Image courtesy of Abrons Arts Center, NYC and the artist. Photo credit Maria Baranova.
Join Emily Johnson and IV Castellanos at Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio as we build a Kinstillatory Fire and collectively think, dream, and activate community futures through forms of dance, song, feasting, and witnessing.
Building the fire itself is a process; a practice of provocation; an offering of seed, of vessel, of protection, of becomingness; a way to bring us out of the catastrophe of now. Fireside, we will gather to think and practice, as artists and community leaders articulate thoughts on protection, our collective futures, and other possibilities.
“Fire’s capacity as a kin-making technology resides in the ephemeral effect, the pauses and breaks of the in-between spaces created by the flames.” (Emily Johnson & Karyn Recollet, 2019).
The evening is presented as part of GATHER: Conversations Led by Black & Indigenous Changemakers, co-produced by Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio. Revenue from the program will equally support Learning & Public Programs at both Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio. Patrons are highly encouraged to carpool to Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio.
ABOUT EMILY JOHNSON / CATALYST
Emily Johnson / Catalyst is based on Mannahatta in Lenapehoking. We work to pay respect to Lenape homeland, people and ancestors past, present, and future by organizing with communities from the Lenape diaspora to build pathways for Lenapeyok return. We have been taught to name Lenape Nations and say cama’i to our relatives from Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, OK; Delaware Nation of Oklahoma in Anadarko, OK; Stockbridge-Munsee and Mohican Community in Wisconsin; Moravian Delaware of the Thames in Ontario, Canada; Munsee-Delaware Nation at Munceytown in Ontario, Canada; Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario, Canada. We strive to be in good relations with our kin—human and more than human—and in effort to support growing kinstillatory relations and sovereign, liberated futures we are anti-colonial and abolitionist in all capacities. We are committed to on-the-ground water and land protection, consistent decolonization work, and Land Back. Quyanaqvaa-lli elpeni to all Sovereign Nations, Indigneous and First Nations people who live in relation to and from Lenapehoking and upon whose lands we work and tour.
ABOUT GATHER: CONVERSATIONS LED BY BLACK & INDIGENOUS CHANGEMAKERS
GATHER spotlights the voices of BIPOC scholars, artists, and leaders, providing lessons on Black & Indigenous histories & traditions, and strategies for moving forward together. The program is co-produced by Guild Hall and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio. Founded by Jeremy Dennis, artist and tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, Ma’s House is a communal art space that includes a residency program for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), an art studio, and library. The series was awarded a 2022 Engaging Communities Award of Merit from the Museum Association of New York.
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IV Castellanos
IV Castellanos is a Queer Trans* Bolivian-Indige/American, a water-protector-in-training and an abstract performance artist and sculptor who creates solo, collaborative, and group-task vignette performances. They construct/deconstruct all their own objects in their performances, and/or in shared process and practice with their collaborators. In addition, they have a studio practice and create stand alone sculptures not meant to be activated by performances.
Photo: NinaIii
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Emily Johnson
Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. She is a land and water protector and an activist for justice, sovereignty and well-being. A Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, she is based in Lenapehoking / New York City. Emily is of the Yup’ik Nation, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as portals and care processions, they engage audienceship within and through space, time, and environment—interacting with a place’s architecture, peoples, history and role in building futures. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present and future.
Her choreography and gatherings have been presented across the United States and Australia. Recently she choreographed the Santa Fe Opera production of Doctor Atomic, directed by Peter Sellars. Her large-scale project, Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars is an all-night outdoor performance gathering taking place amongst 84 community-hand-made quilts. It premiered in Lenapehoking (NYC) in 2017, and was presented in Zhigaagoong (Chicago) in 2019. Her new work in development, Being Future Being, considers future creation stories and present joy.
Emily’s writing has been published and commissioned by ArtsLink Australia, unMagazine, Dance Research Journal (University of Cambridge Press); SFMOMA; Transmotion Journal, University of Kent; Movement Research Journal; Pew Center for Arts and Heritage; and the compilation Imagined Theaters (Routledge), edited by Daniel Sack. She was an advisory committee member for Creative Time’s 10th Anniversary Summit and a Phase One working group member of Creating New Futures. She serves on the advisory committee for Advancing Indigenous Performance Initiative of Western Arts Alliance, The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and the Native American Arts Program Expansion Committee for Idyllwild Arts. Emily is the Pueblo Arts Collaborative Diplomat at Santa Fe Opera, and a lead organiser of First Nations Dialogues.
Emily hosts monthly ceremonial fires on the Lower East Side of Mannahatta in partnership with Abrons Arts Center. She is part of a US based advisory group—including Reuben Roqueni, Ed Bourgeois, Lori Pourier, Ronee Penoi, and Vallejo Gantner—who are developing a First Nations Performing Arts Network.
An urban Cree scholar/artist/and writer, Karyn Recollet’s work focuses on relationality and care as both an analytic and technology for Indigenous movement-based forms of inquiry within urban spaces. Recollet works collaboratively with Indigenous dance-makers and scholars to theorize forms of urban glyphing. Recollet is in conversation with dance choreographers, Black and Indigenous futurist thinkers and Indigenous and Black geographers as ways to theorize and activate futurist, feminist, celestial and decolonial land-ing relationships with more-than-human kinships, and each other.
Photo: Tracy Rector & Melissa Ponder
Sponsors
This program is generously supported by Maureen McMahon and Josh Baratz, and public funding provided by Suffolk County.
Media Partner: James Lane Post
Guild Hall’s Learning + New Works programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Additional major support comes from The Patti Kenner Arts Education Fellowship, the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Endowment Fund, and The Melville Straus Family Endowment.
