We find ourselves in a world reeling from the myriad changes the pandemic has wrought on our political, social, and educational landscapes. In this keynote, Gretchen Coombs asks how we, as scholars, artists, designers, critics, and curators, should position ourselves. Her address will investigate a range of relations that occur across art and life and pose a series of questions. From activism to social practice, to socially engaged art, and the structures and forms of care in art, it will reflect on the complexities of these relations and how we understand them in our lives and our practices. How do we forge the forms of togetherness that resist the codified structures that at times enable them to exist: the conference, the degree, the publishing contract? How can art manoeuvre through persistent structural obstacles? How can it avoid the lure of reification and remain a powerful part of culture – and how do we advocate for practices that bask in the glory of their own indeterminacy as we weave the ineffable through our art experiences and our relationships?