[-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2: CONJURING RE-ENCHANTMENT: CURSES, HEALING, and RITUAL ACROSS NEPANTLA

Tue Nov 12 05:26:41 AEDT 2019

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 Communication and Arts at the University of São Paulo / 2019)
the other at ETE / INPE (Space Engineering and Technology at the National
Institute for Space Research / 2019), both dedicated to art and science
focused on space projects that also include terrestrial systems and
Philosophy of science. Since July 2019, she organizes SACIE (Subjectivity,
Art and Space Sciences) a research program and artistic residencies in the
Brazilian space program (INPE), where she develops a series of activities
focused on Space Culture. She is the organizer of Extremophilia magazine,
launched in 2018. As her academic background is in Psychology, with a
master's degree and phd in Clinical Psychology (PUC / SP), all her work has
a focus on the production of subjectivity. Acting on the frontier between
Art and Clinic, having developed several immersive programs focused on
dream and imaginary levels, operating with fiction, speculation, creation.
Some of her actions have been supported by institutions such as Goethe
Institute, SESC, MAC, MAST, MAR, Museum of Tomorrow, Valongo Observatory,
Ibirapuera Planetarium, Nucleus of Arts and New Organisms PPGAV / UFRJ -
(Brazil), Center for Contemporary Art (Ecuador), Aarhus University -
Department of Information Studies & Digital Design (Denmark), STWST / Ars
Electronica (Austria), SenseLab Concordia University (Canada), XenoEntities
(Germany), Transmediale (Germany), Grow Tottenham, Si Shang Art Museum
(China), etc. She lives in São Paulo in a collective house that plants
organic, organizes parties, concerts, meetings, workshops, etc (Casa
Japuanga, SP). she/her/hers

Lucia Monge (PE) she/her/hers
Lucia Monge is a Peruvian artist and educator whose work explores the way
humans position ourselves within the natural world and relate to other
living beings, especially plants. Her artistic process incorporates
movement and material exploration. For the past nine years she has
organized Plantón Móvil, a yearly “walking forest” performance that leads
to the creation of public green areas in cities such as Lima, Providence,
Minneapolis, and London. In 2019, Plantón Móvil was organized at the Queens
Museum in New York in collaboration with local communities and focused on
human and plant migrations. Other recent projects include adapting and
reperforming Darwin's experiments with climbing plants, learning water
collection strategies from desert plants, mycoremediation rituals in urban
tree pits, and a "fungal broadcast" about deforestation in Ucayali, Peru.
Lucia is a 2014 Brown University Social Innovation Fellow, a 2018 Eliza
Moore Fellow, and has taught art at Rhode Island School of Design and Brown
University.

Julian Xeer (US) (he, him, his)

Cheto Castellano (Chile/US) ( he, him, his)
Cheto Castellano is a yogi with ossicones who is studying to be a shaman.
He was born near Chile’s Andes, migrated to the US in 2003, and has spent
extensive time researching spiritual cognition in Asia’s Himalayan region,
with an emphasis in tantric studies . Recently Castellano made carbon ink
from human bone, and produced a kangling (thigh bone trumpet) using ancient
and contemporary  technologies of consciousness; these are activated in
ritualistic performances with the experimental collective Sarama Sound. For
the past year Castellano has been learning how to restore a colonial house
using 18th century joinery and masonry. Castellano’s projects in media come
from exploratory experiences that research the spiritual cognitive sciences
from diverse peoples, animals, and plants. Castellano is the co-founder of
Sin Kabeza Productions and SK Symbiotic, and is a multimodal practitioner
whose practice is developed across architecture, carpentry, experimental
video, animation, drawing, painting, engraving, corporeal modification,
performance, and multimedia installation.  Together with Ciclón they are
investigating 18th century witchcraft for an upcoming film project that
will be filmed on location at their soon to be inaugurated eco art studio
in a 1730 stone house located  in rural NJ. chetocastellano.com,
www.sinkabeza.com @chetocastellano @sinkabezaa @sksymbiotic

Estephania González (US/Mexico/Aztlán) (she, her, hers)
Estephania González is an interdisciplinary artist utilizing sculpture,
video, animation, and performance. Influenced by indigenous and
contemporary cosmology,  and modern physics, her current practice explores
identity politics and the relationship between the body, the earth, and
their connections to the cosmos. This has led to the development of her own
origin myth, Nāntli Cemanāhual (mother universe in Nahuatl), a performance/
animation experimental video in which she sacrifices her body to be reborn
with new sacred cosmic knowledge.

González is an MFA candidate in Intermedia at Arizona State University and
has received a BA in Art History and BFA in Performance Art from University
of Northern Iowa. She has been a resident at Guapamacataro Art and Ecology
in Maravatio, Michoacan, and La Wayaka Current in Coyo, Atacama Desert,
Chile.

Caitlin Rose Sweet (US) (she, her, hers)
Caitlin Rose Sweet explores the intersections between craft, queerness, and
pop culture to position queerness as a site for incessant transformation
and possibilities. Her playful work resists assimilation and mastery
through an intentional disinvestment in finished work and proper use of
materials. Sweet has shown internationally from Portland Or, to San
Francisco Bay Area, New York City and Berlin. This includes such
exhibitions as Mix 26 (NY 2013), Craftivism (NY 2013), Invisible Landscapes
(PDX 2014), and Words as Objects(PDX 2014). Sweet received her MFA in
Applied Craft and Design from PNCA/OCAC in 2014 and lives in Brooklyn.
http://www.caitlinrosesweet.com/

Ute Hörner (Germany) (she, her, hers)
in representation of Hörner/Antlfinger and CMUK collective. In the dialogue
with human and non-human existences in the "art system" and the
"EverythingOtherSystem" Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger have been opening
up critical perspectives on the technologization of our lifeworld since the
90s. Her installations, videos and sculptures deal with relationships
between people, animals and machines and the utopia of an equal treatment
of the actors. After dealing with the social constructions that determine
human-animal relationships, today she is especially interested in how these
constructions can be changed. Two protagonists who advise them on this
issue are the African gray parrots Clara and Karl, with whom they have been
collaborating since 2014 as Interspecies Collective CMUK . The word CMUK is
an acronym composed of the forenames of the founding members: Clara,
Mathias, Ute and Karl. In Slovak language it means something like a little
kiss.http://h--a.org/

Praba Pilar (Colombia/US) (larval she, her, hers)
Praba Pilar is a queer diasporic Colombian mestiza artist creating
performance art, digital/electronic installations, experimental public
talks, and workshops in museums, universities, festivals, galleries and
streets around the world. Pilar has a decades long practice critical of
extraction based approaches to technology, has been honored with
fellowships and awards, featured in local and international media, and
published her work in peer reviewed and popular journals and books. In
search of better collective electric dreams, she is presently sharing
approaches rooted in hemispheric resistance and resurgence by engaging the
public through reflection, generosity, and criticality. She is now in the
midst of the Techno-Tamaladas, a multi-disciplinary project of food,
generosity, conviviality and dialogue on technologies of life of the
Americas, while continuing her paradimensional microbiomial multi-species
journey with Anuj Vaidya as Larval Rock Stars. Pilar has a PhD in
Performance Studies from UC Davis, is Co-Director of the Hindsight
Institute, and can be visited online at https://www.prabapilar.com/.

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