We live in heavy times. Buried in concrete jungle, in a world of constant erasure, we need to make time to nourish ourselves. Carve out spaces to loosen binds that hold tight our hearts, binds to protect but that day-by-day strangle her till she is barely breathing.
The heart is many things, for one, muscle - with training we can hold her open to this conflicted world, learn to love amidst danger since we know she is strong enough.
These are not spaces to escape reality, but to root us to who we are. Because the most difficult place to look is in the mirror. It’s a scary place, full of falsehoods and confusion, old memories & traps refined over hundreds of years.
But clearing a path through that is the only way to find roots we can trust and so routes to a future other than the one we know now...
'in family stories' 25th Nov 2015, an Arteries production @ikclecticartlab #colonialheavy released
Family, we come together seeding words & weaving songs live musical response smell & taste, breathing images \ arteries / thru' stories we release the heavy
With:
---Refugee Youth // Nations of Migration Awakening the Diaspora, a community from around the world using the creative arts and participatory action research to build an inclusive community of friendship and belonging ---Community-centred Knowledge // How do you understand yourself In this world that you’re making? Wake up to the sweetest smell Of the yam that we’re baking and breaking and sharing And that everyone is taking….. How do you understand food and the food economy? Now on a journey, let us guide Just tie your blindfold… Step inside…
---Selina Nwulu, Anna Lau, Hadiru Mahdi & creating sounds to share thoughts by Tomoya, Nia, Femi, Tilé #colonialheavy released
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear — fear of contempt, of censure, of some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken // Audre Lorde