Session 9 | 19 December

The light pink doily that forms the base of the monstrous flower sprouting from my head (remember those ants Bayo told us about, something to do with cordyceps maybe?) was one my great grandmother made. I decided to play with this thread in my ancestral story and crochet strange new growth, new beginnings from what had seemed like the end – a doily she “completed” decades ago – during our final session at "the end" yesterday. As I pierced through and looped around the tensions of the older pink thread with my crochet hook, I stitched wordless prayer, prayer that flowed like water.

May this wordless doily-prayer flow through the cracks as my blessing of thanks and gratitude to all of you.

- Danielle Nagle

_____________________________

"de-centre the human"

A beautiful audio-visual journey inspired by this year's course-festival and all those who participated here, along with the wider burgeoning animist culture – including the creative cultural musings/work/play of Dare Sohei & Larissa Kaul of Animist Arts, Tada Hozumi, Sofie Strand, Shante Zenith, Azul Thome, Tricky Singer, Craig Slee, Claudia Frick, Robyn Fila, Aerin Dunford, Randy Jones, Rhawn Jones and all that moves through me and the forests, rivers and sea where I live.
There is a longer audio-only version (called "Death is Safe") available here.

- Marianthe Loucataris

_____________________________

I’m once again in deep bowing gratitude for all the generative strangeness of this festival-place. Thank you each and everyone in the team and participants, the visible and invisible, the fabulated and the real, the imaginary and the hidden, to all the melodies even the silent ones. To each and every breath together. With our knees and hearts in the ground we’ve opened wounds, cried and laughed, creating fractal places of being. In reverence for our throbbing hearts we will meet again on the other side.

- Sofia Batalha

_____________________________

The Invitation of Monsters
(In preparation for our monstrous Closing Ceremony.)

- Annette Magdalene Kaye

_____________________________

A meeting of crack-dancers with Lorena Gaibor, T. Carlis Roberts, Lodi Siefer and many beings in Colorado, United States following our final live session on December 19th.

_____________________________

I consider it a great privilege to be have been in this Ceremonial Crack with such constancy. For the second time I have Danced with Mountains and let my life become a crack, or reveal itself to already be one. And still, I know it is a rare thing to gather around emerging principles of postactivism and rituals of decapitating the colonial head, let alone gather internationally and with such decentralized contributions. I was often frustrated with the impatience, critique, and resistance that made itself known, though I understand that is part of the process. But I am so overwhelmed with gratitude and humility to be alive and available at such a time as this for the rarity of a public practice such as this, that I feel so strongly about rejecting grasps at control or disappointments at the lack of "perfection". It's sneaky shit, I get it. I just don't remember seamless, ultimately smooth, ultra luxe comfort being part of the premises for our time together. I know that by sharing my own frustrations I am doing the same thing in a different way, LOL. I hope my attempts to articulate the depth of my respect and reverence for what has been done here, is being done here, and will never be finished here are louder. Like the way our dancing, literal and multidimensional, is louder than the irritation at  zoom glitches and abrupt reorientations.

As someone who has been in various ritualistic spaces, pedagogical experiences, and decolonial praxis for at least a decade, if we are not to include my Unschooled education or being raised by a Liberation Technician (aka my mother who educates people on how colonialism functions), I know exactly how complex the threads that are being woven here are. As someone who has educated and facilitated myself, I simultaneously know and can only imagine the vigorous integrity, resilient bravery, and devotion like the ocean that is required to hold this container, let alone participate in it.

✨ritualistic intelligence✨energetic integrity✨spiritual humility✨praxis, not theory✨practice, not aesthetic✨care, not control✨honesty, not arrogance✨love as the reason why✨

For the fractal and encompassing embodiment of all of the above and more on the part of Bayo Akomolafe, the Team, the transient Teachers, and Those who Prayed on our behalf, Those who Danced for/with us, I am grateful.

I urge you, if you haven't yet, to deeply contemplate how remarkable what we just co-created is. How rare and hard to find it is, even if you've been one of the few fortunate ones to become accustomed to communal ritual making around different iterations of apocalypse. How could we be anything else but grateful to have received so much earnestness, sincerity, and love in what was offered to us? How could we be anything but proud at the bravery, the trust, the willingness to ✨stay with the trouble✨ with which we received the offerings? How could we be in anything but awe for what we gave to each other?

 - Ari Felix