Gesturing Towards Zero
Towards Braiding is an artistic program led by Elwood Jimmy & Vanessa Andreotti and supported by the Musagetes Foundation and the ArtsEverywhere Festival. Interwoven throughout the first three days of the festival and culminating in this full day of conversations on Saturday are a series of experiments, entanglements, workshops, conversations, and art exhibitions that gesture towards more ethical and rigorous relationships and collaborations, and yet-unimaginable wiser futures with each other and the Earth.
See below for the timeline of events and full videos of each conversation. All events are free, and lunch is provided. Come for the whole day or join us for part. We are working to make our events as accessible as possible with access volunteers onsite and an access guide to accompany the festival. See https://bit.ly/2QNAj7A for details.
CONVERSATION: Threading Towards Zero
Haruko Okano, leslie mccue, Lisa Hirmer & Taqralik Partridge
10:45 am—12:30 pm
Over the last year, Musagetes supported the launch of the Thread Residencies, a program supporting artists who have, within their respective communities and contexts, demonstrated a lifelong commitment towards cultivating accountable, ethical, and rigorous practices and sensibilities around different ways of being and knowing, and interrupting and moving away from harmful colonial habits of being and colonial entitlements, as well as holding space for complexity and multiple perspectives and layers around shared global challenges. This conversation will focus on the learning and impacts on and of their practices over the last year through the Thread Residencies program.
BOOK LAUNCH AND CONVERSATION: Cash Ahenakew
Towards Scarring Our Collective Soul Wound
1pm—1:45pm
Using the Sun Dance ceremony to centre this new book, Cash Ahenakew gestures to alternative forms of healing that engage an understanding of our separation from the wider metabolism of which we form a part. Towards Scarring Our Collective Soul Wound is the second book of the Towards Braiding series, part of an ongoing collaborative process initiated by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti, and hosted and published by Musagetes, addressing the difficulties and challenges of decolonization and Indigenization.
CONVERSATION: Radiant Practices—Relationship as Centre
Sangamithra Iyer, Anu Radha Verma, Anne Riley, & Lisa Hirmer
2:15–3:45 pm
This conversation focuses on relational practices that are deeply invested in the real relationships that define who and how we are in the world. Bringing together writer Sangamithra Iyer, activist curator Anu Radha Verma and artist Anne Riley, with Thread Residency artist and moderator Lisa Hirmer, we will consider an expanded territory for creative work that stretches well past the conventional limits of individual projects and careers where what we do exists in relation with so much beyond itself. With the wisdom of three practitioners who centre relationship not as an addendum to their work but as their work itself, this conversation will be an opportunity to celebrate radiant practices of meaningful, deliberate care.