Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2: CONJURING RE-ENCHANTMENT: CURSES, HEALING, and RITUAL ACROSS NEPANTLA
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear -empyre-, so excited by the conversations so far, by the tremendous effort and knowledge of week 1 and the looming questions we must contend with…the concept of ruderal witchcraft to begin with, an offering by Oliver I am still hoping to continue activating, I was so struck by Marisa Prefer’s reminder that we are in the waxing moon in Capricorn, by their sensibilities about Red Hook’s ocean water who is reclaiming a space once called home, and by their introduction to Spartina, a plant feared as invasive, whose roots sends texts that stimulate microbial expansion in the crust of the earth…as well as with their sensibilities to the way we contend with the limitations of binary language and structures, where natives and invasives are categorized as oppositional…I am eager to learn more of the history of European witch-hunts and wonder if contemporary so called invasive hunts being practiced across Abya Yala now might be triggered by parallel conjunctures. I love the idea of a rude ruderal, a growth with side eye to the idea of a pure or undisturbed past, and am eaten away by Whitefeather's “leave it the fuck alone” transmission and the question if the slow violence of ecocide can be healed only over extended time lapses, beyond those perhaps that we as homo aspens may be able to experience…There is so much to respond to, there are lagoons between these reflections, I will return...each post has been a world I want to swim within, and I hope that my carrier bag of queer kin will help us to digest the muck, as we slowly begin to receive and respond to the posts of -empyre- please forgive our delay. Please also accept my apology for a missing discussant and sibling who got cut from my curatorial care, Lucian O’Connor, whose bio, I attach now, here. Lucian O’Connor (Irish American in Továngar) (they, them, theirs and he, him, his) Lucian O’Connor is a critical theorist and artist who lives in southern California. They hold a master’s degree in Performance Studies from NYU (2003) and a doctorate in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz (2012). Research interests include semiotics, decoloniality, evolutionary biology, aesthetics, the history of ideas, and ethnography. While not working, O’Connor enjoys hiking, gardening, and spending quality time with loved ones. As for the incredible guest only recently introduced, Joan Haran, your invitation to cat’s cradle with Donna Haraway, Starhawk, Niamh Moore, Maria Puig de Bellacasa, adrienne maree brown, et. Al thank you..let us continue to share constellations and trace collective dreams with our stardust. Ciclón ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
[-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2: CONJURING RE-ENCHANTMENT: CURSES, HEALING, and RITUAL ACROSS NEPANTLA
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear -empyre-, I am honored to introduce a number of discussants to the CONJURING RE-ENCHANTMENT conversation this week, many of whom Ciclón ( aka Lissette-Tatiana Olivares) has brought on for what I'm sure will be highly enchanting exchange. I met Ciclón in October 2017 on -empyre- during the multispecies worlding conversation, and have learned so much from them ever since. I have been loving the conversation so far and big thank you to those who have participated. The RUDERAL WITCHCRAFT conversation can continue as CONJURING ebbs into the mix. ... Ciclón ( aka Lissette-Tatiana Olivares) (US/CL/CO) they/ their/ theirs is the co-founder and co-director of Sin Kabeza Productions and SK Symbiotic, activist research platforms developed in collaboration with Cheto Castellano to work across diverse media and together with multiple life-forms. As a diasporic trans* Latinx that is non-binary and gender defiant Olivares’ applies transmedia storytelling to research that engages mestizx, cyborg, and companion species consciousness. Postanthropocentric and SF imaginaries become palpable through mediated environments as well as intragalactic conversations with the extraterrestrial cyborg Coco Rico. Olivares’ more than human ethnography is approached with diverse technologies that include creative writing, performance, intervention, experimental film and sound, architecture, design fiction, and multimedia installation. Olivares acquired critical research skills from study programs at Vassar College, Peking University, and the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program as a Helena Rubenstein Fellow in Critical Studies. A co-taught class on Multispecies Storytelling by Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing in 2010 offered the working space to develop a performative approach to multispecies storytelling while pursuing studies in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Between 2010 and 2012 Olivares was an Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies where they* were supported by a NYU Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship for Academic Diversity. In 2012 curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev invited Sin Kabeza Productions to submit a collection of their experimental video works with multispecies and SF themes to The Worldly House: An Archive Inspired by Donna Haraway’s Multispecies Writings on CoEvolution at dOCUMENTA(13). It was in this same context that SKP produced their first architectural intervention, SEEDBANK: An eco evo devo design fiction in the SF Mode, designed as a living posthumanist research site for dOCUMENTA(13). After an unexpected encounter with an orphaned hedgehog during their artistic residency in Kassel they became committed to wildlife rehabilitation and multispecies architecture, and have worked with Indian free roaming dogs, raccoons, squirrels, and white-tailed deer. Between 2012-2013 they presented some of their initial and colorful fieldwork as OPEN TV in collaboration with Raqs Media Collective at the Devi Art Foundation in Delhi and Donaufestival in Austria. Between 2015-2016 Olivares and Castellano were research fellows at Terreform ONE where they investigated Speculative architecture and design for a Post Anthropos/Anthropocene. In 2016 Olivares presented SKP’s multispecies architectural platform at the Yinchuan Biennale Conference in China, while their multispecies architectures were displayed at the NGBK gallery in Berlin as part of the Animal Lovers exhibition. SKP’s SEED: Visualscapes from the Future was recently exhibited at the Edith Russ Haus for New Media Art in Oldenburg and at Muzeum Sztuki as part of Pangea United . Their* intradisciplinary research has been supported by the Fulbright Fellowship, Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, ICI-Berlin Curatorial Fellowship, and A Blade of Grass’ Artist Files Fellowship, which recognizes socially engaged art production. SKP and SK Symbiotic are currently engaged in a coevolutionary dream that envisions a refuge, research, and rehabilitation center for dis/placed and crip wildlife that will jointly serve as an eco art laboratory and community setting in a 1730 Georgian stone house they are renovating and remodeling in rural NJ. Fabi Borges (BR) she/her/hers Fabiane M. Borges: Acts at the intersection between clinic, art and technology. She works as a Psychologist (in person and online) and as an essayist, having written and organized publications between academic journals, collections and personal books. She articulates two international networks/festivals: Technoshamanism (technology & ancestry) and Intergalactic Commune (art & space sciences). She has a Post-phd in Visual Arts at EBA / UFRJ - School of Fine Arts, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro / 2016-2018. She did a Phd in Visual Arts at Goldsmiths University of London / 2011, and currently she is doing two post-phd: one at ECA / USP (School of Communicatio
