K.o.W 2020

Our first co-curated gathering took place over two days, January 11-12, 2020. The structure of Knowledge of Wounds relied on the somatic and spiritual connections, co-presencing, a sense of shared, mutual imbrication of bodies in relation. The program incorporated moments of rest and storytelling, as well as food, music, gesture, and performance. This first iteration revolved around illuminating strategies of resistance, rage, and refusal, but also joy and perseverance. 

For the inaugural K.o.W, Norman wrote the following curatorial statement: 

Ceremonial technologies often utilise the act of wounding—the deliberate breaching of the skin—as an initiatory pathway into specific knowledge. The wound itself might be regarded as a threshold. In many Native cultures, threshold spaces are regarded as sacred, and those who dwell there are honored as healers.

The speakers and artists invited by S.J Norman and Joseph Pierce to lead this two day gathering are interested in illuminating the knowledge/s held within bodies and communities that have been shaped by displacement trauma, and considering especially the ways Native and diasporic peoples embody the tensions and gifts of liminality. This gathering seeks to examine the nature of borders as political, somatic and psychic structures, and elevate the knowledges of those who seek (or are compelled) to cross them. At a time when the aggravated imposition of national borders is producing violent consequences all over the world, how might we consider these questions within the broader, ongoing history of settler colonialism? How might the specific medicine of border-crossers, of all kinds, be implemented in our shared survival and resistance?  

This framing formed the basis from which Norman and Pierce developed the first K.o.W January 2020, held at Performance Space New York. 

Cherokee elder Joan Henry opened the gathering by lighting a fire, which was kept for the duration of the event, sending smoke and prayer to the ancestors. devynn emory and Joshua Pether co-led a morning physical session and an afternoon session of active rest. Emily Johnson led participants in a session of kinstillatory dreaming, a visioning of our rootedness to place and kin. Sebastián Calfuqueo premiered Bodies in Resistance, a performance that drew historical connections between Mapuche efforts to navigate the colonial imposition of gender binaries. Joe Cross and Donna Couteau offered stories of place and kinship. The evening included musical performances by Demian DinéYazhi’ and Kevin Holden, Laura Ortman, and Elisa Harkins. And the day concluded with a ceremonial offering led by Tohil Fidel Brito Bernal, María Regina Firmino-Castillo, and Amaru Márquez Ambía. 

The second day opened with another physical session by devynn emory and Joshua Pether, and Javier Stell-Frésquez danced the fire to life. This was followed by a performance/reading by Joshua Whitehead and a conversation between Lukás Avendaño and María Regina Firmino-Castillo. Holly Nordlum then demonstrated traditional Inuit tattooing, and discussed her relationship and practice with this ancestral medicine. At the end of the day we gathered to eat a meal prepared by Quintin Glabus and finished the evening with a closing ritual led by emory and Pether and offering the ashes from the two-days of gathering to the East River.