During our residency, we’ve been developing Future Soil, an anti-performance and collective meditation inspired by the ritual of tarot reading and the collaborative relationship between rock and lichen, who came together through slow processes of weathering to create the first soils that were the basis for all life on land. As we live through times of global socio-political collapse, we look to rock and lichen as elders, survivors, and oracles, whose collaboration models the kind of solidarity we must embody to birth new worlds from the cracks of empire.
Our SlowSocial will invite folks into our process of learning from our rock and lichen companions, first through guided meditation scores that invite our bodies into gentle movement and reflection through the acts of slowing down, listening, and zooming in. We will spend the second half of the workshop translating the wisdom we receive from the rock and lichen meditations into writing, creating collaged poems that will form a card deck, which we will incorporate in our performance. Conversations around solidarity, collective liberation, animacy, grief, and kinship will guide the session.
Future Soil is an anti-performance and collective meditation inspired by the ritual of tarot reading and the collaborative relationship between rock and lichen, who came together through slow processes of weathering to create the first soils that were the basis for all life on land. As we live through times of global socio-political collapse, we look to rock and lichen as elders, survivors, and oracles, whose collaboration models the kind of solidarity we must embody to birth new worlds from the cracks of empire. Weaving this wisdom into text and movement, we invite witnesses to slow down and zoom in alongside us. Together, we compost our grief into soil from which new ecosystems can emerge.
Sarah Nash Wong and Alyssa Amarshi are collaborators, comrades, and kin situated on the unceded, ancestral, and illegally occupied territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Together they rest, meditate, facilitate, write, organize with Dancers for Palestine YVR, marvel endlessly at rocks and lichen, commune with their ancestors, rant about white supremacy, and contemplate the complex and generative experience of existing in a body. Grounded in dreams of collective liberation, their collaborative vision is to engage with artmaking as a mode of resistance to build worlds of tangible solidarity and care with each other and the land. Nash and Alyssa want you to know that spiritually, they are just two lil guys. They dedicate their work to their late friend Zahra Shahab—thank you Z for planting these seeds of friendship.
Art at The Hargrove – Unwritten Weekend festival
Presented by Barking Sphinx
Saturday March 28 & Sunday March 29, 4-11:30 pm
The Hargrove, 150 east 3rd avenue “Vancouver” (alleyway entrance)
