Future Ecologies

An afternoon that dives deep into the topic of climate justice through an intersectional lens, with a presentation by artist, curator and art director Georgina Johnson, a panel discussion with choreographer Ana Pi (The Divine Cypher) and Kyu Choi (artistic director Seoul Performing Arts Festival), workshops, film and performance.

*English program

This program, made by Holland Festival and Felix Meritis, is an invitation to apply intersectionality to environmentalism and to imagine (artistic) strategies of decolonization within the ecological crisis we find ourselves in. How can we as individuals and (inter)national performing arts festivals take responsibility for decreasing our ecological footprint while also providing space for (internationally) unheard voices? What inequalities do we create or perpetuate, whether wittingly or unwittingly, in the name of sustainability? What role does creativity play in imagining future ecologies and changing current systems? We explore these questions not just from the perspective of festival organizers, but artists, activists and theorists as well.

Check the website of Holland Festival for more information and tickets.

Presentation Georgina Johnson

London-based artist and curator Georgina Johnson is the editor of the Intersectional Environmentalist anthologies; The Slow Grind: Practising Hope and Imagination (2023) and The Slow Grind: Finding Our Way Back to Creative Balance (2020). Johnson is an Earthworker, a curious individual and powerhouse whose work focuses on cultivating equitable creative ecologies that put nature and community at their heart.

Her hybrid practice has resulted in the curation and production of experiential installations and works that illustrate the delicate and complex connection between radical ecology, race, mental health, sustainability and intersectional environmentalism.

Georgina defines art in its most expansive sense as: discourse, dreaming, playing, writing, pausing and questioning. Often oscillating between these states in diverse contexts, both independently and in fellowship with a constellation of globally recognised platforms including: Frieze London, The Design Museum, Eco-Age and SPACE 10.

She has been commissioned by the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The Photographers’ Gallery London and received awards from Arts Council England, Jerwood Arts and Mulberry England. In essence, her work in the creative, cultural and social-environmental worlds is a vital asset to the development of future imaginings of these spaces.

Panel discussion

Ana Pi | choreographer and visual artist

Ana Pi (Brazil/France, 1986) is a choreographer and visual artist, researcher in urban dance, contemporary dancer and teacher. Her work is connected with travel and revolves around notions of transit, displacement, belonging, overlapping, memory, colour and everyday gestures. In 2020, she created the structure NA MATA LAB.

NoirBLUE—les déplacements d’une danse (2018 – 27 min) was her first documentary, and VÓS (2011 – 5 min 30 sec) was her first video essay. In her pieces O BΔNQUETE, COROA, NoirBLUE, DRW2 and Le Tour du Monde des Danses Urbaines en 10 villes, she interweaves choreography, speech and installation. She has given dance workshops under the name CORPO FIRME; danças periféricas, gestos sagrados since 2010.

The Divine Cypher is a project which she created in Haiti and for which she received an arts fellowship in Latin America from the MoMA (New York) and Cisneros Institute. She is also an associated choreographer with the Dancing Museums project in France, and an associated artist with the Latitudes Contemporaines production office.

She is developing the choreographic exhibition WOMEN PART 3 in collaboration with Ghyslaine Gau and Annabel Guérédrat, and the installation Rádio Concha with philosopher Maria Fernanda Novo. Lastly, for RACE, her latest essay combining dance and image, she is working with @FavelinhaDance and Chassol.

Kyu Choi – festival director and producer

Kyu is a festival director, producer and researcher, currently working as artistic director of Seoul Performing Arts Festival (SPAF) from 2022-26 and has worked as creative director at Performing Arts Market in Seoul (PAMS). With a focus on the important themes of contemporary art, such as ‘New narratives’, ‘Technology & Science Innovation and Post-humanism in arts’, and ‘Locality and Translocality’, Kyu has developed numerous projects, including creative research residencies, labs and workshops.

His previous positions include: festival director and creative director for – UK/Korea Season Festival 2017-18; Chuncheon International Mime Festival; Ansan Street Arts Festival. In 2005 he founded AsiaNow productions, in which for over 10 years he worked for Korean theaters in the field of international exchange, while also developing various international co-productions and residency projects as a producer, and dramaturge. Since 2013, he has been working for the Asian Producers’ Platform and APP Camp, a collaborative network of Asian producers for the development of various projects.

Dymphie Braun | host

Dymphie is an experienced programme maker, facilitator, and strategist driven by the principles of equality and inclusion. Her mission is to promote creativity as a tool for social justice. She organises and hosts programmes, events, and talk shows about art, design, and (digital) storytelling – sparking up cultural convos for the community.

Film screening: ‘I Am the River, the River is Me’

In 2017, the Whanganui River in Aotearoa/New Zealand became the first river in the world to be granted equal rights with humans. This was the result of over 150 years of legal struggle by the Maori, who see the river as their ancestors, as an indivisible and spiritual being.

Ned Tapa, the Maori guardian of the river, takes the filmmakers, international water representatives and activists on a five-day canoe trip on the impressive river. As river and travelers flow organically together, there is lightness, humor, and room for healing from the echoes of the colonial past.

I Am The River, The River Is Me is more than a journey through a breathtaking landscape and a society that seems so far removed from capitalism and individualism – it is a call for action, a call to rethink value systems regarding our surroundings and community for the sake of all future life on earth.

‘I feel it is my job to ensure that what I’ve been given, I hand on to others’ – Ned Tapa (Whanganui)

I Am The River, The River Is Me is now on show in cinemas.

Workshop: Decolonizing art & earth

by Chihiro Geuzebroek

Have you noticed climate film, eco music, environmental theater can (and often does) reproduce colonial frames and white saviorism? In this workshop we will look at some pitfalls and some examples of shifting frames. We will practice decolonial climate justice storytelling through a songwriting exercise. Chihiro Geuzebroek is a Bolivian-Dutch activist and artist working as singersongwriter, poet and public speaker the past 15 years. She is also the director of the feature documentary Radical Friends.

*This workshop is for art professional /storytellers.

Official website: chihiro.nl

Workshop: Water as thought

by Weaving Realities Collective

How can something so simple as water be a way to change our relationship with the world around us? Water is not just a resource to be taken. Water has been here since the beginning of life as the most important element and she holds the memories of all living beings. The approach where humans transform life into resources, as owners of the world, has brought us to a condition of Earthlessness and Worldlessness[1]. However, it has not always been the way and it is certainly not our defining human nature. There are other worlds of meaning, where humans hold a radically different relation to Earth, where they become guardians of life, and with less than 5% of the global population, they have protected and conserved 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity.

We want to learn together from these other worlds of meaning which have been protecting life. This means changing our position from owning the land to owing our lives to a living Earth, viewing humans not as the center but as merely one thread in the infinite interweaving of life.

Weaving Realities invites you to a workshop where you activate your body and listen to the memories of water. How can water help us re-member[2] who we are? How can water root us in thinking-feeling[3] with a living Earth? This workshop involves meditative exercise, and body movements followed by a conversation.

[1] Earthlessness is the loss of biodiversity, the loss of our connection to Earth and worldlessness is the loss of words, the loss of meanings, hence annihilating the relational world. Vazquez Rolando, Vistas of Modernity 2020.

[2]Re-member is to acknowledge and bring back what has been dismembered, erased or unacknowledged by coloniality.

[3] Sentipensar con la Tierra, is to change our position of thinking beyond the intellectual in communality with the sensations, emotions and territories. Arturo Escobar 2014

Official website: weavingrealities.com

Closing performance by Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti

Inspired by her background in ancestral Andean technologies, Ibelisse will guide us through an embodied practice about reciprocity and integration. Bridging knowledge towards the architecture of our individual and collective bodies as a way to re-member pathways of inter-relational connectivity. 

Ibelisse is a multi-medium artist, vocalist, composer, performer and maker based in Amsterdam (NL). Born in Bolivia and raised in Brazil, she weaves her sonic and performative practices inspired by her latin roots. For the last two decades she has been creating work autonomously and as part of the vibrant and outspoken music, performance and physical theater scenes in the Netherlands. She has performed internationally in a wide range of concert venues, festivals, theater stages and museum spaces.

Her practice involves a multidisciplinary approach which stems from her deep connection to ritual and trance as a form of threading worldviews carried by her ancestors. It is also a deliberate act of resistance to bond with knowledge that has been erased by means of colonization and oppression. She sees her heritage almost as if it would be trickster dust that never ceases to whisper its memories through songs, embodiment, image and spatial information, with the aim of creating celebratory, energetic and shape-shifting sonic performances.