next steps.
Follow-up
Decide who will write a follow-up email. This could include a summary of the meeting, an invitation to plan the next one, a list of questions to think about before then, or the start of a conversation about how the group would like to move forward.
Next, if you are a human but you want to make a hologram for a plant, animal, coffee table or other non-human person:
The Hologram is a technology made by humans, for humans who are living in late-stage capitalism on a planet that is being burned by the human addiction to capitalism. Out of desperation, regret, and boredom with the ways of most humans, many humans have begun to expand their sense of who their comrades are on the planet. I get it, humans are pretty difficult, and so it feels urgent to escape the utter loneliness of being friends and family with only other humans. In that spirit of angsty exploration and curiosity we've experimented with what it means to do Holograms with more-than-humans. When I say more than humans, I mean olive trees, glaciers and cats.
A few years ago, I was in Puglia, where a type of bacteria had spread and killed hundreds or 1000s of very old olive trees. The olive trees looked like ancient members of my family, and I spent as much time as possible walking and talking with them. I asked three of my friends who are humans, to try to do a Hologram with one of the trees, the tree that caught my eye the most.
Instead of having one human asking social questions, one human asking physical questions and one person asking mental and emotional questions, we divided our roles into the following:
One person sensed the tree through touch.
One person paid attention to the sounds around and in the tree.
One person tried to look at as much of the tree as possible.
And I watched the humans and the tree interacting.
Instead of asking questions with words, we aimed to sense things about the tree, and we did that while simultaneously moving around the tree together and then separate for about 15 minutes. After that, we sat around the tree and we reflected back to the tree what we felt, using words in the English language, thoughts, or non-verbal bodily noises and movements. We gave the feedback by sharing our bodies somewhere in and around the tree's vicinity, trying to interact with the tree in a way that might be a gift to the tree. Someone peed on the very dry ground, someone hugged the tree, and I don't remember what the last person did.
My experience doing a Hologram for an olive tree was that, as humans, we're pretty self-centered. I don't think we could really make contact with the tree on the tree's terms. And I don't think we can really do The Hologram for a tree that didn't ask us to do it, because the most basic premise of the protocol is that the one who's receiving the attention and care has requested it. This seemed like a process that was more for the humans who are offering the attention and desiring a connection, than for the tree itself. It wasn't unmagical, but I don't know if the tree experienced the magic.
Now that I'm saying this, I feel a little bit cynical. If I granted the tree more power in my imagination, I could also tell a story that the tree invited us there that day. What if, when I was walking by that tree, they had been convincing me to give them attention? I could have an even wilder premise and believe that the tree had ordered me to spend much of my life organizing The Hologram so that humans would stop being so pent up and self-centred, and finally pay attention to the trees, especially this one. I have no idea if this Hologram worked, but if I was to do this again, I would probably do it the same way.
Original Hologram text is from a forthcoming book called DO IT ANYWAY published by Thick Press.
The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced by people from beds and couches around the world. It is a practice that anyone can use. Anyone? Who counts as anyone? Who else would like to use it? Is this a tool that can be used by people other than humans? By people who are more than humans, like cats or olive trees or your coffee table? In the hologram community we often say that you should experience the hologram protocol before you try to adapt it. So below you will find a manual for how to do the hologram among other humans first. After you try it, we think you can adapt it to use it with ANY one person, no matter what type of being they are.
First, how it works for humans:
The goal of the project is to produce stability for the people who use it. This protocol, when done regularly with focus, produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for, and supporting while being supported, in the long term, from people you know. When you practice it, you are part of building a network of solidarity and trust, outside of profit-driven or otherwise broken institutions. It is not mysterious, nor is it magic. This stability comes from being supported and knowing your friends are supported but not feeling that all that support is your personal responsibility or is coming from a place fuelled by capital and exploitation. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers can and will survive the very scary ends of capitalism together with their communities, and these communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us.
The Hologram comes from the work produced at the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is one of about sixty clinics that opened in Greece during their financial crisis (approximately 2008-2015) and a migrant crisis. At the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, where they were already offering free care, they were also interested in offering care that was better than you would get when you normally went to a traditional doctor, where and when the patient had very little power or agency. Specifically, some members of the clinic team were trying to experiment with how to produce care without the hierarchy that exists between caregivers and care receivers.
When a person came into the clinic, they were no longer referred to as a patient. Instead, they were called an incomer. This change in vocabulary tried to minimize the difference in power between, say, the doctor and the person receiving care. The person receiving care is simply coming in from outside, and that's the only difference.
In the Integrative Model, which was the clinic's particular experiment that most influenced The Hologram protocol, the incomer would be seen by a social worker, a therapist, and a general practitioner. All three of these people would ask the incomer questions. The doctor would ask about the body and provide a physical checkup. The social worker might ask about the incomer's financial situation, their work conditions, and their housing. The therapist might ask about the incomer's feelings, their dreams, and their ideas. Each of these care providers could see the questions and answers of the others.
Frosso Moureli, one person who helped develop the Integrative Model, told us that when she was acting as a therapist alongside a social worker and a doctor, she began to see the incomers as holograms–instead of flat pieces of paper–because she could see all their dimensions. That's where we get our unconventional title for this mutual aid project.
The Hologram is a different version of the integrative model, done among friends, without experts. We discovered this mutation many years ago in the US, when a few different groups attempted to repurpose the Integrative Model within the cut- throat conditions of the US. This meant that we needed to translate their project without money, without experts or expertise, and without physical space. What was developed is The Hologram protocol as described below.
In The Hologram, we refer to the person called the incomer in the Integrative Model in the Social Solidarity Clinic as the hologram. This person invites three people who they know to meet with them regularly and ask them questions. One person asks them questions about their mental and emotional health, including feelings and moods, ideas and anxieties, dreams and beliefs. Another friend asks them questions about their social health, including their roommates and family, their relationships, their work, their finances, their relationship to hierarchies, conflicts, and larger social systems. A third friend asks them questions about their physical health, including their body, food, medicine, their home, the planet. These three people meet with the hologram in one group, and all three ask questions in a structured ritual described below that takes between 90 minutes and two hours. It can happen in person or online.
The hologram is an expert about their own care. Nobody knows how it feels to be them. No one knows what helps or hurts but them, what they've lived through, or what makes them healthy or sick. We also see the hologram as a teacher. Asking for help, being vulnerable, and articulating needs is very unsexy in any of our societies. The hologram shows the other people around them that it's possible and beneficial to clearly ask for the support you need.
The people who ask questions are called triangle members. The triangle members' main job is to be openly curious, and to ask the types of questions that help the hologram speak about their pursuit of life. In this way, triangle members are not experts, and they never have to give advice. We think this should feel like a great relief. We know it's hard to resist the temptation to advise or present opinions within our questions. But the triangle members, over time, learn how to use their curiosity and question asking to provide empowering and supportive care to their hologram.
We also see triangle members as critical feelers. We take this idea from disability justice. In The Hologram protocol, triangle members are not trying to fix any problems. We don't see anyone as a sinking boat whose holes we need to fill or fix. We see each person as someone with wishes who we want to support with curiosity and focused attention. The job of being a critical feeler includes showing curiosity as you try to find out how the hologram feels and why, and to be with them in that without trying to change or fix them.
The triangle members also take notes. When you take notes throughout a session, you sometimes see a linguistic, conceptual, or behavioural pattern that recurs throughout a meeting. If you meet regularly over time, then you can see how certain words or ideas might reappear consistently in someone's life over time. These patterns are really important parts of the process of becoming someone's Living Medical Record.
In the larger project, all caretakers are cared for. The hologram's job is not to give back what they receive from their triangle members, but to ask each of them what kind of support they would like from others, and to help them get it. The hologram might then help one of their triangle members to invite three different people to support them. In this way, the practice spreads, and the hologram may sleep better knowing their friends are cared for, even if they (the hologram) cannot do it for all of them directly.
The hologram who receives support from the three triangle members also makes someone else a hologram. They do this by becoming a triangle member for someone else (outside of their triangle), along with two other people. This project is based on the idea that supporting somebody else's well-being is a top secret, highly effective medicine that anyone can do well.
About this guide (for people)
This guide is for people who want to become holograms and lead sessions where they receive support, based on the model put forth by The Hologram project. This guide will help you choose the people to be part of your triangle, and help you set up the group practice. We see this practice as something that comes from an oral tradition, so the best way to learn is from someone else. You can also start out by doing an online workshop, or talking to someone who is already in a Hologram about their experience (email cooperativespecies@gmail.com).
You can adapt the basic principles in this guide to suit your particular group. This guide is geared towards video conference meetings and in-person use.
MEETING BASICS
You should set aside around two hours for each meeting. In the following pages, there’s a sample agenda to help you plan for the flow, with detailed descriptions of each item. This can be done online or in person.
PART ONE
45 min
Tech checks
Introductions
Explain the Hologram Practice
Go over the agenda
Decide how to record
Experiment with pronouns
Define and determine roles
PART TWO
60 min
Stuck dance
Mark the task
Asking questions
PART THREE
35 min
Reflections
Feedback
Closing/check-ins
Follow-up
PART ONE
Tech Checks
5 min
If you are doing this by video conference or phone, make sure everyone’s technology is working. You’ll need to be able to see each participant’s whole body for later stages, so make sure each person’s camera is set up for that.
Introductions
15 min
Triangle participants may not know each other, so do a round of introductions. You can start with the basics—names, locations, pronouns, and “How are they?” You can also include an ice breaker question, “What’s the weather like (internal or external) where you are?”
Explain the Hologram Practice
10 min
In your own words, explain the history of The Hologram, how the process works, and why we are doing it.
Go over the agenda
3 min
You may go over the steps we describe below. It is not completely necessary, but it can be nice for people to know generally what is coming.
Decide how to record
3 min
Notes are a tool for the future, to remember the past. Decide as a group if someone will take notes or make drawings, or if you’ll make an audio or video recording. We recommend that each member take notes on what were the most important moments, statements, or questions for them—these will be helpful in the Reflections segment. Well-organized notes are really useful. Decide what you will do with the notes: Will they be shared with the group or kept private, will someone keep them all, under what circumstances could they be shared outside the group (or not at all)?
Experiment with pronouns
3 min
In Hologram events and workshops, we often use the pronoun “we” when we would usually say “I.” First, it causes everyone to slow down when they speak. The more we practice it, the more we observe that saying “we” instead of “I” creates a sense of solidarity in the group -- we aren’t talking about “your” health, but “our” health -- because we know that our health and liberation is bound up in one another’s! Try it and see how it affects your group dynamic.
Define and determine roles
3 min
Explain the role of the hologram and the role of the triangle members. In a triangle, one person generally asks questions about the hologram’s physical health, one about social health, and one about mental/emotional health. Decide as a group who will ask what questions. Sometimes it’s easiest for the hologram to determine the roles ahead of time, with the option for people to change their roles once things get going.
PART TWO
Stuck dance
10 min
The hologram and the triangles all participate in this, with the hologram going last. One at a time, each person positions themselves so they can be seen by the others. They imagine a situation in their life where they feel stuck. They then make a “sculpture” of that feeling with their body and hold it for five seconds. After they come back to the camera, each of the others makes a one or two sentence comment describing what they observed, without any analysis. For example, “I noticed that the sculpture was very soft on the top and very tense on the bottom.”
You can also adapt the stuck dance to meet abilities and comfort levels of your group–some people do the stuck dance with only their hand, or with sound. We are always looking for new ideas that promote intimacy, connection, and humour.
Mark the task
5 min
The hologram states what they want out of the meeting, including what type of feeling they want to produce for themselves and the group, and what situation they want to talk about. Try to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Meetings can be upbeat, fun, focused, and they can provide energy and positivity if you decide to use them that way. If you want to dive deep, or dig up something heavy, be up-front about it with your triangle team so they can prepare.
Asking questions
45 min
This is the longest segment of the meeting. The triangle members start by asking questions about what the hologram mentioned when they marked the task, or what came up in their stuck dance. This can be awkward at first—that’s okay! You can also ask basic questions to get started, because it’s hard to know what the right catalyst for conversation will be. The triangle members don’t need to rotate neatly; follow up questions are welcome. And over time, it becomes normal for the triangle members to ask questions outside of their assigned listening ‘areas’ (social, physical, mental/emotional), as long as it doesn't feel like some part of the hologram is being forgotten. (It can be so easy to narrow down a focus to one problem, like money, and forget about the body, for instance.) It’s good to ask follow-up questions, and it’s okay if the questions don’t lead to a clear conversation, or if there are no apparent solutions. Questioning simply helps participants explore the hologram's experience without having a goal of changing or fixing anything; it develops question asking skills and helps people learn more about each other.
PART THREE
Reflections
10 min
Start this segment if it feels like enough questions have been asked, or if there’s a natural pause in conversation, or if you’ve run out of time. Each member of the triangle (and the hologram as well) describes what they felt were the most important moments in the conversation. What gave you goosebumps? What felt familiar? What wouldn’t you want to forget? This is a chance to feel solidarity with the hologram, as the triangle reveals that some of the feelings and experiences described in the session are things they find familiar. It can be such a relief to feel like you are not alone!
Feedback
15 min
Take five minutes to write down some feedback for the hologram (the hologram can give themselves feedback too). Feedback is not advice. Instead, it is based on the observations that happened within the session. The feedback can include:
1. Patterns: Mention if you noticed a pattern in the language or behaviour of the hologram. Just describing the pattern is enough. No analysis necessary.
2.Wishes: Make a wish for the hologram based on what you learned. What do you hope for them? Detailed wishes are the best.
3.Provocation: Give the hologram a prompt: “what if you were to...”
Closing/Check-ins
10 min
You can create a closing ritual to make sure there is clarity, closure, and peace in the group. This could be a breathing, movement, or listening exercise. One person has invented an UNstuck dance that usually involves everyone dancing and shaking together. Afterwards, discuss how everyone is feeling after the session. What are they going to do after the call or gathering? Do we want to do this again? This may be a time to decide on next steps.
Follow-up
Decide who will write a follow-up email. This could include a summary of the meeting, an invitation to plan the next one, a list of questions to think about before then, or the start of a conversation about how the group would like to move forward.
Next, if you are a human but you want to make a hologram for a plant, animal, coffee table or other non-human person:
The Hologram is a technology made by humans, for humans who are living in late-stage capitalism on a planet that is being burned by the human addiction to capitalism. Out of desperation, regret, and boredom with the ways of most humans, many humans have begun to expand their sense of who their comrades are on the planet. I get it, humans are pretty difficult, and so it feels urgent to escape the utter loneliness of being friends and family with only other humans. In that spirit of angsty exploration and curiosity we've experimented with what it means to do Holograms with more-than-humans. When I say more than humans, I mean olive trees, glaciers and cats.
A few years ago, I was in Puglia, where a type of bacteria had spread and killed hundreds or 1000s of very old olive trees. The olive trees looked like ancient members of my family, and I spent as much time as possible walking and talking with them. I asked three of my friends who are humans, to try to do a Hologram with one of the trees, the tree that caught my eye the most.
Instead of having one human asking social questions, one human asking physical questions and one person asking mental and emotional questions, we divided our roles into the following:
One person sensed the tree through touch.
One person paid attention to the sounds around and in the tree.
One person tried to look at as much of the tree as possible.
And I watched the humans and the tree interacting.
Instead of asking questions with words, we aimed to sense things about the tree, and we did that while simultaneously moving around the tree together and then separate for about 15 minutes. After that, we sat around the tree and we reflected back to the tree what we felt, using words in the English language, thoughts, or non-verbal bodily noises and movements. We gave the feedback by sharing our bodies somewhere in and around the tree's vicinity, trying to interact with the tree in a way that might be a gift to the tree. Someone peed on the very dry ground, someone hugged the tree, and I don't remember what the last person did.
My experience doing a Hologram for an olive tree was that, as humans, we're pretty self-centered. I don't think we could really make contact with the tree on the tree's terms. And I don't think we can really do The Hologram for a tree that didn't ask us to do it, because the most basic premise of the protocol is that the one who's receiving the attention and care has requested it. This seemed like a process that was more for the humans who are offering the attention and desiring a connection, than for the tree itself. It wasn't unmagical, but I don't know if the tree experienced the magic.
Now that I'm saying this, I feel a little bit cynical. If I granted the tree more power in my imagination, I could also tell a story that the tree invited us there that day. What if, when I was walking by that tree, they had been convincing me to give them attention? I could have an even wilder premise and believe that the tree had ordered me to spend much of my life organizing The Hologram so that humans would stop being so pent up and self-centred, and finally pay attention to the trees, especially this one. I have no idea if this Hologram worked, but if I was to do this again, I would probably do it the same way.
Original Hologram text is from a forthcoming book called DO IT ANYWAY published by Thick Press.
Cassie Thornton is an artist and recovering individualist who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity with her friends. For work and for fun Cassie and crew has started an international conspiracy of anti-capitalist care, opened a social clinic disguised as a bar in Berlin, invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service, hypnotized hedge fund managers, dressed up as an elder to attend tech conferences. She is the author of The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, (Vagabonds, 2020).
BY CASSIE THORNTON
The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced by people from beds and couches around the world. It is a practice that anyone can use. Anyone? Who counts as anyone? Who else would like to use it? Is this a tool that can be used by people other than humans? By people who are more than humans, like cats or olive trees or your coffee table? In the hologram community we often say that you should experience the hologram protocol before you try to adapt it. So below you will find a manual for how to do the hologram among other humans first. After you try it, we think you can adapt it to use it with ANY one person, no matter what type of being they are.
First, how it works for humans:
The goal of the project is to produce stability for the people who use it. This protocol, when done regularly with focus, produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for, and supporting while being supported, in the long term, from people you know. When you practice it, you are part of building a network of solidarity and trust, outside of profit-driven or otherwise broken institutions. It is not mysterious, nor is it magic. This stability comes from being supported and knowing your friends are supported but not feeling that all that support is your personal responsibility or is coming from a place fuelled by capital and exploitation. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers can and will survive the very scary ends of capitalism together with their communities, and these communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us.
The Hologram comes from the work produced at the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is one of about sixty clinics that opened in Greece during their financial crisis (approximately 2008-2015) and a migrant crisis. At the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, where they were already offering free care, they were also interested in offering care that was better than you would get when you normally went to a traditional doctor, where and when the patient had very little power or agency. Specifically, some members of the clinic team were trying to experiment with how to produce care without the hierarchy that exists between caregivers and care receivers.
When a person came into the clinic, they were no longer referred to as a patient. Instead, they were called an incomer. This change in vocabulary tried to minimize the difference in power between, say, the doctor and the person receiving care. The person receiving care is simply coming in from outside, and that's the only difference.
In the Integrative Model, which was the clinic's particular experiment that most influenced The Hologram protocol, the incomer would be seen by a social worker, a therapist, and a general practitioner. All three of these people would ask the incomer questions. The doctor would ask about the body and provide a physical checkup. The social worker might ask about the incomer's financial situation, their work conditions, and their housing. The therapist might ask about the incomer's feelings, their dreams, and their ideas. Each of these care providers could see the questions and answers of the others.
Frosso Moureli, one person who helped develop the Integrative Model, told us that when she was acting as a therapist alongside a social worker and a doctor, she began to see the incomers as holograms–instead of flat pieces of paper–because she could see all their dimensions. That's where we get our unconventional title for this mutual aid project.
The Hologram is a different version of the integrative model, done among friends, without experts. We discovered this mutation many years ago in the US, when a few different groups attempted to repurpose the Integrative Model within the cut- throat conditions of the US. This meant that we needed to translate their project without money, without experts or expertise, and without physical space. What was developed is The Hologram protocol as described below.
In The Hologram, we refer to the person called the incomer in the Integrative Model in the Social Solidarity Clinic as the hologram. This person invites three people who they know to meet with them regularly and ask them questions. One person asks them questions about their mental and emotional health, including feelings and moods, ideas and anxieties, dreams and beliefs. Another friend asks them questions about their social health, including their roommates and family, their relationships, their work, their finances, their relationship to hierarchies, conflicts, and larger social systems. A third friend asks them questions about their physical health, including their body, food, medicine, their home, the planet. These three people meet with the hologram in one group, and all three ask questions in a structured ritual described below that takes between 90 minutes and two hours. It can happen in person or online.
The hologram is an expert about their own care. Nobody knows how it feels to be them. No one knows what helps or hurts but them, what they've lived through, or what makes them healthy or sick. We also see the hologram as a teacher. Asking for help, being vulnerable, and articulating needs is very unsexy in any of our societies. The hologram shows the other people around them that it's possible and beneficial to clearly ask for the support you need.
The people who ask questions are called triangle members. The triangle members' main job is to be openly curious, and to ask the types of questions that help the hologram speak about their pursuit of life. In this way, triangle members are not experts, and they never have to give advice. We think this should feel like a great relief. We know it's hard to resist the temptation to advise or present opinions within our questions. But the triangle members, over time, learn how to use their curiosity and question asking to provide empowering and supportive care to their hologram.
We also see triangle members as critical feelers. We take this idea from disability justice. In The Hologram protocol, triangle members are not trying to fix any problems. We don't see anyone as a sinking boat whose holes we need to fill or fix. We see each person as someone with wishes who we want to support with curiosity and focused attention. The job of being a critical feeler includes showing curiosity as you try to find out how the hologram feels and why, and to be with them in that without trying to change or fix them.
The triangle members also take notes. When you take notes throughout a session, you sometimes see a linguistic, conceptual, or behavioural pattern that recurs throughout a meeting. If you meet regularly over time, then you can see how certain words or ideas might reappear consistently in someone's life over time. These patterns are really important parts of the process of becoming someone's Living Medical Record.
In the larger project, all caretakers are cared for. The hologram's job is not to give back what they receive from their triangle members, but to ask each of them what kind of support they would like from others, and to help them get it. The hologram might then help one of their triangle members to invite three different people to support them. In this way, the practice spreads, and the hologram may sleep better knowing their friends are cared for, even if they (the hologram) cannot do it for all of them directly.
The hologram who receives support from the three triangle members also makes someone else a hologram. They do this by becoming a triangle member for someone else (outside of their triangle), along with two other people. This project is based on the idea that supporting somebody else's well-being is a top secret, highly effective medicine that anyone can do well.
About this guide (for people)
This guide is for people who want to become holograms and lead sessions where they receive support, based on the model put forth by The Hologram project. This guide will help you choose the people to be part of your triangle, and help you set up the group practice. We see this practice as something that comes from an oral tradition, so the best way to learn is from someone else. You can also start out by doing an online workshop, or talking to someone who is already in a Hologram about their experience (email cooperativespecies@gmail.com).
You can adapt the basic principles in this guide to suit your particular group. This guide is geared towards video conference meetings and in-person use.
MEETING BASICS
You should set aside around two hours for each meeting. In the following pages, there’s a sample agenda to help you plan for the flow, with detailed descriptions of each item. This can be done online or in person.
PART ONE
45 min
Tech checks
Introductions
Explain the Hologram Practice
Go over the agenda
Decide how to record
Experiment with pronouns
Define and determine roles
PART TWO
60 min
Stuck dance
Mark the task
Asking questions
PART THREE
35 min
Reflections
Feedback
Closing/check-ins
Follow-up
PART ONE
Tech Checks
5 min
If you are doing this by video conference or phone, make sure everyone’s technology is working. You’ll need to be able to see each participant’s whole body for later stages, so make sure each person’s camera is set up for that.
Introductions
15 min
Triangle participants may not know each other, so do a round of introductions. You can start with the basics—names, locations, pronouns, and “How are they?” You can also include an ice breaker question, “What’s the weather like (internal or external) where you are?”
Explain the Hologram Practice
10 min
In your own words, explain the history of The Hologram, how the process works, and why we are doing it.
Go over the agenda
3 min
You may go over the steps we describe below. It is not completely necessary, but it can be nice for people to know generally what is coming.
Decide how to record
3 min
Notes are a tool for the future, to remember the past. Decide as a group if someone will take notes or make drawings, or if you’ll make an audio or video recording. We recommend that each member take notes on what were the most important moments, statements, or questions for them—these will be helpful in the Reflections segment. Well-organized notes are really useful. Decide what you will do with the notes: Will they be shared with the group or kept private, will someone keep them all, under what circumstances could they be shared outside the group (or not at all)?
Experiment with pronouns
3 min
In Hologram events and workshops, we often use the pronoun “we” when we would usually say “I.” First, it causes everyone to slow down when they speak. The more we practice it, the more we observe that saying “we” instead of “I” creates a sense of solidarity in the group -- we aren’t talking about “your” health, but “our” health -- because we know that our health and liberation is bound up in one another’s! Try it and see how it affects your group dynamic.
Define and determine roles
3 min
Explain the role of the hologram and the role of the triangle members. In a triangle, one person generally asks questions about the hologram’s physical health, one about social health, and one about mental/emotional health. Decide as a group who will ask what questions. Sometimes it’s easiest for the hologram to determine the roles ahead of time, with the option for people to change their roles once things get going.
PART TWO
Stuck dance
10 min
The hologram and the triangles all participate in this, with the hologram going last. One at a time, each person positions themselves so they can be seen by the others. They imagine a situation in their life where they feel stuck. They then make a “sculpture” of that feeling with their body and hold it for five seconds. After they come back to the camera, each of the others makes a one or two sentence comment describing what they observed, without any analysis. For example, “I noticed that the sculpture was very soft on the top and very tense on the bottom.”
You can also adapt the stuck dance to meet abilities and comfort levels of your group–some people do the stuck dance with only their hand, or with sound. We are always looking for new ideas that promote intimacy, connection, and humour.
Mark the task
5 min
The hologram states what they want out of the meeting, including what type of feeling they want to produce for themselves and the group, and what situation they want to talk about. Try to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Meetings can be upbeat, fun, focused, and they can provide energy and positivity if you decide to use them that way. If you want to dive deep, or dig up something heavy, be up-front about it with your triangle team so they can prepare.
Asking questions
45 min
This is the longest segment of the meeting. The triangle members start by asking questions about what the hologram mentioned when they marked the task, or what came up in their stuck dance. This can be awkward at first—that’s okay! You can also ask basic questions to get started, because it’s hard to know what the right catalyst for conversation will be. The triangle members don’t need to rotate neatly; follow up questions are welcome. And over time, it becomes normal for the triangle members to ask questions outside of their assigned listening ‘areas’ (social, physical, mental/emotional), as long as it doesn't feel like some part of the hologram is being forgotten. (It can be so easy to narrow down a focus to one problem, like money, and forget about the body, for instance.) It’s good to ask follow-up questions, and it’s okay if the questions don’t lead to a clear conversation, or if there are no apparent solutions. Questioning simply helps participants explore the hologram's experience without having a goal of changing or fixing anything; it develops question asking skills and helps people learn more about each other.
PART THREE
Reflections
10 min
Start this segment if it feels like enough questions have been asked, or if there’s a natural pause in conversation, or if you’ve run out of time. Each member of the triangle (and the hologram as well) describes what they felt were the most important moments in the conversation. What gave you goosebumps? What felt familiar? What wouldn’t you want to forget? This is a chance to feel solidarity with the hologram, as the triangle reveals that some of the feelings and experiences described in the session are things they find familiar. It can be such a relief to feel like you are not alone!
Feedback
15 min
Take five minutes to write down some feedback for the hologram (the hologram can give themselves feedback too). Feedback is not advice. Instead, it is based on the observations that happened within the session. The feedback can include:
1. Patterns: Mention if you noticed a pattern in the language or behaviour of the hologram. Just describing the pattern is enough. No analysis necessary.
2.Wishes: Make a wish for the hologram based on what you learned. What do you hope for them? Detailed wishes are the best.
3.Provocation: Give the hologram a prompt: “what if you were to...”
Closing/Check-ins
10 min
You can create a closing ritual to make sure there is clarity, closure, and peace in the group. This could be a breathing, movement, or listening exercise. One person has invented an UNstuck dance that usually involves everyone dancing and shaking together. Afterwards, discuss how everyone is feeling after the session. What are they going to do after the call or gathering? Do we want to do this again? This may be a time to decide on next steps.
Follow-up
Decide who will write a follow-up email. This could include a summary of the meeting, an invitation to plan the next one, a list of questions to think about before then, or the start of a conversation about how the group would like to move forward.
Next, if you are a human but you want to make a hologram for a plant, animal, coffee table or other non-human person:
The Hologram is a technology made by humans, for humans who are living in late-stage capitalism on a planet that is being burned by the human addiction to capitalism. Out of desperation, regret, and boredom with the ways of most humans, many humans have begun to expand their sense of who their comrades are on the planet. I get it, humans are pretty difficult, and so it feels urgent to escape the utter loneliness of being friends and family with only other humans. In that spirit of angsty exploration and curiosity we've experimented with what it means to do Holograms with more-than-humans. When I say more than humans, I mean olive trees, glaciers and cats.
A few years ago, I was in Puglia, where a type of bacteria had spread and killed hundreds or 1000s of very old olive trees. The olive trees looked like ancient members of my family, and I spent as much time as possible walking and talking with them. I asked three of my friends who are humans, to try to do a Hologram with one of the trees, the tree that caught my eye the most.
Instead of having one human asking social questions, one human asking physical questions and one person asking mental and emotional questions, we divided our roles into the following:
One person sensed the tree through touch.
One person paid attention to the sounds around and in the tree.
One person tried to look at as much of the tree as possible.
And I watched the humans and the tree interacting.
Instead of asking questions with words, we aimed to sense things about the tree, and we did that while simultaneously moving around the tree together and then separate for about 15 minutes. After that, we sat around the tree and we reflected back to the tree what we felt, using words in the English language, thoughts, or non-verbal bodily noises and movements. We gave the feedback by sharing our bodies somewhere in and around the tree's vicinity, trying to interact with the tree in a way that might be a gift to the tree. Someone peed on the very dry ground, someone hugged the tree, and I don't remember what the last person did.
My experience doing a Hologram for an olive tree was that, as humans, we're pretty self-centered. I don't think we could really make contact with the tree on the tree's terms. And I don't think we can really do The Hologram for a tree that didn't ask us to do it, because the most basic premise of the protocol is that the one who's receiving the attention and care has requested it. This seemed like a process that was more for the humans who are offering the attention and desiring a connection, than for the tree itself. It wasn't unmagical, but I don't know if the tree experienced the magic.
Now that I'm saying this, I feel a little bit cynical. If I granted the tree more power in my imagination, I could also tell a story that the tree invited us there that day. What if, when I was walking by that tree, they had been convincing me to give them attention? I could have an even wilder premise and believe that the tree had ordered me to spend much of my life organizing The Hologram so that humans would stop being so pent up and self-centred, and finally pay attention to the trees, especially this one. I have no idea if this Hologram worked, but if I was to do this again, I would probably do it the same way.
Original Hologram text is from a forthcoming book called DO IT ANYWAY published by Thick Press.
The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced by people from beds and couches around the world. It is a practice that anyone can use. Anyone? Who counts as anyone? Who else would like to use it? Is this a tool that can be used by people other than humans? By people who are more than humans, like cats or olive trees or your coffee table? In the hologram community we often say that you should experience the hologram protocol before you try to adapt it. So below you will find a manual for how to do the hologram among other humans first. After you try it, we think you can adapt it to use it with ANY one person, no matter what type of being they are.
First, how it works for humans:
The goal of the project is to produce stability for the people who use it. This protocol, when done regularly with focus, produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for, and supporting while being supported, in the long term, from people you know. When you practice it, you are part of building a network of solidarity and trust, outside of profit-driven or otherwise broken institutions. It is not mysterious, nor is it magic. This stability comes from being supported and knowing your friends are supported but not feeling that all that support is your personal responsibility or is coming from a place fuelled by capital and exploitation. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers can and will survive the very scary ends of capitalism together with their communities, and these communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us.
The Hologram comes from the work produced at the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is one of about sixty clinics that opened in Greece during their financial crisis (approximately 2008-2015) and a migrant crisis. At the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, where they were already offering free care, they were also interested in offering care that was better than you would get when you normally went to a traditional doctor, where and when the patient had very little power or agency. Specifically, some members of the clinic team were trying to experiment with how to produce care without the hierarchy that exists between caregivers and care receivers.
When a person came into the clinic, they were no longer referred to as a patient. Instead, they were called an incomer. This change in vocabulary tried to minimize the difference in power between, say, the doctor and the person receiving care. The person receiving care is simply coming in from outside, and that's the only difference.
In the Integrative Model, which was the clinic's particular experiment that most influenced The Hologram protocol, the incomer would be seen by a social worker, a therapist, and a general practitioner. All three of these people would ask the incomer questions. The doctor would ask about the body and provide a physical checkup. The social worker might ask about the incomer's financial situation, their work conditions, and their housing. The therapist might ask about the incomer's feelings, their dreams, and their ideas. Each of these care providers could see the questions and answers of the others.
Frosso Moureli, one person who helped develop the Integrative Model, told us that when she was acting as a therapist alongside a social worker and a doctor, she began to see the incomers as holograms–instead of flat pieces of paper–because she could see all their dimensions. That's where we get our unconventional title for this mutual aid project.
The Hologram is a different version of the integrative model, done among friends, without experts. We discovered this mutation many years ago in the US, when a few different groups attempted to repurpose the Integrative Model within the cut- throat conditions of the US. This meant that we needed to translate their project without money, without experts or expertise, and without physical space. What was developed is The Hologram protocol as described below.
In The Hologram, we refer to the person called the incomer in the Integrative Model in the Social Solidarity Clinic as the hologram. This person invites three people who they know to meet with them regularly and ask them questions. One person asks them questions about their mental and emotional health, including feelings and moods, ideas and anxieties, dreams and beliefs. Another friend asks them questions about their social health, including their roommates and family, their relationships, their work, their finances, their relationship to hierarchies, conflicts, and larger social systems. A third friend asks them questions about their physical health, including their body, food, medicine, their home, the planet. These three people meet with the hologram in one group, and all three ask questions in a structured ritual described below that takes between 90 minutes and two hours. It can happen in person or online.
The hologram is an expert about their own care. Nobody knows how it feels to be them. No one knows what helps or hurts but them, what they've lived through, or what makes them healthy or sick. We also see the hologram as a teacher. Asking for help, being vulnerable, and articulating needs is very unsexy in any of our societies. The hologram shows the other people around them that it's possible and beneficial to clearly ask for the support you need.
The people who ask questions are called triangle members. The triangle members' main job is to be openly curious, and to ask the types of questions that help the hologram speak about their pursuit of life. In this way, triangle members are not experts, and they never have to give advice. We think this should feel like a great relief. We know it's hard to resist the temptation to advise or present opinions within our questions. But the triangle members, over time, learn how to use their curiosity and question asking to provide empowering and supportive care to their hologram.
We also see triangle members as critical feelers. We take this idea from disability justice. In The Hologram protocol, triangle members are not trying to fix any problems. We don't see anyone as a sinking boat whose holes we need to fill or fix. We see each person as someone with wishes who we want to support with curiosity and focused attention. The job of being a critical feeler includes showing curiosity as you try to find out how the hologram feels and why, and to be with them in that without trying to change or fix them.
The triangle members also take notes. When you take notes throughout a session, you sometimes see a linguistic, conceptual, or behavioural pattern that recurs throughout a meeting. If you meet regularly over time, then you can see how certain words or ideas might reappear consistently in someone's life over time. These patterns are really important parts of the process of becoming someone's Living Medical Record.
In the larger project, all caretakers are cared for. The hologram's job is not to give back what they receive from their triangle members, but to ask each of them what kind of support they would like from others, and to help them get it. The hologram might then help one of their triangle members to invite three different people to support them. In this way, the practice spreads, and the hologram may sleep better knowing their friends are cared for, even if they (the hologram) cannot do it for all of them directly.
The hologram who receives support from the three triangle members also makes someone else a hologram. They do this by becoming a triangle member for someone else (outside of their triangle), along with two other people. This project is based on the idea that supporting somebody else's well-being is a top secret, highly effective medicine that anyone can do well.
About this guide (for people)
This guide is for people who want to become holograms and lead sessions where they receive support, based on the model put forth by The Hologram project. This guide will help you choose the people to be part of your triangle, and help you set up the group practice. We see this practice as something that comes from an oral tradition, so the best way to learn is from someone else. You can also start out by doing an online workshop, or talking to someone who is already in a Hologram about their experience (email cooperativespecies@gmail.com).
You can adapt the basic principles in this guide to suit your particular group. This guide is geared towards video conference meetings and in-person use.
MEETING BASICS
You should set aside around two hours for each meeting. In the following pages, there’s a sample agenda to help you plan for the flow, with detailed descriptions of each item. This can be done online or in person.
PART ONE
45 min
Tech checks
Introductions
Explain the Hologram Practice
Go over the agenda
Decide how to record
Experiment with pronouns
Define and determine roles
PART TWO
60 min
Stuck dance
Mark the task
Asking questions
PART THREE
35 min
Reflections
Feedback
Closing/check-ins
Follow-up
PART ONE
Tech Checks
5 min
If you are doing this by video conference or phone, make sure everyone’s technology is working. You’ll need to be able to see each participant’s whole body for later stages, so make sure each person’s camera is set up for that.
Introductions
15 min
Triangle participants may not know each other, so do a round of introductions. You can start with the basics—names, locations, pronouns, and “How are they?” You can also include an ice breaker question, “What’s the weather like (internal or external) where you are?”
Explain the Hologram Practice
10 min
In your own words, explain the history of The Hologram, how the process works, and why we are doing it.
Go over the agenda
3 min
You may go over the steps we describe below. It is not completely necessary, but it can be nice for people to know generally what is coming.
Decide how to record
3 min
Notes are a tool for the future, to remember the past. Decide as a group if someone will take notes or make drawings, or if you’ll make an audio or video recording. We recommend that each member take notes on what were the most important moments, statements, or questions for them—these will be helpful in the Reflections segment. Well-organized notes are really useful. Decide what you will do with the notes: Will they be shared with the group or kept private, will someone keep them all, under what circumstances could they be shared outside the group (or not at all)?
Experiment with pronouns
3 min
In Hologram events and workshops, we often use the pronoun “we” when we would usually say “I.” First, it causes everyone to slow down when they speak. The more we practice it, the more we observe that saying “we” instead of “I” creates a sense of solidarity in the group -- we aren’t talking about “your” health, but “our” health -- because we know that our health and liberation is bound up in one another’s! Try it and see how it affects your group dynamic.
Define and determine roles
3 min
Explain the role of the hologram and the role of the triangle members. In a triangle, one person generally asks questions about the hologram’s physical health, one about social health, and one about mental/emotional health. Decide as a group who will ask what questions. Sometimes it’s easiest for the hologram to determine the roles ahead of time, with the option for people to change their roles once things get going.
PART TWO
Stuck dance
10 min
The hologram and the triangles all participate in this, with the hologram going last. One at a time, each person positions themselves so they can be seen by the others. They imagine a situation in their life where they feel stuck. They then make a “sculpture” of that feeling with their body and hold it for five seconds. After they come back to the camera, each of the others makes a one or two sentence comment describing what they observed, without any analysis. For example, “I noticed that the sculpture was very soft on the top and very tense on the bottom.”
You can also adapt the stuck dance to meet abilities and comfort levels of your group–some people do the stuck dance with only their hand, or with sound. We are always looking for new ideas that promote intimacy, connection, and humour.
Mark the task
5 min
The hologram states what they want out of the meeting, including what type of feeling they want to produce for themselves and the group, and what situation they want to talk about. Try to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Meetings can be upbeat, fun, focused, and they can provide energy and positivity if you decide to use them that way. If you want to dive deep, or dig up something heavy, be up-front about it with your triangle team so they can prepare.
Asking questions
45 min
This is the longest segment of the meeting. The triangle members start by asking questions about what the hologram mentioned when they marked the task, or what came up in their stuck dance. This can be awkward at first—that’s okay! You can also ask basic questions to get started, because it’s hard to know what the right catalyst for conversation will be. The triangle members don’t need to rotate neatly; follow up questions are welcome. And over time, it becomes normal for the triangle members to ask questions outside of their assigned listening ‘areas’ (social, physical, mental/emotional), as long as it doesn't feel like some part of the hologram is being forgotten. (It can be so easy to narrow down a focus to one problem, like money, and forget about the body, for instance.) It’s good to ask follow-up questions, and it’s okay if the questions don’t lead to a clear conversation, or if there are no apparent solutions. Questioning simply helps participants explore the hologram's experience without having a goal of changing or fixing anything; it develops question asking skills and helps people learn more about each other.
PART THREE
Reflections
10 min
Start this segment if it feels like enough questions have been asked, or if there’s a natural pause in conversation, or if you’ve run out of time. Each member of the triangle (and the hologram as well) describes what they felt were the most important moments in the conversation. What gave you goosebumps? What felt familiar? What wouldn’t you want to forget? This is a chance to feel solidarity with the hologram, as the triangle reveals that some of the feelings and experiences described in the session are things they find familiar. It can be such a relief to feel like you are not alone!
Feedback
15 min
Take five minutes to write down some feedback for the hologram (the hologram can give themselves feedback too). Feedback is not advice. Instead, it is based on the observations that happened within the session. The feedback can include:
1. Patterns: Mention if you noticed a pattern in the language or behaviour of the hologram. Just describing the pattern is enough. No analysis necessary.
2.Wishes: Make a wish for the hologram based on what you learned. What do you hope for them? Detailed wishes are the best.
3.Provocation: Give the hologram a prompt: “what if you were to...”
Closing/Check-ins
10 min
You can create a closing ritual to make sure there is clarity, closure, and peace in the group. This could be a breathing, movement, or listening exercise. One person has invented an UNstuck dance that usually involves everyone dancing and shaking together. Afterwards, discuss how everyone is feeling after the session. What are they going to do after the call or gathering? Do we want to do this again? This may be a time to decide on next steps.
Follow-up
Decide who will write a follow-up email. This could include a summary of the meeting, an invitation to plan the next one, a list of questions to think about before then, or the start of a conversation about how the group would like to move forward.
Next, if you are a human but you want to make a hologram for a plant, animal, coffee table or other non-human person:
The Hologram is a technology made by humans, for humans who are living in late-stage capitalism on a planet that is being burned by the human addiction to capitalism. Out of desperation, regret, and boredom with the ways of most humans, many humans have begun to expand their sense of who their comrades are on the planet. I get it, humans are pretty difficult, and so it feels urgent to escape the utter loneliness of being friends and family with only other humans. In that spirit of angsty exploration and curiosity we've experimented with what it means to do Holograms with more-than-humans. When I say more than humans, I mean olive trees, glaciers and cats.
A few years ago, I was in Puglia, where a type of bacteria had spread and killed hundreds or 1000s of very old olive trees. The olive trees looked like ancient members of my family, and I spent as much time as possible walking and talking with them. I asked three of my friends who are humans, to try to do a Hologram with one of the trees, the tree that caught my eye the most.
Instead of having one human asking social questions, one human asking physical questions and one person asking mental and emotional questions, we divided our roles into the following:
One person sensed the tree through touch.
One person paid attention to the sounds around and in the tree.
One person tried to look at as much of the tree as possible.
And I watched the humans and the tree interacting.
Instead of asking questions with words, we aimed to sense things about the tree, and we did that while simultaneously moving around the tree together and then separate for about 15 minutes. After that, we sat around the tree and we reflected back to the tree what we felt, using words in the English language, thoughts, or non-verbal bodily noises and movements. We gave the feedback by sharing our bodies somewhere in and around the tree's vicinity, trying to interact with the tree in a way that might be a gift to the tree. Someone peed on the very dry ground, someone hugged the tree, and I don't remember what the last person did.
My experience doing a Hologram for an olive tree was that, as humans, we're pretty self-centered. I don't think we could really make contact with the tree on the tree's terms. And I don't think we can really do The Hologram for a tree that didn't ask us to do it, because the most basic premise of the protocol is that the one who's receiving the attention and care has requested it. This seemed like a process that was more for the humans who are offering the attention and desiring a connection, than for the tree itself. It wasn't unmagical, but I don't know if the tree experienced the magic.
Now that I'm saying this, I feel a little bit cynical. If I granted the tree more power in my imagination, I could also tell a story that the tree invited us there that day. What if, when I was walking by that tree, they had been convincing me to give them attention? I could have an even wilder premise and believe that the tree had ordered me to spend much of my life organizing The Hologram so that humans would stop being so pent up and self-centred, and finally pay attention to the trees, especially this one. I have no idea if this Hologram worked, but if I was to do this again, I would probably do it the same way.
Original Hologram text is from a forthcoming book called DO IT ANYWAY published by Thick Press.
Cassie Thornton is an artist and recovering individualist who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity with her friends. For work and for fun Cassie and crew has started an international conspiracy of anti-capitalist care, opened a social clinic disguised as a bar in Berlin, invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service, hypnotized hedge fund managers, dressed up as an elder to attend tech conferences. She is the author of The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, (Vagabonds, 2020).
BY CASSIE THORNTON
The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced by people from beds and couches around the world. It is a practice that anyone can use. Anyone? Who counts as anyone? Who else would like to use it? Is this a tool that can be used by people other than humans? By people who are more than humans, like cats or olive trees or your coffee table? In the hologram community we often say that you should experience the hologram protocol before you try to adapt it. So below you will find a manual for how to do the hologram among other humans first. After you try it, we think you can adapt it to use it with ANY one person, no matter what type of being they are.
First, how it works for humans:
The goal of the project is to produce stability for the people who use it. This protocol, when done regularly with focus, produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for, and supporting while being supported, in the long term, from people you know. When you practice it, you are part of building a network of solidarity and trust, outside of profit-driven or otherwise broken institutions. It is not mysterious, nor is it magic. This stability comes from being supported and knowing your friends are supported but not feeling that all that support is your personal responsibility or is coming from a place fuelled by capital and exploitation. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers can and will survive the very scary ends of capitalism together with their communities, and these communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us.
The Hologram comes from the work produced at the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is one of about sixty clinics that opened in Greece during their financial crisis (approximately 2008-2015) and a migrant crisis. At the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, where they were already offering free care, they were also interested in offering care that was better than you would get when you normally went to a traditional doctor, where and when the patient had very little power or agency. Specifically, some members of the clinic team were trying to experiment with how to produce care without the hierarchy that exists between caregivers and care receivers.
When a person came into the clinic, they were no longer referred to as a patient. Instead, they were called an incomer. This change in vocabulary tried to minimize the difference in power between, say, the doctor and the person receiving care. The person receiving care is simply coming in from outside, and that's the only difference.
In the Integrative Model, which was the clinic's particular experiment that most influenced The Hologram protocol, the incomer would be seen by a social worker, a therapist, and a general practitioner. All three of these people would ask the incomer questions. The doctor would ask about the body and provide a physical checkup. The social worker might ask about the incomer's financial situation, their work conditions, and their housing. The therapist might ask about the incomer's feelings, their dreams, and their ideas. Each of these care providers could see the questions and answers of the others.
Frosso Moureli, one person who helped develop the Integrative Model, told us that when she was acting as a therapist alongside a social worker and a doctor, she began to see the incomers as holograms–instead of flat pieces of paper–because she could see all their dimensions. That's where we get our unconventional title for this mutual aid project.
The Hologram is a different version of the integrative model, done among friends, without experts. We discovered this mutation many years ago in the US, when a few different groups attempted to repurpose the Integrative Model within the cut- throat conditions of the US. This meant that we needed to translate their project without money, without experts or expertise, and without physical space. What was developed is The Hologram protocol as described below.
In The Hologram, we refer to the person called the incomer in the Integrative Model in the Social Solidarity Clinic as the hologram. This person invites three people who they know to meet with them regularly and ask them questions. One person asks them questions about their mental and emotional health, including feelings and moods, ideas and anxieties, dreams and beliefs. Another friend asks them questions about their social health, including their roommates and family, their relationships, their work, their finances, their relationship to hierarchies, conflicts, and larger social systems. A third friend asks them questions about their physical health, including their body, food, medicine, their home, the planet. These three people meet with the hologram in one group, and all three ask questions in a structured ritual described below that takes between 90 minutes and two hours. It can happen in person or online.
The hologram is an expert about their own care. Nobody knows how it feels to be them. No one knows what helps or hurts but them, what they've lived through, or what makes them healthy or sick. We also see the hologram as a teacher. Asking for help, being vulnerable, and articulating needs is very unsexy in any of our societies. The hologram shows the other people around them that it's possible and beneficial to clearly ask for the support you need.
The people who ask questions are called triangle members. The triangle members' main job is to be openly curious, and to ask the types of questions that help the hologram speak about their pursuit of life. In this way, triangle members are not experts, and they never have to give advice. We think this should feel like a great relief. We know it's hard to resist the temptation to advise or present opinions within our questions. But the triangle members, over time, learn how to use their curiosity and question asking to provide empowering and supportive care to their hologram.
We also see triangle members as critical feelers. We take this idea from disability justice. In The Hologram protocol, triangle members are not trying to fix any problems. We don't see anyone as a sinking boat whose holes we need to fill or fix. We see each person as someone with wishes who we want to support with curiosity and focused attention. The job of being a critical feeler includes showing curiosity as you try to find out how the hologram feels and why, and to be with them in that without trying to change or fix them.
The triangle members also take notes. When you take notes throughout a session, you sometimes see a linguistic, conceptual, or behavioural pattern that recurs throughout a meeting. If you meet regularly over time, then you can see how certain words or ideas might reappear consistently in someone's life over time. These patterns are really important parts of the process of becoming someone's Living Medical Record.
In the larger project, all caretakers are cared for. The hologram's job is not to give back what they receive from their triangle members, but to ask each of them what kind of support they would like from others, and to help them get it. The hologram might then help one of their triangle members to invite three different people to support them. In this way, the practice spreads, and the hologram may sleep better knowing their friends are cared for, even if they (the hologram) cannot do it for all of them directly.
The hologram who receives support from the three triangle members also makes someone else a hologram. They do this by becoming a triangle member for someone else (outside of their triangle), along with two other people. This project is based on the idea that supporting somebody else's well-being is a top secret, highly effective medicine that anyone can do well.
About this guide (for people)
This guide is for people who want to become holograms and lead sessions where they receive support, based on the model put forth by The Hologram project. This guide will help you choose the people to be part of your triangle, and help you set up the group practice. We see this practice as something that comes from an oral tradition, so the best way to learn is from someone else. You can also start out by doing an online workshop, or talking to someone who is already in a Hologram about their experience (email cooperativespecies@gmail.com).
You can adapt the basic principles in this guide to suit your particular group. This guide is geared towards video conference meetings and in-person use.
MEETING BASICS
You should set aside around two hours for each meeting. In the following pages, there’s a sample agenda to help you plan for the flow, with detailed descriptions of each item. This can be done online or in person.
PART ONE
45 min
Tech checks
Introductions
Explain the Hologram Practice
Go over the agenda
Decide how to record
Experiment with pronouns
Define and determine roles
PART TWO
60 min
Stuck dance
Mark the task
Asking questions
PART THREE
35 min
Reflections
Feedback
Closing/check-ins
Follow-up
PART ONE
Tech Checks
5 min
If you are doing this by video conference or phone, make sure everyone’s technology is working. You’ll need to be able to see each participant’s whole body for later stages, so make sure each person’s camera is set up for that.
Introductions
15 min
Triangle participants may not know each other, so do a round of introductions. You can start with the basics—names, locations, pronouns, and “How are they?” You can also include an ice breaker question, “What’s the weather like (internal or external) where you are?”
Explain the Hologram Practice
10 min
In your own words, explain the history of The Hologram, how the process works, and why we are doing it.
Go over the agenda
3 min
You may go over the steps we describe below. It is not completely necessary, but it can be nice for people to know generally what is coming.
Decide how to record
3 min
Notes are a tool for the future, to remember the past. Decide as a group if someone will take notes or make drawings, or if you’ll make an audio or video recording. We recommend that each member take notes on what were the most important moments, statements, or questions for them—these will be helpful in the Reflections segment. Well-organized notes are really useful. Decide what you will do with the notes: Will they be shared with the group or kept private, will someone keep them all, under what circumstances could they be shared outside the group (or not at all)?
Experiment with pronouns
3 min
In Hologram events and workshops, we often use the pronoun “we” when we would usually say “I.” First, it causes everyone to slow down when they speak. The more we practice it, the more we observe that saying “we” instead of “I” creates a sense of solidarity in the group -- we aren’t talking about “your” health, but “our” health -- because we know that our health and liberation is bound up in one another’s! Try it and see how it affects your group dynamic.
Define and determine roles
3 min
Explain the role of the hologram and the role of the triangle members. In a triangle, one person generally asks questions about the hologram’s physical health, one about social health, and one about mental/emotional health. Decide as a group who will ask what questions. Sometimes it’s easiest for the hologram to determine the roles ahead of time, with the option for people to change their roles once things get going.
PART TWO
Stuck dance
10 min
The hologram and the triangles all participate in this, with the hologram going last. One at a time, each person positions themselves so they can be seen by the others. They imagine a situation in their life where they feel stuck. They then make a “sculpture” of that feeling with their body and hold it for five seconds. After they come back to the camera, each of the others makes a one or two sentence comment describing what they observed, without any analysis. For example, “I noticed that the sculpture was very soft on the top and very tense on the bottom.”
You can also adapt the stuck dance to meet abilities and comfort levels of your group–some people do the stuck dance with only their hand, or with sound. We are always looking for new ideas that promote intimacy, connection, and humour.
Mark the task
5 min
The hologram states what they want out of the meeting, including what type of feeling they want to produce for themselves and the group, and what situation they want to talk about. Try to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Meetings can be upbeat, fun, focused, and they can provide energy and positivity if you decide to use them that way. If you want to dive deep, or dig up something heavy, be up-front about it with your triangle team so they can prepare.
Asking questions
45 min
This is the longest segment of the meeting. The triangle members start by asking questions about what the hologram mentioned when they marked the task, or what came up in their stuck dance. This can be awkward at first—that’s okay! You can also ask basic questions to get started, because it’s hard to know what the right catalyst for conversation will be. The triangle members don’t need to rotate neatly; follow up questions are welcome. And over time, it becomes normal for the triangle members to ask questions outside of their assigned listening ‘areas’ (social, physical, mental/emotional), as long as it doesn't feel like some part of the hologram is being forgotten. (It can be so easy to narrow down a focus to one problem, like money, and forget about the body, for instance.) It’s good to ask follow-up questions, and it’s okay if the questions don’t lead to a clear conversation, or if there are no apparent solutions. Questioning simply helps participants explore the hologram's experience without having a goal of changing or fixing anything; it develops question asking skills and helps people learn more about each other.
PART THREE
Reflections
10 min
Start this segment if it feels like enough questions have been asked, or if there’s a natural pause in conversation, or if you’ve run out of time. Each member of the triangle (and the hologram as well) describes what they felt were the most important moments in the conversation. What gave you goosebumps? What felt familiar? What wouldn’t you want to forget? This is a chance to feel solidarity with the hologram, as the triangle reveals that some of the feelings and experiences described in the session are things they find familiar. It can be such a relief to feel like you are not alone!
Feedback
15 min
Take five minutes to write down some feedback for the hologram (the hologram can give themselves feedback too). Feedback is not advice. Instead, it is based on the observations that happened within the session. The feedback can include:
1. Patterns: Mention if you noticed a pattern in the language or behaviour of the hologram. Just describing the pattern is enough. No analysis necessary.
2.Wishes: Make a wish for the hologram based on what you learned. What do you hope for them? Detailed wishes are the best.
3.Provocation: Give the hologram a prompt: “what if you were to...”
Closing/Check-ins
10 min
You can create a closing ritual to make sure there is clarity, closure, and peace in the group. This could be a breathing, movement, or listening exercise. One person has invented an UNstuck dance that usually involves everyone dancing and shaking together. Afterwards, discuss how everyone is feeling after the session. What are they going to do after the call or gathering? Do we want to do this again? This may be a time to decide on next steps.
Follow-up
Decide who will write a follow-up email. This could include a summary of the meeting, an invitation to plan the next one, a list of questions to think about before then, or the start of a conversation about how the group would like to move forward.
Next, if you are a human but you want to make a hologram for a plant, animal, coffee table or other non-human person:
The Hologram is a technology made by humans, for humans who are living in late-stage capitalism on a planet that is being burned by the human addiction to capitalism. Out of desperation, regret, and boredom with the ways of most humans, many humans have begun to expand their sense of who their comrades are on the planet. I get it, humans are pretty difficult, and so it feels urgent to escape the utter loneliness of being friends and family with only other humans. In that spirit of angsty exploration and curiosity we've experimented with what it means to do Holograms with more-than-humans. When I say more than humans, I mean olive trees, glaciers and cats.
A few years ago, I was in Puglia, where a type of bacteria had spread and killed hundreds or 1000s of very old olive trees. The olive trees looked like ancient members of my family, and I spent as much time as possible walking and talking with them. I asked three of my friends who are humans, to try to do a Hologram with one of the trees, the tree that caught my eye the most.
Instead of having one human asking social questions, one human asking physical questions and one person asking mental and emotional questions, we divided our roles into the following:
One person sensed the tree through touch.
One person paid attention to the sounds around and in the tree.
One person tried to look at as much of the tree as possible.
And I watched the humans and the tree interacting.
Instead of asking questions with words, we aimed to sense things about the tree, and we did that while simultaneously moving around the tree together and then separate for about 15 minutes. After that, we sat around the tree and we reflected back to the tree what we felt, using words in the English language, thoughts, or non-verbal bodily noises and movements. We gave the feedback by sharing our bodies somewhere in and around the tree's vicinity, trying to interact with the tree in a way that might be a gift to the tree. Someone peed on the very dry ground, someone hugged the tree, and I don't remember what the last person did.
My experience doing a Hologram for an olive tree was that, as humans, we're pretty self-centered. I don't think we could really make contact with the tree on the tree's terms. And I don't think we can really do The Hologram for a tree that didn't ask us to do it, because the most basic premise of the protocol is that the one who's receiving the attention and care has requested it. This seemed like a process that was more for the humans who are offering the attention and desiring a connection, than for the tree itself. It wasn't unmagical, but I don't know if the tree experienced the magic.
Now that I'm saying this, I feel a little bit cynical. If I granted the tree more power in my imagination, I could also tell a story that the tree invited us there that day. What if, when I was walking by that tree, they had been convincing me to give them attention? I could have an even wilder premise and believe that the tree had ordered me to spend much of my life organizing The Hologram so that humans would stop being so pent up and self-centred, and finally pay attention to the trees, especially this one. I have no idea if this Hologram worked, but if I was to do this again, I would probably do it the same way.
Original Hologram text is from a forthcoming book called DO IT ANYWAY published by Thick Press.
The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced by people from beds and couches around the world. It is a practice that anyone can use. Anyone? Who counts as anyone? Who else would like to use it? Is this a tool that can be used by people other than humans? By people who are more than humans, like cats or olive trees or your coffee table? In the hologram community we often say that you should experience the hologram protocol before you try to adapt it. So below you will find a manual for how to do the hologram among other humans first. After you try it, we think you can adapt it to use it with ANY one person, no matter what type of being they are.
First, how it works for humans:
The goal of the project is to produce stability for the people who use it. This protocol, when done regularly with focus, produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for, and supporting while being supported, in the long term, from people you know. When you practice it, you are part of building a network of solidarity and trust, outside of profit-driven or otherwise broken institutions. It is not mysterious, nor is it magic. This stability comes from being supported and knowing your friends are supported but not feeling that all that support is your personal responsibility or is coming from a place fuelled by capital and exploitation. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers can and will survive the very scary ends of capitalism together with their communities, and these communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us.
The Hologram comes from the work produced at the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, in Greece. This is one of about sixty clinics that opened in Greece during their financial crisis (approximately 2008-2015) and a migrant crisis. At the Social Solidarity Clinic of Thessaloniki, where they were already offering free care, they were also interested in offering care that was better than you would get when you normally went to a traditional doctor, where and when the patient had very little power or agency. Specifically, some members of the clinic team were trying to experiment with how to produce care without the hierarchy that exists between caregivers and care receivers.
When a person came into the clinic, they were no longer referred to as a patient. Instead, they were called an incomer. This change in vocabulary tried to minimize the difference in power between, say, the doctor and the person receiving care. The person receiving care is simply coming in from outside, and that's the only difference.
In the Integrative Model, which was the clinic's particular experiment that most influenced The Hologram protocol, the incomer would be seen by a social worker, a therapist, and a general practitioner. All three of these people would ask the incomer questions. The doctor would ask about the body and provide a physical checkup. The social worker might ask about the incomer's financial situation, their work conditions, and their housing. The therapist might ask about the incomer's feelings, their dreams, and their ideas. Each of these care providers could see the questions and answers of the others.
Frosso Moureli, one person who helped develop the Integrative Model, told us that when she was acting as a therapist alongside a social worker and a doctor, she began to see the incomers as holograms–instead of flat pieces of paper–because she could see all their dimensions. That's where we get our unconventional title for this mutual aid project.
The Hologram is a different version of the integrative model, done among friends, without experts. We discovered this mutation many years ago in the US, when a few different groups attempted to repurpose the Integrative Model within the cut- throat conditions of the US. This meant that we needed to translate their project without money, without experts or expertise, and without physical space. What was developed is The Hologram protocol as described below.
In The Hologram, we refer to the person called the incomer in the Integrative Model in the Social Solidarity Clinic as the hologram. This person invites three people who they know to meet with them regularly and ask them questions. One person asks them questions about their mental and emotional health, including feelings and moods, ideas and anxieties, dreams and beliefs. Another friend asks them questions about their social health, including their roommates and family, their relationships, their work, their finances, their relationship to hierarchies, conflicts, and larger social systems. A third friend asks them questions about their physical health, including their body, food, medicine, their home, the planet. These three people meet with the hologram in one group, and all three ask questions in a structured ritual described below that takes between 90 minutes and two hours. It can happen in person or online.
The hologram is an expert about their own care. Nobody knows how it feels to be them. No one knows what helps or hurts but them, what they've lived through, or what makes them healthy or sick. We also see the hologram as a teacher. Asking for help, being vulnerable, and articulating needs is very unsexy in any of our societies. The hologram shows the other people around them that it's possible and beneficial to clearly ask for the support you need.
The people who ask questions are called triangle members. The triangle members' main job is to be openly curious, and to ask the types of questions that help the hologram speak about their pursuit of life. In this way, triangle members are not experts, and they never have to give advice. We think this should feel like a great relief. We know it's hard to resist the temptation to advise or present opinions within our questions. But the triangle members, over time, learn how to use their curiosity and question asking to provide empowering and supportive care to their hologram.
We also see triangle members as critical feelers. We take this idea from disability justice. In The Hologram protocol, triangle members are not trying to fix any problems. We don't see anyone as a sinking boat whose holes we need to fill or fix. We see each person as someone with wishes who we want to support with curiosity and focused attention. The job of being a critical feeler includes showing curiosity as you try to find out how the hologram feels and why, and to be with them in that without trying to change or fix them.
The triangle members also take notes. When you take notes throughout a session, you sometimes see a linguistic, conceptual, or behavioural pattern that recurs throughout a meeting. If you meet regularly over time, then you can see how certain words or ideas might reappear consistently in someone's life over time. These patterns are really important parts of the process of becoming someone's Living Medical Record.
In the larger project, all caretakers are cared for. The hologram's job is not to give back what they receive from their triangle members, but to ask each of them what kind of support they would like from others, and to help them get it. The hologram might then help one of their triangle members to invite three different people to support them. In this way, the practice spreads, and the hologram may sleep better knowing their friends are cared for, even if they (the hologram) cannot do it for all of them directly.
The hologram who receives support from the three triangle members also makes someone else a hologram. They do this by becoming a triangle member for someone else (outside of their triangle), along with two other people. This project is based on the idea that supporting somebody else's well-being is a top secret, highly effective medicine that anyone can do well.
About this guide (for people)
This guide is for people who want to become holograms and lead sessions where they receive support, based on the model put forth by The Hologram project. This guide will help you choose the people to be part of your triangle, and help you set up the group practice. We see this practice as something that comes from an oral tradition, so the best way to learn is from someone else. You can also start out by doing an online workshop, or talking to someone who is already in a Hologram about their experience (email cooperativespecies@gmail.com).
You can adapt the basic principles in this guide to suit your particular group. This guide is geared towards video conference meetings and in-person use.
MEETING BASICS
You should set aside around two hours for each meeting. In the following pages, there’s a sample agenda to help you plan for the flow, with detailed descriptions of each item. This can be done online or in person.
PART ONE
45 min
Tech checks
Introductions
Explain the Hologram Practice
Go over the agenda
Decide how to record
Experiment with pronouns
Define and determine roles
PART TWO
60 min
Stuck dance
Mark the task
Asking questions
PART THREE
35 min
Reflections
Feedback
Closing/check-ins
Follow-up
PART ONE
Tech Checks
5 min
If you are doing this by video conference or phone, make sure everyone’s technology is working. You’ll need to be able to see each participant’s whole body for later stages, so make sure each person’s camera is set up for that.
Introductions
15 min
Triangle participants may not know each other, so do a round of introductions. You can start with the basics—names, locations, pronouns, and “How are they?” You can also include an ice breaker question, “What’s the weather like (internal or external) where you are?”
Explain the Hologram Practice
10 min
In your own words, explain the history of The Hologram, how the process works, and why we are doing it.
Go over the agenda
3 min
You may go over the steps we describe below. It is not completely necessary, but it can be nice for people to know generally what is coming.
Decide how to record
3 min
Notes are a tool for the future, to remember the past. Decide as a group if someone will take notes or make drawings, or if you’ll make an audio or video recording. We recommend that each member take notes on what were the most important moments, statements, or questions for them—these will be helpful in the Reflections segment. Well-organized notes are really useful. Decide what you will do with the notes: Will they be shared with the group or kept private, will someone keep them all, under what circumstances could they be shared outside the group (or not at all)?
Experiment with pronouns
3 min
In Hologram events and workshops, we often use the pronoun “we” when we would usually say “I.” First, it causes everyone to slow down when they speak. The more we practice it, the more we observe that saying “we” instead of “I” creates a sense of solidarity in the group -- we aren’t talking about “your” health, but “our” health -- because we know that our health and liberation is bound up in one another’s! Try it and see how it affects your group dynamic.
Define and determine roles
3 min
Explain the role of the hologram and the role of the triangle members. In a triangle, one person generally asks questions about the hologram’s physical health, one about social health, and one about mental/emotional health. Decide as a group who will ask what questions. Sometimes it’s easiest for the hologram to determine the roles ahead of time, with the option for people to change their roles once things get going.
PART TWO
Stuck dance
10 min
The hologram and the triangles all participate in this, with the hologram going last. One at a time, each person positions themselves so they can be seen by the others. They imagine a situation in their life where they feel stuck. They then make a “sculpture” of that feeling with their body and hold it for five seconds. After they come back to the camera, each of the others makes a one or two sentence comment describing what they observed, without any analysis. For example, “I noticed that the sculpture was very soft on the top and very tense on the bottom.”
You can also adapt the stuck dance to meet abilities and comfort levels of your group–some people do the stuck dance with only their hand, or with sound. We are always looking for new ideas that promote intimacy, connection, and humour.
Mark the task
5 min
The hologram states what they want out of the meeting, including what type of feeling they want to produce for themselves and the group, and what situation they want to talk about. Try to set expectations at the beginning of every meeting. Meetings can be upbeat, fun, focused, and they can provide energy and positivity if you decide to use them that way. If you want to dive deep, or dig up something heavy, be up-front about it with your triangle team so they can prepare.
Asking questions
45 min
This is the longest segment of the meeting. The triangle members start by asking questions about what the hologram mentioned when they marked the task, or what came up in their stuck dance. This can be awkward at first—that’s okay! You can also ask basic questions to get started, because it’s hard to know what the right catalyst for conversation will be. The triangle members don’t need to rotate neatly; follow up questions are welcome. And over time, it becomes normal for the triangle members to ask questions outside of their assigned listening ‘areas’ (social, physical, mental/emotional), as long as it doesn't feel like some part of the hologram is being forgotten. (It can be so easy to narrow down a focus to one problem, like money, and forget about the body, for instance.) It’s good to ask follow-up questions, and it’s okay if the questions don’t lead to a clear conversation, or if there are no apparent solutions. Questioning simply helps participants explore the hologram's experience without having a goal of changing or fixing anything; it develops question asking skills and helps people learn more about each other.
PART THREE
Reflections
10 min
Start this segment if it feels like enough questions have been asked, or if there’s a natural pause in conversation, or if you’ve run out of time. Each member of the triangle (and the hologram as well) describes what they felt were the most important moments in the conversation. What gave you goosebumps? What felt familiar? What wouldn’t you want to forget? This is a chance to feel solidarity with the hologram, as the triangle reveals that some of the feelings and experiences described in the session are things they find familiar. It can be such a relief to feel like you are not alone!
Feedback
15 min
Take five minutes to write down some feedback for the hologram (the hologram can give themselves feedback too). Feedback is not advice. Instead, it is based on the observations that happened within the session. The feedback can include:
1. Patterns: Mention if you noticed a pattern in the language or behaviour of the hologram. Just describing the pattern is enough. No analysis necessary.
2.Wishes: Make a wish for the hologram based on what you learned. What do you hope for them? Detailed wishes are the best.
3.Provocation: Give the hologram a prompt: “what if you were to...”
Closing/Check-ins
10 min
You can create a closing ritual to make sure there is clarity, closure, and peace in the group. This could be a breathing, movement, or listening exercise. One person has invented an UNstuck dance that usually involves everyone dancing and shaking together. Afterwards, discuss how everyone is feeling after the session. What are they going to do after the call or gathering? Do we want to do this again? This may be a time to decide on next steps.
Follow-up
Decide who will write a follow-up email. This could include a summary of the meeting, an invitation to plan the next one, a list of questions to think about before then, or the start of a conversation about how the group would like to move forward.
Next, if you are a human but you want to make a hologram for a plant, animal, coffee table or other non-human person:
The Hologram is a technology made by humans, for humans who are living in late-stage capitalism on a planet that is being burned by the human addiction to capitalism. Out of desperation, regret, and boredom with the ways of most humans, many humans have begun to expand their sense of who their comrades are on the planet. I get it, humans are pretty difficult, and so it feels urgent to escape the utter loneliness of being friends and family with only other humans. In that spirit of angsty exploration and curiosity we've experimented with what it means to do Holograms with more-than-humans. When I say more than humans, I mean olive trees, glaciers and cats.
A few years ago, I was in Puglia, where a type of bacteria had spread and killed hundreds or 1000s of very old olive trees. The olive trees looked like ancient members of my family, and I spent as much time as possible walking and talking with them. I asked three of my friends who are humans, to try to do a Hologram with one of the trees, the tree that caught my eye the most.
Instead of having one human asking social questions, one human asking physical questions and one person asking mental and emotional questions, we divided our roles into the following:
One person sensed the tree through touch.
One person paid attention to the sounds around and in the tree.
One person tried to look at as much of the tree as possible.
And I watched the humans and the tree interacting.
Instead of asking questions with words, we aimed to sense things about the tree, and we did that while simultaneously moving around the tree together and then separate for about 15 minutes. After that, we sat around the tree and we reflected back to the tree what we felt, using words in the English language, thoughts, or non-verbal bodily noises and movements. We gave the feedback by sharing our bodies somewhere in and around the tree's vicinity, trying to interact with the tree in a way that might be a gift to the tree. Someone peed on the very dry ground, someone hugged the tree, and I don't remember what the last person did.
My experience doing a Hologram for an olive tree was that, as humans, we're pretty self-centered. I don't think we could really make contact with the tree on the tree's terms. And I don't think we can really do The Hologram for a tree that didn't ask us to do it, because the most basic premise of the protocol is that the one who's receiving the attention and care has requested it. This seemed like a process that was more for the humans who are offering the attention and desiring a connection, than for the tree itself. It wasn't unmagical, but I don't know if the tree experienced the magic.
Now that I'm saying this, I feel a little bit cynical. If I granted the tree more power in my imagination, I could also tell a story that the tree invited us there that day. What if, when I was walking by that tree, they had been convincing me to give them attention? I could have an even wilder premise and believe that the tree had ordered me to spend much of my life organizing The Hologram so that humans would stop being so pent up and self-centred, and finally pay attention to the trees, especially this one. I have no idea if this Hologram worked, but if I was to do this again, I would probably do it the same way.
Original Hologram text is from a forthcoming book called DO IT ANYWAY published by Thick Press.
Cassie Thornton is an artist and recovering individualist who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity with her friends. For work and for fun Cassie and crew has started an international conspiracy of anti-capitalist care, opened a social clinic disguised as a bar in Berlin, invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service, hypnotized hedge fund managers, dressed up as an elder to attend tech conferences. She is the author of The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, (Vagabonds, 2020).