March 16, 2018
Danzkafe Sowieso, Helmersstraat 138, The Hague
Doors open 20:30
Presentations start 21:00
Abandon pre-existing ideas of storytelling and historicizing and step into the worlds of living archives. Listen to Aurélie Lierman’s musical transcription of a conversation on 6 Rwandan proverbs, take in Falak Vasa’s trickster pedagogy of Jain cosmology and Western cartographies, learn an alternative history of cimarrón communities and the plant spirits of ‘el monte’ with Catherine Feliz, and celebrate the Dutch ballroom scene with Tavarell Martens and RaeZor Beam.
Curated by Yun Ingrid Lee and James Parnell
FEATURING:
Aurélie Lierman performed by Marianna Soroka
#kinyarwanda #proverbs #music #percussion
Catherine Feliz
#alternativehistory #dominicanrepublic #cimarrones #plantspirits #embodiedknowledge
Falak Vasa
#cosmology #cartography #decolonization #pedagogy #trickery
Tavarell Martens & RaeZor Beam
#dutch #ballroom #vogue #zine #archive
and beats throughout the night by DJ Shai Wan
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Aurélie Lierman was born in Rwanda but grew up in Belgium from the age of two. She’s an independent radio producer, vocalist and composer. Her main focus is her personal field recordings: a large collection of unique sounds and soundscapes from rural and urban contemporary East‐Africa. Sound‐bit by sound‐bit she’s transforming and sculpting them into something she would call “Afrique Concrète”.
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Falak Vasa is an interdisciplinary artist from Bhawanipur, Kolkata, West Bengal, India, currently studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA with a Thesis in Visual and Critical Studies, 2018). Their work intersects performance, video, photography and writing to explore notions of the (post)colonial and the (post)human mediated through their own intersecting identities. It is said that Falak has the most adorable smile. They also like to dance.
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Catherine Feliz is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in New York City. Her multimedia projects are personal reflections on the social-political constructions of power and knowledge. Through applying the languages of visual desire and the practices of care, they’re interested in reorganizing geographical place through the experiences of politicized bodies in that space. In 2017 they received a BFA in Photography from SUNY Purchase College of Art + Design. Catherine also exists in the world as a birth doula, community organizer, medicine-maker, and friend.
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Tavarell Martens is the godmother of the Kiki House of Angels, a vogue training house in Rotterdam. The purpose of this Kiki House is to train beginners and advanced voguers and help them to reach a higher level.
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RaeZor Beam (Rae Parnell) is a researcher, writer, zinester, and educator based in The Hague, NL. They do healing work and community building through workshop facilitation and use the process of zine-making to archive queer and trans communities of color. Their past projects have focused on a range of topics, including anti-racist organizing, queer and trans knowledge distribution, and healing justice and disability justice. RaeZor Beam wrote “Kiki With Family“, a zine documenting the Dutch ballroom scene.
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DJ Shai Wan, a shy one. One who curates sonic experiences A non-binary cross genre DJ creating spatial narratives for spatial thinkers. Always becoming… Playing a range of music from trap to electronica to nostalgic R&B to keep you on your toes and have you check your assumptions.
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Additional Events
Mar 23: When Homelands Hurt- Healing with Ancestral Plant Spirits (workshop by Catherine Feliz)
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BARTALK#11 was made possible with the generous support of CultuurSchakel, Stroom Den Haag, and Danzkafe Sowieso.












Photos by Hans Poel
More photos here