With Mariaa Randall, Genevieve Grieves, Paola Balla, Emily Johnson, Muriel Miguel, Joshua Pether, and S.J Norman.
KIN is part of First Nations Dialogues, a series of Indigenous-led performances, discussions, workshops, meetings, and ceremony taking place across New York City in January 2019. Kicking off the No Series, KIN features three performances, one workshop, and three conversations by five First Nations artists from Australia and local NYC-based elder Muriel Miguel from the Kuna and Rappahannock Nations. These artists are in dialogue with one another and share specific Indigenous experiences through their work such as kinship, care, and the transmutation of grief through movement, process, ceremony, and language.
Refusing imposed colonial structures, the artists in KIN celebrate a radical Indigenous sociality which has allowed for both survival and futurity over centuries. Practicing care and kinship within wide networks of human and more-than-human beings (e.g. water and land) is fundamental to this sociality and celebrated in KIN.
Schedule:
Performance
January 5 | 7pm
January 6 | 3pm
U.S. Premiere
$15
The work of the Joshua Pether, who is of Kalkadoon heritage but lives on Noongar country in Western Australia, is influenced by his two cultural histories, indigeneity and disability. His latest work, Jupiter Orbiting, involves an immersive sci-fi narrative which invites the viewer into a powerful encounter with dissociation and trauma.
Conversations
January 6 | 5pm
January 8, 10 | 4pm
Free
KIN Conversations 1: Center of Center of Center
KIN Conversations 2: Uqamaltaciq, the weight of something
KIN Conversations 3: Qailluqtarr, to act, change or deal with things in various ways – some ways in which are hard to explain
Guided by First Nations artists and scholars—Paola Balla, a Wemba-Wemba and Gunditjmara woman based in Melbourne; Genevieve Grieves, a Worimi woman from Southeast Australia based in Melbourne; and Emily Johnson, a Yup’ik woman from Alaska based in New York City—this series of conversations threads through KIN and like KIN, it weaves through trauma, violence, and history with a generous resolve for the present and future—a commitment to generosity, positive motion, and the kind of deep love that moves forward like the undercurrent of the East River, the Birrarung, the Mnisose. Please come to all three conversations if you can, as they are accumulative.
Workshop
January 7 | 3 – 9pm
Free
Led by Muriel Miguel—one of the founders of the legendary Indigenous women’s theater company Spiderwoman Theater—the Pulling Threads Fabric Workshop invites participants to share stories and listen, to stitch together that which has been ripped apart, through storytelling and quilting, and to engage with personal and community stories of violence, healing, and ultimately, renewal. The workshop is open to female identified people only.
Performance
January 8 | 7:30pm
World Premiere
$15
Please read the artist’s Invitation Letter before making your reservation.
Norman is a non-binary Koori live artist and writer. Cicatrix 1 (that which is taken/that which remains), specially made for KIN, is a chain of actions, woven from the syncretic tissues of buried rites for mourning and remembrance. In particular, Cicatrix 1 considers the collision of Indigenous, queer, and trans bodies with state power, specifically the abuse and obliteration of those bodies by the carceral state. A long-durational ritual unfolding over approximately four hours, Cicatrix 1 begins with the lighting of a medicinal fire and concludes with an outdoor, midnight procession.
Credits
Lead artist: S.J Norman
Performers: Carly Sheppard, Emily Johnson, Mykaela Saunders, and Muriel Miguel.
Live tattooing: Holly Mititquq Nordlum
Sound: Naretha Williams
Video: Sam Icklow
Data-mapping/back piece design: Kiesia Carmine
Performance
January 10 | 2pm, 6pm, 8pm
U.S. Premiere
$15
Mariaa Randall belongs to the Bundjalung and Yaegl people of the Far North Coast of New South Wales, Australia. Footwork/Technique is a movement piece of contemporary Australian Aboriginal footworks and dance legacies. It is presented as an art in motion, as a form of Land Acknowledgment, as a reference to time and a comment on colonization.
Produced in partnership with First Nations Dialogues, BlakDance, Global First Nations Performance Network, and American Realness.
Supported by the Barragga Bay Fund with additional support by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
Photo: Adele Wilkes (cropped into heart).