Politics of Love:
#9 Afrodiasporic Spiritual Practice
#9 Afrodiasporic Spiritual Practice
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Also available as a livestream (in English language only) here and on Facebook.
In African Traditional Religions and Afrodiasporic Spiritual Practices, we find specific moments of our histories archived: the ability to connect with our ancestors, useful tools for health, sustainability, and resistance, knowledge transfer, and pathways to facilitate the advocacy of those who came before us. There are those of us who have always been connected to these practices, others who have returned, and those who are newly attracted to the cosmologies, methodologies, and philosophies entrenched in these spiritual practices. Where and by what means do those of us who identify as Black and Queer find liberation, healing, innovation, and transformation in the practices and disciplines of our ancestors? Through dialogue and exchange, practitioners of various disciplines will engage in a multilocal, multicultural conversation which addresses Queerness and African as well as Afro Diasporic Spiritual Practices.
ConCept And Moderation Joy Kristin Kalu, Isaiah Lopaz GUESTS Sokari Ekine, Hess Love, Goitse Freeverse Montsho
Sokari Ekine is a Nigerian British queer feminist and abolitionist who has lived and worked in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. Their work has been exhibited in such venues as: 4th Biennale of Fine Art and Documentary Photography; Berlin, PhotoVille, New York and Los Angeles; New Orleans African American Museum; AfroFuture at Art Basel, Miami. As a practicing Haitian Vodouisant initiate, Ekine’s work focuses on decolonization, sexuality and African diasporic spiritualities; in ways that overlap in their multiple roles as photographer, independent scholar, blogger and community builder.
Hess Love Born in Annapolis and currently in love with Baltimore, Hess is the accumulation of their mother’s and grandmother’s and foremother’s love. Creative, fluid, compassionate and fierce being that is very protective of what and who they love. Water and all of its abilities personified. Fire too. Student of the world. Made of stardust and their ancestor’s wildest dreams. In between their pieces that can be found on RaceBaitr, Black Youth Project, Wear Your Voice Mag, Brown Girls Out Loud and Medium, you can find them online “politicking” about Blackness, Hoodoo, History, Feminism, Motherhood, Queerness, Food, Books, Sex and Humor.
Isaiah Lopaz is a transdiscplinary artist who works with photography, text, collage, and performance. Maintaining a socially engaged practice is essential to Lopaz who curates public conversations, facilitates workshops, writes about art and culture, lectures, and is a frequent media commentator. Themes and subjects central to his work include gender, race, sexuality, class, citizenship, Hoodoo, African and Afro-Diasporic histories and cultures. Born into a working class family in occupied Tongva territory, Lopaz is an African American of Geechee and Indigenous heritage. He identifies as queer and is a local of Los Angeles, Brussels, and Berlin.
Our conversation series Politics of Love is dedicated to forms of standing for each other, which carefully and lovingly create community. Questions of representation are currently moving culture and politics. Who actually represents whom? Who is allowed to depict whom? And how does one actually stand for oneself? Together with guests from the arts, aesthetic and political theory, we discuss strategies of representation and self-assertion and thus the basic agreements of theater and democracy. The focus is on the affirmation of concepts with a solidary and hegemony-critical orientation.
Our current issue on Afrodiasporic Spiritual Practice takes as its source of inspiration Isaiah Lopaz’ short stories published and contextualized as part of his Anthology / Appendix project. Among other themes, they touch upon the relationship between spirituality and queerness in Black communities.