“When a crack appears in the mighty wall, the only thing scarier than letting it grow unbridled, the only thing more worrisome than allowing it breathe, is sealing it up – for the thesis of the crack is to call into question the form we’ve assumed, the nobilities we cherish, the stories we assume to be true. The crack is the monster’s gift – a reminder that the fixity of the postures we take on often prove more dangerous than the threats we presume to withstand.”

Bayo Akomolafe, 2023

I’m interested in how we can live most soulfully and most joyfully together. I’m interested in the role that culture broadly, and artists in particular, play in supporting or eroding the conditions for this: papering over or investigating the cracks that appear in our everyday performances of modern life.

My projects usually start from my own ‘monster’s gifts’. The long slow disturbance of grief after losing my dad at 12. The wild unreality of becoming a father myself. The moments of transcendent joyful play until we lose a sense of up and down. Uncovering the patterns of intergenerational trauma encoded in my body.

My work is collaborative, relational and invitational. I aim to make work that allows people a relationship with their own ‘monster’s gifts’. Work that offers the possibility to transform those gifts from private, personal issues (as modernity would encourage us to relate to them) into something messier, more connecting, more collective and ultimately, more joyful.

As an artist, I work across disciplines: social practice, visual art, storytelling, ecology,  photography, textiles, video and more. My work often begins with a question and unfolds unpredictably into something that a moment unexpectedly calls for — a film school in a depressed former mining town, a zine born from time spent sitting with trees, sci-fi films made by the broken hearted.

Reader - I hope we can explore some cracks together sometime soon.

Jake Garber co-founded collective imagination organisations W.I.G.S. with Jo Harrington and Canopy with Hannah McDowall. He devised and taught the Society and Imagination course as part of the Design MA at Goldsmiths. Jake is currently a co-host of the Collective Imagination Practice Community with more than 900 members worldwide.