WATER, Mikki Stelder, Oupa Sibeko

Water can be a place of refuge, while also holding layers of violence. Water might serve as an escape route, but also always serves violent trade and border control. Scholar Mikki Stelder shares a talk about crafting rituals with and for water locally in a context where those connections to the water/land have been severed through the emergence of colonial capitalism. Stelder asks: Can we do it? How do we do it?

Performance artist Oupa Sibeko will take us under water through a sonic scape and the image of a bird taking flight. This performance, PILGRIMAGE TO UHURU, first started developing in Namibia in 2017, addressing refugees taking flight to Namibia and Botswana from Zimbabwe.

Read more at https://refuge.rietveldacademie.nl/preliminary-programme 

Jan 18. 14:00—15:30, Fedlev auditorium

*Find on your seat a mildly inflammatory gift: y/our tongues are true, the new lexicon written by CPR...
 

Campbell X's Still We Thrive is a film about our healing and self-care under white supremacy. Still We Thrive uses found/archive footage, pieces to camera, voice over, and music to build a story of Black mental health resilience. The film uses archive and found footage of Black people, from different times and geographical locations, to create a sense of connection via Diaspora.

Content heads up: brief racist imagery

In Joseph Wilson's Isn't It A Beautiful World (2021), Queer performers lip-sync to archival confessionals of unknown provenance as they explore abandoned spaces of abject neglect. The blurring of time and place creates an air of the unknown, but not the intangible. Through their evocative performances, Soroya, Harry & Kenya render an all-too-familiar story for members of the LGBTQIA+ community of loneliness, anxiety, trauma and recovery.

Read more at https://refuge.rietveldacademie.nl/beamclub