“My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant from plant to galaxy.” – Ana Mendieta
The in-between. A space-no-space where everything has space to be. Where binarism, duty, and accomplishing disappear. Where actions like transition, waiting, taking care of, attention, poetry, listening, and resting are common. Where bodies mix and/or exchange places among themselves to feel, perhaps understand each other. Where time is not counted, and a faraway place, maybe from the past or another dimension, is present and about to create and become the future with us.
For this Littoral Listening session, we will explore and imagine being in this temporal space of queerness and color within technology, voices, and layers of sounds, as well as listen to the openness and love that lies and emerges in-between daily — sometimes taken for granted — actions.
WHEN: Tuesday 13 December 3:30 – 5 pm
Where: Zoom
CONVENED BY: Irene Trejo (Mexico)
READINGS (TO READ OUT LOUD AND LISTEN TO TOGETHER)
1. Excerpt from “Interfacing Materials: An Experiment with Self-Organized Writing” essay written by Ana Paula Silva & Matheus Ferreira. Published on July 18, 2022, in &&&, the publishing platform operated by The New Centre for Research & Practice.
2. Quipu Menstrual/ Menstrual Quipu from KUNTUR KO (2012) by Cecilia Vicuña. In this set of songs/poems Cecilia enters the space of the death of the glaciers, the slow disappearance of “agua dulce,” sweet water in the Andes and the world. She offers a prayer, a call for us to return to a relationship with water that protects its cycle from ocean to glacier and back.
The word “qon”, (also spelled kon, or con) in Quechua is water / ocean / chaos / the source of life. In Mapuche, “con” or “co” is water and the whole cycle of water from glacier to ocean. Cecilia plays as well with the Quechua word “kuntur” (“condor”), turning it into the Spanish “cordón” (“thread”). In the Andes, water and thread become the metaphor “thread of life.” Kuntur is the ancestral spirit, the guardian of the glaciers, weaving the waters as they move from glacier to ocean and back. During the ceremonial cleansing of the irrigation canals, people play a flute made from the hollow bone of the condor’s wings. Its eerie sound brings into presence the ancestral world of the true owners of water, the mountain deities.
3. Poem “Glory” by Sonia Guiñansaca, 2020. Sonia is a poet, cultural organizer, and social justice activist. As a writer and performer, they create narrative poems and essays on migration, queerness, feminism, climate change, and nostalgia.
ADDITIONAL TEXTS/AUDIOS (OPTIONAL):
1. Listen: “Existing Between” with writer Daisy Hildyard and marine microbiologist Karen Lloyd, Undead Matter Podcast (51:56 minutes). July, 2022.
2. Listen: “Soy la Mujer” a poem by Mazatec shaman and curandera Maria Sabina with English Translation. Maria Sabina lived between life and death. She lived in the Sierra Mazateca in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Her healing sacred mushroom ceremonies, called veladas, were based on the use of a sacred mushroom important to the Mazatecs to cross to other realms to find answers and heal.
3. Listen: The invisible: Rosa Menkman & Helga Timko, Arts at Cern Podcast (27:16 minutes) June, 2022.
4. Read “Mothering an Archipelago of Hope” by Holly Bynoe, published in Terrremoto Magazine, June 2021. Holly Bynoe reflects on the expansion of Obeah, a belief system of the Caribbean Black communities, and its relationship, the in-between women and their ancestral heritage.https://terremoto.mx/en/revista/maternar-un-archipielago-de-esperanza/
5. Listen to “Screen eats fire” a poem by Mexican poet Lucia Hinojosa Gaxiola.
The FEELed lab 