Bouquets [events]
Tributaries: A Wet Ritual for Witnessing
Workshop as part of Sembrando Humedad, Mexico City
1st-5th April 2024
“Tributaries: A Wet Ritual for Witnessing” is a ritual about water, about time, about absence, about queer ancestors who have been lost and who we commit to remember. It is a ritual of blessing and complicity, of coming together, of mixing. We invite you to remember, reflect, and repeat this ritual, always concluding in tight embrace.
This participatory performance was conceived by Victoria Perrie, Jehan Roberson, Sophie Seita, and Naomi Woo.
Photos courtesy of Ruta del Castor and Eduardo Velasco Vasquez and Andrés Jurado.
Bios:
Jehan L. Roberson is a writer, scholar, artist, and memory worker using text as the basis for her interdisciplinary practice. She collaborates with literature, archives, maps, artists of all disciplines, and family members to explore textual methods of place-making and self-liberation for Black people in the Americas. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Criticism, Public Books, Women & Performance, Apogee, ZORA, emisférica, Autostraddle, and in the forthcoming volume Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Archives and Practice (Litwin Press 2024), among others. Jehan is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University.
Victoria Perrie is a Métis-Cree artist and criminal defence lawyer. While living in Nunavut, the Sammurtok family named her ᑕᒐᓕᑭᑕ (Tagalikita/Butterfly). Victoria is the co-founder of Nishtis Collective, an Indigenous theatre and arts service organisation in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her artistic practice is multi-disciplinary, but these days she is most often producing theatre or writing poetry.
Sophie Seita is a London-based artist and researcher whose work swims in the muddy waters of language and is informed by deep listening, critical opacity, queer abstraction, and a playfulness that’s both rigorous and pleasurable. Often working collaboratively, she’s expanding and deepening her ongoing project with the musician and conductor Naomi Woo, to give voice to the untold queer archives, alongside other international artists, academics, activists, gardeners, designers, and writers, as part of The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions. She teaches fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Canadian conductor & pianist Naomi Woo is a widely sought-after symphonic and operatic conductor and educator and the Music Director of NYO Canada. Beginning with the 23-24 season she is the Artistic Partner of Orchestre Métropolitain Montréal and joins the Philadelphia Orchestra as assistant conductor for the 24-25 season. She has conducted more than a dozen operas with students and young professionals in US and the UK, and collaboratively created new, genre-bending operatic works with Sasha Amaya and Catherine Kontz (A Certain Sense of Order, Tête à Tête Opera Festival 2017), Sophie Seita (Beethoven Was a Lesbian, Tête à Tête Opera Festival 2020), and Alex Ho/Julia Cheng (dramaturg for UNTOLD, Snape Maltings 2019).
ABOUT SEMBRANDO HUMEDAD:
The workshop formed part of Sowing Moisture, a collaboration between Ruta del Castor, Carolina Caycedo, organizations, educational institutions, community members of Xochimilco, artists, activists, farmers and students in order to collectively reflect upon the relationship that we have with water as a binding body that weaves cultures and ecosystems.
We set out from the urgency of regenerating the agreement we have with the aquifer, of coming together with water within a space of community and convergence, of diversity of thought and collectivity. With Sowing Moisture our cultural work is aligned with the defense of life and territorial resistance to delve into its complexities and its ludic and artistic potentials. We immerse ourselves in water as a vital liquid that connects us with our ancestors and future generations, a space of gathering to moisten our imagination and think about more fluid and fair futures.
Sembrando humedad es una colaboración entre Ruta del Castor, Carolina Caycedo organizaciones e instituciones educativas, miembros de la comunidad de Xochimilco, artistas, activistas, agricultores y estudiantes para reflexionar colectivamente sobre la relación que tenemos con el agua como cuerpo que entreteje culturas y ecosistemas.
Partimos de la urgencia de regenerar el acuerdo que tenemos con el manto acuífero, de vincular con el agua en un espacio de comunidad, de diversidad de pensamiento y colectividad. En Sembrando humedad nuestro trabajo cultural se alinea con la defensa de la vida y la resistencia territorial para profundizar en sus complejidades y su potencial lúdico y artístico. Nos sumergimos en el agua como líquido vital que nos conecta con los ancestros y las generaciones venideras, un espacio de encuentro para humedecer nuestra imaginación y sentipensar futuros más fluidos y justos.
Read more about the project
