TI #6: Poconos, PA work & games weekend

Terra Incognita #6 featured seven highly-focused individuals spending time at a table making, learning, cooking, and sharing; and some very fun walks and adventures in the Poconos…

TI #5 NOLA — January 2012

Four of us went to New Orleans in January 2012 to recoup and “fill the well.”
We explored the the ArtHouse Treehouse, got inspired at an art show and a community storytelling spot; met a poodle; ate the shit out of foods; wandered along the canal in the Marigny; saw the Rebirth Brass Band, a punk show, Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship, and of course, a graveyard…

TI #4 in Ocean City! + Mind Map: Abundance, Desire, Security, and Art

The six artists Damien Luxe, Heather Acs, Irit Reinheimer, Jenna Peters-Golden, Tomasin Boatthief and Silas Howard…on a boardwalk / in a beach house: intentional conversation, mind-mapping, and getting a Fortune that told us to slow down. Oh and did I mention that we swooped thru Atlantic City on the way?

This is our slideshow. Below is our MINDMAP of Art/Abundance/Desire/Security, magical coin and fortune.

I had a difficult time lining everything up, but you get the idea.

Our Luck

Purim collaboration March 2011: 18 Keys

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What was standing in the way of the women and girls trapped in the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory: locked doors. In our work/lives now, what are the locked doors standing between us and liberation? Liberation from harmful working conditions, work restrictions due to documentation/citizenship status, oppressive gender norms, low wages, long hours, lack of respect and  unfair expectations.

While grounded in the legacy of the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory, JFREJ, the success of Domestic Workers Union Bill of Rights and the lessons of Purim,  we manifest our own keys, and unlock the doors standing in our way.

Inspiration on Cold Fronts: Terra Incognita III

On the weekend of January 22nd, Irit, Thomasin, Damien and Jenna all met up in Brooklyn on the coldest day of the year. Taking a quick break from collective art production, we decided to steep ourselves in the inspiration part of Art. We banded together to explore the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope with the hopes of uncovering stories, twisting the knobs of doors yet opened, and reading/touching/looking at everything we could. The Lesbian Herstory Archives are an *amazing* resource, a totally special place and a catacomb of adventures, stories and questions.

After poking around for 20 minutes or so, we were shown around on a tour where we only just began to grasp WHAT those Herstorical Lesbians are *actually* archiving. And? Entire collections of: Zines, newspapers, books, journals, photographs, films and videos, board games, records, LPs, cassettes, banners, t-shirts, buttons, organizational records (Audre Lorde Project! ACT UP New York! the Butch Femme Association!), and countless personal “special collections” — these folder boxes that have the names of random queers like you or me taped to the front and are filled with letters, bulletins, menstrual blood, snap shots and all kinds of other ephemera. We spent a couple hours getting lost in poetry, t-shirts, board games, Special Collections and beyond before we had to sign the guest book and make our way back in to the cold, hungry for pizza but at least totally satiated on stories and questions and ideas.

What spoke to *me* the most about the Archives, was the structural and spiritual foundation of the Place. This brownstone in Brooklyn has had it’s floors, walls and chairs seeped with curious, sad, lost, and fierce-as-fuck dykes and queers for years and years. I felt lucky as i leaned against the molding of a wall to subtly smell the pages of a Lesbian Science Fiction book because, well I can’t help but wonder, how many other backs have leaned against that wall? Were they leaning there because they were reading? Crying? Kissing? Hiding? I moved the toe of my boot gently but meaningfully against the basement floor as I glanced at the stacks of records and the file drawers of Dyke March Banners and the people I was with because, how many people, right there in that basement, had blasted Tribe 8 while painting a banner with barely enough Time for the Paint to Dry before the March? What glances had been launched from the dark corners to windy staircases and how lucky that now my own glances to someone belong there.

There aren’t ways to archive those feelings — even Feminist Archiving hasn’t got a system for it. To label and shelf what I’m wearing that day, what your lipstick smells like, the dimes and nickles I’m jingling in my pockets, how dry my throat feels reading that page. There isn’t a way to collect and display what it feels like to be one more volume in this living collection of bodies and breaths and spirits who go to this place and then become this place.

So next time I go, and the last time you went, will luckily connect and intersect; in this one place that acts as a giving and bending container to hold on to our details and our main events, defying time and holding space. I’ll see you there?

Education for Liberation Training!

*Education for Liberation: An Introduction to Paulo Freire’s Concepts & Techniques*

*The Brecht Forum – 451 West Street (Between Bank and Bethune)
To register: Contact Kazembe@brechtforum.org

* Saturday, May 21st and Sunday, May 22nd*
*Registration Deadline FRIDAY MAY 6th – RESERVE YOUR PLACE NOW!*

Please arrive *Saturday at 8:30AM for registration / confirmation. *Workshop
will begin at *9:00 AM *and *end at 5:00 PM* each day *Sliding scale:
$65-$85 per day*

Carmelina Cartei, Linda Tigani, Kate Cavanagh, Esperanza Martell, Shoshana
Brown, Javier Salamanca & others

This is an introductory hands-on workshop in the use of popular education
concepts and techniques based on the complementary approaches to Education
for Liberation developed by two Brazilian Marxist educators and political
cultural activists: philosopher and educator Paulo Freire, author of
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and theater director Augusto Boal, Workers Party
(PT) activist and founder of the Theater of the Oppressed.

Art/Tech to be excited about

Sharon Daniels

Made an amazing flash website “Public Secrets” giving voice to the experiences of women in prison

Border Technologies is a site utilizing “technology for social inclusion”

Brooke Singer

Created Superfund365 – an online repository from a project which visited and recorded toxicity levels at “Superfund sites, or the nation’s worst toxic-waste sites as designated by the EPA” — one each day for a year.

Interesting Calls for Submissions: AntiAnti Utopia and the Visual Aids Project

One thing we discussed at TI2 was the Anti-Anti Utopia Call for Submissions. It got us thinking about utopia versus dystopia, and led us to some interesting research on José Esteban Muñoz. Proposals are due Dec 15.

Works that cruise utopia with queer futurities, with techno-utopianism after the end of utopia, art that continues creating utopian desires from dystopian fictions and the fictions of science, gestures that push forward new ecologies after the end of what cannot be imagined as the end.

We also considered working on postcards for the Visual Aids Project, due Dec 10.

TI Retreat II

Irit Reinheimer, Tomasin, Jenna Peters-Golden and Hadassah D’Luxe met up in Philly to work and inspire each other.

Jenna and Tomasin worked on drawings for the Lesbian Epigraph Project, organized by Niki Paul.
Hadassah worked on her Vanifesto and Irit worked on video editing.

Later on the day Sunday, we went to the beautiful and semi-abandoned Mount Moriah Cemetary.

TI Retreat I

Heather Acs, Silas Howard, Jenna Peters-Golden, and Hadassah D’Luxe gathered in the Poconos for our first DIY Artists Retreat.

We went to the local waterfall, took walks where we encountered tiny animals, and worked on drawings for our various art practices.