Inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child, Tracey Moffatt’s visually haunting film beDevil, delves into three tales that explore Indigenous relationships with the unseen world. This largely buried film is the first feature made by an Aboriginal Australian Woman. Each narrative brims with a sense of unease as the ghostly apparitions collide with the living to reveal the unsettling forces that shape our lives.
The film unfolds in three distinct but interconnected vignettes, each peeling back layers of the past to reveal the complex and often haunting relationship between identity and the enduring scars of colonialism and capitalism.
Archives: Shows
Screening of The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland
Anicka Yi presents The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland, a film by the Indigenous Karrabing Film Collective. The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland is a surrealist exploration of contamination, extractive capitalism, and its impact on human and non-human life. The film transports us to a landscape poisoned by the toxicity of Western colonization and capitalism, where Europeans can no longer survive outdoors. The film follows Aiden, a young Indigenous man who is able to survive long periods outdoors, as he comes up against two possible futures and pasts. Yi’s initial experience with the movie during the Hawai’i Triennial 2022: Pacific Century inspired profound inquiries about the deep time histories of colonialism, migration, and environmental resilience in the Pacific region.
The screening is followed by a conversation with Elizabeth Povinelli, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University.
Wail•Fall•Whale•Fall
Installation (Wail Room)
Keith Haring Theatre
October 26 – 28 | 4 – 6pm
The Wail Room invites you to cry. A space to grieve and decompose; it is a listening space. Decompress, decompose, fall to the floor, get horizontal, release.
Free
Activation (Wail•Fall)
Keith Haring Theatre
October 26 – 28 | 7pm
Tickets!
Wail•Fall is an ACTIVATION of the Wail Room, an installation that acknowledges the labor it takes to grieve. This is not about performing grief. This ACTIVATION invites a different ecology of cellular integration to emerge through the act of grieving. In this watery space, perhaps we can echolocate our way to each other amidst all the noise that characterizes modern life. Perhaps we can let the whales take us to the below so we can better see the light above.
Accompanied by electronic cellist, Dorothy Carlos, and performer Camilo Restrepo, mayfield brooks ACTIVATES an embodied sonic watery world that decomposes colonized spatial logic.
Photo by Nir Aireli cropped into heart.
Living Room Concept
Angel Dimayuga (they/she) invites you to Living Room Concept an intimate and immersive dwelling that feels like your friend’s home. Over the course of the evening, guests will share, learn, and be fed (with a restaurant delivery by “Angel’s World.” )
The night will feature a sensory soundscape by Miho Hatori, a reading, some of Dimayuga’s favorite clips as well as film screenings by Stephanie Comilang, Maggie Lee, and Andrew Thomas Huang. The films depict the search for a grounded sense of self and belonging through the disparate nature of the third culture experience in the global Asian diaspora.
Embracing the powers of interconnectedness and cross-pollination, Dimayuga invites their community to witness the potential of a world shaped by ancestral knowledge and queer systems of coexistence.
Tales from the Memory Vortex
Black Quantum Futurism, the multidisciplinary collaboration between Camae Ayewa (Rockers!; Moor Mother) and Rasheedah Phillips (The AfroFuturist Affair; Metropolarity) presents Tales from the Memory Vortex, a two-hour immersive performance event featuring a curated selection of guest poets, musicians, and scholars. This multidisciplinary gathering delves into readings of thought-provoking essays, evocative poems, and performative lectures centered on themes of Black anthropological discoveries, Black temporalities, quantum physics, and the intricate tapestry of African and Black Diasporic time and memory rituals. Employing a retrocausal framework, Tales from the Memory Vortex spirals backward through time and space to examine our origins and trajectories.