Sounds 4 Survival

with Phoebe Collings-James

New audio work coming in 2021

Live performance 2018/19

A performance and sound work accompanied by devotional objects (ceramic balls) with a morphing community cast featuring Frederica Agbah, Yasmine Akim, Ain Bailey, Rebecca Bellantoni, Sophie Monique Brown, Chloe Filani, Onyeka Igwe, Joy Labinjo, Reannon Licorish, Katarzyna Perlak

PERFORMANCES:

Borealis Festival, Bergen (2019) / Cafe Oto, London (2019) / Paradiso, Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam (2019) / Wysing Polyphonic, Wysing Arts Centre (2018)

Research with Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin

Ongoing thinking, conversing, writing and holding space with Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin, from 2019:

A Vast and Incidental Kind Of Holding

25.11.2020

Conversations on expanded multi-dimensional ideas of anatomy, divination, geography and language, seeking to bring transformational movement to ideas of trauma and healing as they are shaped by oppressive systems and given form in our bodies

“hyper awareness is violence to myself / it is not a choice to be in a continual state of friction”

“What is this work and if it is survival work, why can it leave us feeling devastated? This is not necessarily a sign of growth or healing, or if it is a part of these processes, how can I/we support that? What do we do with it, how can we move through it?

I guess I want to think together about/allow a being in, this wake, hitting up against hostile architectures that exist inside and around us.”

We (Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin & Jamila Johnson-Small/SERAFINE1369) are hosting a conference with guest speakers Kopano Maroga, Selam Tesfai & Daniella Valz Gen, working across different fields invited to discuss their strategies for and approaches to facilitation; on how embodying the work that they do invites an approach to and views on holding, guidance, navigating and working with language to support the communication and manifestations of their visions and intentions.  

We are thinking about expanded ideas of anatomy, divination, geography, and the ways that ideologies in/form language and bodies/gesture as ways to think about - and bring movement to - trauma as it is held in bodies and perpetuated by systems, including ideas of healing and the wellness industry.

Trauma and healing are two words come up often in the work that we both do, and we take issue with how they are situated within, and mobilised (sometimes weaponised) by, pop and queer cultural discourses and practices, and as such, absorbed into our lives, daily practices of relating and communicating and conceiving of ‘self’. There are lots of monolithic and slippery words that we would like to think about together and with others, untouchable unbreakable seemingly immovable shape-shifting looming objects of false promises and disguised violence.

The conference will be a collage of questions, predicaments, criticism, strategies and responses that come up as we navigate how to embody the things we aim to share as artists and facilitators. We want the day to offer some energetic cleansing, some poetry and the opportunity to speak critically, curiously and kindly as we think together about crafting and sharpening tools for the destruction of oppressive systems.

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Some Kind of Magnetism

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Unruly Bodies

Ongoing practices and adventures with Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome

Project O

Collaboration with Alexandrina Hemsley from 2010 onwards. In residence at Somerset House Studios since 2016. New Wave Associates at Sadlers Wells from 2017.