An invitation to heal: voices on bridging art, academia and activisms

Description

This talk explores synergies between research, arts and community-building initiatives taking point of departure in the upcoming memorial for Phillip Johansen -- a young black man who was tortured and killed by two white men on the Danish island of Bornholm in the summer of 2020. The speakers, Susan Zekiros and Xenia Brown Pallesen, are among the driving forces behind the initiative to organize the memorial. The purpose of the memorial is to honor the life of Phillip Johansen and protest the violent silencing of the Danish bipoc community, but it is also a celebration of the healing powers of art and community.

Susan: While the project of organizing a memorial for Phillip Johansen characterized as a community-based initiative, I feel that the event and the process itself has become a concrete exploration of the concept of community itself. One of the guiding principles of this exploration concerns the matter of time and a deep need to create time and space to actually register, connect and feel the impact and meaning of events taking place in the world. The need to slow down is what fueled the need to act. To resolve this paradox it would be vital to insist on creating time and space for each step on the way. This may seem like a somewhat abstract principle to work from, but it has played out in very concrete ways. Another guiding principle has been to center human connection and insisting that the process would need to be reflective of the goal. Insisting on those two guiding principles, the need to slow down and the need for human connection, has made the process both productive (not in the capitalist sense of the word, but productive as in generative or creative) and meaningful. While the initiative and process has been rather intuitive, there are several streams and sources that continue to provide deep inspiration. One such example would be Alexis Pauline Gumbs (black queer troublemaker and love evangelist) and ideas related to revolutionary mothering. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. More specifically, revolutionary mothering speaks to the core of the project on many different levels and allows for a deep dive into ideas of past and future ancestors, remembering, listening and living otherwise.

Xenia: The current conversation on art is dictated by experts and institutions. They frame the narratives and interpretations - usually through one-way communication. By including the audience, we can open up the conversation. Art is subjective and an important tool to understand and gain deeper insight into ourselves and the world that surround us. Through my talk I wish to explore how we can go from focusing on representation to identification as part of a democratic process, which (apart from connecting us more deeply with art) provides the foundations of a more equal coexistence and creates space for new voices. The subject of this discussion is our initiating project leading up to the memorial for Phillip Johansen where a selected group of participants is invited to take part in a workshop dedicated to healing prospects of art. The aim is to create an empowering community and safe space where marginalised voices can share their common experience of their own life and art, that articulate the consciousness and inner feelings of being ‘other’ in a society one identifies as being a part of.

Susan Zekiros is an External Lecturer at the Department of Cultural Encounters at Roskilde University. With a background in English and International Development, her focus areas include queer black feminism and social justice.

Xenia Brown Pallesen is an art historian with a profound interest in the intersections between art, society, technology and environmental issues. More specifically, she has been looking into how dissemination of art can be used as a tool to create a deeper understanding of self, each other and surrounding environments.

Period	7 Jun 2021
Event type	Lecture
Location	Roskilde, DenmarkShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International