ARCAthens Virtual Residency March 2022

Le’Andra LeSeur is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses a range of media including video, installation, photography, painting, and performance. LeSeur’s body of work, a celebration of Blackness, queerness, and femininity, seeks to dismantle systems of power and achieve transcendence and liberation through perseverance. Through the insertion of her body and voice into her work, she provides her audience with an opportunity to contemplate themes such as identity, family, Black grief and joy, the experience of invisibility, and what it means to take up space as a queer Black woman—a rejection of the stereotypes which attempt to push these identities to the margins.
LeSeur has received several notable awards including the Leslie-Lohman Museum Artists Fellowship (2019), the Time-Based Medium Prize as well as the Juried Grand Prize at Artprize 10 (2018). LeSeur recently appeared in conversation with Marilyn Minter at the Brooklyn Museum, presented by the Tory Burch Foundation and has lectured at RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI, and SCAD Atlanta, among others. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at The Shed, New York, NY; Marlborough, New York, NY; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Assembly Room, New York, NY; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Anacostia Art Center, Washington, D.C.; SITELAB, Grand Rapids, MI; Arnika Dawkins, Atlanta, GA; and others. Residences include NARS Foundation, Marble House Project, and MASS MoCA. LeSeur is represented by Marlborough Gallery in NY, NY and will have a solo showing at their Chelsea gallery in NYC in April 2022.

Maria Sideri is an artist and researcher. Her practice involves performance, text, voice and sound and her artistic research is influenced from her background in anthropology and history of religion. Maria has performed and exhibited at Kiev Biennale (2021), MOMus Museums (2021), Stavros Niarchos (2019), Phenomena / Φαινόμενα as a commission of State of Concept (2021), the 4th Biennale/ Greece (2013), ArtsAdmin (2014), Trouble Festival (2013) and Spill Festival (2012). Parallel to her solo practice Maria has collaborated as a performer over the last 10 years with various artists internationally: Ron Athey, Manuel Vason, Lina Lapelyte, Dora Garcia, Tino Seghal, Julie Tolentino, Tai Shani. Maria has also been developing community and youth projects like the project Assemblages part of the Artistic Acupuncture Missions and hosted by Lieux Public of the INSITU network in Marseille (2018-9), the project Déviation (2019) with Signal Festival and CIFAS in Bruxelles and Hello World Choir (2017) with Tadamon in Cairo. Maria has received funding from the Arts Council of England for her work Vibrant Matter/La Métachorie project (2014-6) and was awarded the ARTWORKS Fellowship in 2018 in Athens. Since March 2018 she is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Macedonia in the department of Applied and Visual Arts. Maria is also part of an eco-feminist artistic network called Room to Bloom and a member of a music band called Bora-Barx.
“Through different research methods my work is shaped around themes of archives, embodiment, feminisms and rituals. My investigations turn to the body being an archive and archivist simultaneously and towards notions of memorisation and possession as artistic methodologies that uncover histories of bodies that are often silenced. Using different mediums and research methods through the various projects I am engaging with, I am interested in finding ways to expand the notion of archives and documentation through and with the body with an aim to create counter archives of affect and empowerment”.
Maria Sideri

Lydia Matthews is a Brooklyn and Athens-based curator, writer, educator/MFA Co-Director in the Fine Arts program at Parsons School of Design and founding director of the Curatorial Design Research Lab, which spans various colleges across The New School in New York City. A dual citizen of the US and Greece, she trained in contemporary modern art history at University of California, Berkeley and University of London’s Courtauld Institute, and has held academic positions in New York, San Francisco, and at the University of Thessaly in Volos, Greece, where she co-taught as a Fulbright Scholar with Maria Papadimitriou and Giorgos Tzirtzilakis. Her work explores how contemporary artists, artisans and designers foster critical democratic debates and intimate community interactions in the public sphere, often in response to a variety of urgent global and local conditions in their daily lives. Matthews’s essays have appeared in numerous journals, books and exhibition catalogs, and she has lectured internationally on socially-engaged art, craft and design practices.
Curatorial projects include art exhibitions, walking events, community-based urban festivals, and multidisciplinary pedagogical exchanges addressing ecological and social sustainability. Commissioned by Fulbright Foundation, NEON, CEC Artslink, Open Society Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Emre Senan Foundation and the US Embassy in Georgia, she has organized projects within Bienalʼ21 Fotografia Do Porto featuring Alfredo Jaar and Susan Meiselas, (Porto, 2021); Benaki Museum’s Patrick Leigh Fermor House (Kardamyli, 2021); ArtMill Center (Czech Republic, 2018/19); Artisterium International (Tbilisi, 2017, 2014, 2012, 2010, 2008); Batumi Backyards Project (Batumi, 2013, 2012); Dietski Dom Orphanage and Tengri Umai Gallery, (Akkol /Almaty, 2015/16); Proteus Gowanus (Brooklyn, 2014); Souzy Tros Art Canteen (Athens, Greece, 2013); Kuad Gallery (Istanbul, 2012); Benaki Museum Pireos Annex (Athens, 2011); Byzantine Museum (Athens, 2008); and Art Caucasus International (Tbilisi, 2007, 2005).
At Parsons, she regularly teaches graduate/undergraduate seminars on “Walking as a Research Practice” as well as Socially-Engaged Art. Her participatory walking projects have been featured in “Walking Practices/Walking Arts/ Walking Bodies” (2019, Prespes); Ca Foscari University’s Porto Maghera Project (Venice, Italy, 2017), Colorado College’s Design Week (Colorado Springs, 2017), NeMe Arts Centre (Limossol, Cyprus, 2017), as well as in Milena Principle’s “Made of Walking Festival” (2016, Delphi, Greece).
AVR Synopsis – A Cross Cultural Dialogue Between the AVR Fellows
Instagram Visual Conversation
Week 1: Somatic Archive





I can only think about hands as a beginning, middle, and end for sight.
My hands – a gesture for birth. I have felt every part of myself therefore I see myself. Reviving and living through touch.
That touch as gentle as ever continues when we pass, our hands folded, holding us in the wake.
In January of 2021, I performed a piece for a zoom audience titled, “Grief is a burden we carry without consent”.
Grief, like Performance is nuanced. Sometimes I want to be seen and other times I refuse. Being seen is a burden and yet a gift in all the same breath. There is something cathartic about refusal. About the unseen. What occurs when we refuse seeing. When we allow our hands to lead the way?
In this moment, I refuse(d). You could // will only bear witness to my hands.
And so I ask…What do hands carry when they are not holding you? Have you ever listened to your hands? Can we hold space for our hands to speak? What will they say? How will they see? I know they can hold me, but can hands hold grace? And if so, what are we envisioning grace to be?
#PostedbyLeAndraLeSeur #LeAndraLeSeur @ellechien #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #MariaSideri @marsideri #LydiaMatthews #AVR5 #SomaticExperience #Somatics


Stills from a one week body-weather workshop in the Cairngorms mountains of Scotland. Body weather is a comprehensive approach to the training and performance that investigates the intersections of bodies and environments. Bodies are conceived not as fixed and separate entities but as constantly changing like the weather. The term and philosophical basis for body weather was founded by dancer Min Tanaka in the 1980’s and further developed by various practitioners worldwide. This week was facilitated by the dancer and educator Frank Van de Van and assisted by the performers Simone Kenyon and Neil Callaghan. During this
exercise, myself and the other practitioners dispersed in the forest and explored the landscape with our eyes closed. Exact duration was not specifically defined, so some stayed longer than others. I was focused on the idea of vision without sight and how to merge or give in to what
surrounded me. I can recall the smell and the texture of this ground.
#Postedbymariasideri #MariaSideri @marsideri #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #LeAndraLeSeur #LydiaMatthews @ellechien #AVR5
Posted by LeAndra LeSeur
I can only think about hands as a beginning, middle, and end to sight.
Still hands still sway
Still hands still sway
Still hands still sway
In 2018, I created a project very dear to me titled “brown, carmine, and blue.” Within this project, I performed for two weeks lifting close to 300 cinder blocks throughout the space. Holding them. Caring
for them. Then building large monoliths as a way to physically see the weight I was holding onto.
This video piece titled “In Reverence (An Honoring)” played on a loop in the space throughout that time. Reminding me of the importance of honoring a still body, yet a body that still moved.
How do we honor the weight we carry?
In a journal at that time, I wrote about weight and movement. Stillness and the ability to still progress.
Those words read, “…there is a weight within us that sits weightless as we peak…”
I hope I continue to peak – still – with hands raised.
Because, Still hands still sway.
#PostedbyLeAndraLeSeur #LeAndraLeSeur @ellechien #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #MariaSideri @marsideri #LydiaMatthews #AVR5 #SomaticExperience #Somatics



part of my on-going phd research and of the transdisciplinary artist project entitled “Vibrant Matter”, these photographs are from my current research at the American University of Cairo and specifically from the Women’s Papers at the Rare Books and Special Books Collections.
Looking for the traces of the french avant- garde artist Valentine de Saint Point in Cairo, I have found one letter she wrote to the egyptian feminist Huda Sharaawi from 1939. While my hands searched for many hours different boxes and touched a lot of documents, I noticed the dust left on my fingers. I thought what is an archive without a hand and “I breathed in their dust” (Jules Michelet).
Posted by LeAndra LeSeur
I can only think about hands as a beginning, middle, and end to sight.
“There is no movement without rhythm”, 2021
Here I’m posting a small excerpt from a five-channel video piece focused on rhythm and the way in which rhythm activates our spirit.
My hands held me in this work. They held a spirit hard to define. These hands held rhythm.
The following text was a part of a journal prompt once this piece was completed:
“I am forever trying to embody the essence and beauty of the spirit in my work. A spirit that is quiet, yet stern. An “ever present witness”. A spirit we succumb to. A spirit we feel and sometimes see in the midst of our ways. It’s subtle in so many ways. It embodies a form of refusal I aim for in order to honor our existence. I am being truthful to a movement that isn’t seen or heard. It is felt. Demanding a deep listening, a deep presence. Generative to my spirit. Some things are only meant to be occupied by your spirit – your essence. And not physically held as a whole.”
Hands hold so much.
#PostedbyLeAndraLeSeur #LeAndraLeSeur @ellechien #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #MariaSideri @marsideri #LydiaMatthews #AVR5 #SomaticExperience #Somatics
Posted by Maria Sideri
“Valentine”, is a video tribute to the early-20th century artist Valentine de Saint-Point (Lyon, 1875-Cairo, 1953). Saint-Point carried out a series of performance experiments in which the female body is shown not as an object of beauty but as a vehicle of ideas.
Thinking and working with the framework of “Vibrant matter” of Jane Bennett and the agency of non human things, this work reactivates the pioneering ideas of de Saint Point on gender not as a rigid categorization but as a fluid quality.
In an experiment of Wave Physics, the oscillations and vibrations become another non-human body, a material with an agency on its own, echoing and transmitting traces of Saint’s Point’s work and ideas today.
#Postedbymariasideri #MariaSideri @marsideri #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #LeAndraLeSeur #LydiaMatthews @ellechien #AVR5
Posted by LeAndra LeSeur
I can only think about hands as a beginning, middle, and end to sight.
TW: Self-Harm
In Alice Coltrane’s autobiographical book, Monument Eternal, inspired by what she called an “initiation from the Lord” that grew out of these visions, harpist Alice Coltrane began a period of spiritual testing in the Yogic tradition of austerity, known as “Tapas.” “Tapas” are self-imposed physical and mental tests. Coltrane goes into depth about her process of repetitively harming her physical body in order to achieve transcendence and spiritual awakening. In one tests, she places her hand over a burning stove and watches on as the flame melted the flesh from her hand. These acts have also been likened to a Buddhist philosophy which focuses on meditative acts above physical limitation.
In this live performance in Poland, we see Coltrane playing freely. I am focusing on her hands in this clip, which I sourced and used as a small part of a six-channel piece I titled “Maybe rainbows do exist at night”. On her hands – the remnants from the Tapas test are still visible. Her hands move freely as if connected to something outside of her physical body.
I was moved from the first moment I saw this piece. Focusing on her hands and being transformed by the rhythmic sound.
What takes place when our bodies are put through the utmost struggle and physical deterioration? Can we allow ourselves space to still exist through this physical transcendence – a moment likened to death – that allows us to imagine ourselves whole and new in the likes of our spirits?
Her hands were gentle, connected to spirit. Giving us tenderness – regardless of what they had been through.
#PostedbyLeAndraLeSeur #LeAndraLeSeur @ellechien #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #MariaSideri @marsideri #LydiaMatthews #AVR5 #SomaticExperience #Somatics

This polaroid was taken by the artist Manuel Vason in 2011 in the UK, in an ancient woodland known as Epping Forrest located between London and Essex. Together with Manuel we explored through a series of improvised acts, the relationship between body and nature and their constant becomings. The trunk I am with became a body and I gripped onto it and onto everything around me,felt alive and connected to the spirits that passed from there and who also touched the tree and breathed with it.
In answer to your question “what takes place when our bodies are put through the utmost struggle and physical starvation?” I would say that we remove the hand from the
stove, because this level of pain is something that comes to an end.
Your reference in the post from the autobiographical book of Alice Coltrane, “Initiation from the Lord”, reminds me of Nina Simone’s performance of the song Take my Hands precious Lord, a prayer.
Take my hand,
Lead me on,
let me stand,
I am tired,
I am weak,
I am worn.
Through the storm,
Through the night,
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord,
Lead me home.
(Right now)
What are the gestures that hold memories, our aide-mémoires?
#Postedbymariasideri #MariaSideri @marsideri #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #LeAndraLeSeur #LydiaMatthews @ellechien #AVR5





I can only think about hands as a beginning, middle, and end to sight.
In your most recent posts, you asked “What gestures hold memories?”
I love this question and the dialogue it sparks.
Memories are linked to so many things but repetitive gestures have been the most rewarding for me in holding and releasing. I find myself leaning into a continuous act asking myself to forget but in the end remembering over and over again.
Once we find which gestures hold memories, does any slight change in that gesture change how we remember?
In 2018, I created a project very dear to me titled “brown, carmine, and blue.” Within this project, I performed for two weeks lifting close to 300 cinder blocks throughout the space. Holding them. Caring for them. Then building large monoliths as a way to physically see the weight I was holding onto.
I would remember holding onto small traumas – holding space for the smallest slights towards my being. As time moved on, the act forced me into a numbness. I don’t remember remembering. I don’t remember thinking. I was only feeling my body in that moment. Focusing on the smallest things that took place in the moments before, during, and after.
Is that how we exist? In present moments rather than extended histories? Some questions I’m still pondering
because presence – especially with self – can be difficult when the histories and scopes of life that came before and that will come are so heavy.
Photos 1-4 documented by my dear friend @solasink
#PostedbyLeAndraLeSeur #LeAndraLeSeur @ellechien #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #MariaSideri @marsideri #LydiaMatthews #AVR5 #SomaticExperience #Somatics


I am going back to this question of yesterday. “What are the gestures that hold memories?”
Last year we planted with my partner a benjamin tree in Vravrona, a wetland one hour from Athens. We wanted to mark a loss that we have experienced during the pandemic and symbolically offer to nature a new life. As we were not allowed to leave not only the city but our neighborhood due to covid restrictions, we have created these fake forms- in case we would be stopped by the police- claiming to shoot a film in that location.
We have chosen to plant the tree next to the temple of Artemis where the sea and the Erasinos river meet. We placed the tree inside the ground
and stood there for a few minutes. Suddenly a hailstorm started and we had to leave. On the way back to Athens, we discussed inside the car about how we felt relieved and that somehow we also left a part of our sadness there. We also talked about chance and control and the way it manifests in nature. We said that we shouldn’t expect the tree to grow or not and that we wouldn’t go back to look for it.
This symbolic gesture was followed from correspondence with close friends and family who couldn’t be there due to the restrictions of the pandemic. When we got back, I shared the text and image of the tree with my father and he responded with this beautiful drawing as a return.
#Postedbymariasideri #MariaSideri @marsideri #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #LeAndraLeSeur #LydiaMatthews @ellechien #AVR5
AVR5 Curatorial Reflection #1 – Somatic Archive
Week 2: Remnants



Rhythm Study 1, 2019
Oil on Linen
53 x 51 in
Rhythm Study 2, 2019
Oil on Linen
54 x 51 in
Rhythm Studies (2019) are a series of paintings that represent a liberation from thought as movement overtakes the artist’s body. Each work is the result of an improvisational performance set to a jazz piece, the canvas transforming into a remnant of internal movement and freedom.


about remnants, remains and residues
Still photographs and an extract video/interview from “Rhizhotomikon”.
“Rhizhotomikon” is part of the collective project “identity in between”. Conceived by the visual artist Efi Spyrou and produced by Runonart, 5 women artists were invited to create performance projects and share their artistic expression and ideas on the notion of identity and its multiple reflections. The performances took place and filmed by the Runonart group at the former airport of Elliniko during October 2020, followed by interviews of the artists.
Read More
Drawing inspiration from the medieval herbariums, I was impressed by the variety of the anthropomorphic depictions of the plant of the mandrake and its mythological representations. The complex and multiple identity of the mandrake combining therapeutic and toxic properties, got me to think not only about gender expressions in nature but also made me reflect more broadly about remains of embodied knowledge and the separations between the human and the non-human world.
Still photography by Emma Louise Charalambous.
Make up for Rhizhotomikon: Vasiliki Kita
Props master for Rhizhotomikon: Socratis Papadopoulos
Costume design for Rhizhotomikon: Christina Lardikou
interview video
Assistant Director: Sokratis Morfonios
Cinematographer: Pavlos Mavrikidis
Camera: Jo Capralou, Costas Goulas
Texts-Interviews: Charis Kanellopoulou, Paraskevi Tektonidou
Identity in between
Production: RUNONART
Concept-Direction: Efi Spyrou
Assistant Director: Sokratis Morfonios
Cinematographer: Pavlos Mavrikidis
Camera: Jo Capralou, Costas Goulas
Still photography: Emma Louise Charalambous
Sound: Iason Theophanou
Drone: Andreas Papanikolas
Dir.production: Haris Michaloyiannakis
Props curator and styling: Milena Panagiotova
Μake-up: Amanda
Make-up & Hair: Beehive artists|Anna Mpakatsaki
Editing: Giorgos Alefantis
Coloring: Marios Stylianou
Sound composition and sound editing: Dimitris Tsoukas
Αudiovisual translation-subtitling: Myrto Koromantzou
Poster: Yannis Mantzaris
#Postedbymariasideri #MariaSideri @marsideri #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #LeAndraLeSeur #LydiaMatthews @ellechien #AVR5







“I am less interested in understanding myself. More interested in understanding the other.” – @marsideri
In 2018, I performed over the course of 2 weeks for a project titled, “brown, carmine, and blue.” One of the performances titled “Wholy, Holy” taken after Marvin Gaye’s song of the same name was about leaving a remnant of my body over a duration of time. How present could black be when built up over time? My body was dragged across a bare canvas laid flat on the floor for a total of 4 hours.
The goal was to cover my body in black and rub it
onto the canvas through the dragging and pressing my body downward into the canvas – into the ground. I referenced David Hammons’ body prints as a source of inspiration for this gesture.
At some points, I could feel my body give up and give in. Not allowing me to move forward. In those moments, I laid still slowly moving inch by inch because small progression for me was better than none at all. My body laying bare and the struggle of movement became a spectacle to see. Many viewers would walk in and stare as I dragged myself from point a to point b over and over and over again. In shock at the struggle that ensued between me and my own body.
The repetitive movement and the remnant that came thereafter solidified a few emotions for me. In my moments of stillness, I started to think about what it means to have “potential” to keep moving. Not to only move but to just have the potential to do so. That I am able to get up and move on from this act. That I have the potential to still progress.
How powerful is potential in a world that demands for us to always act on what is possible? Can we just sit with our potential and be okay with that? Knowing that that alone is enough. We alone in our existence are enough.
The remnant that was left is something I have kept with me in my personal archive. The clothes I wore as well. All have become stiff without the ability to bend or move and yet my body has been fluid since.
#PostedbyLeAndraLeSeur #LeAndraLeSeur @ellechien #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #MariaSideri @marsideri #LydiaMatthews #AVR5 #SomaticExperience #Somatics






about remnants, remains and residues
In 2014 myself and the artist Manuel Vason devised a performance entitled “I, love to you”. Invited from Άine Philips, head of the sculpture department at the Burren College of Art in Ireland and an artist herself, we have created a performance in the occasion of the Newtown Castle Performance Festival in Ireland. The performance took place in a parking lot in front of the 16th Century Newtown Castle and we have used a rope, two masks and two fire extinguishers that we painted black.
“I, love to you” was looking at our relationship as a couple and as artists and
started as a response to the lyrics of the song of Portishead “it’s a fire”. We wanted to create a performative action where we could perform a simultaneous symbolic action of confessing our love in front of a public.
We laid on the asphalt on the parking lot, pulled the rope and crawled to each other till we stand up. We then, pulled the pin of the extinguisher, aimed at each other while circling away. The action lasted less than 5 minutes with heavy rain. The white foam on the ground was washed away by the water.
#Postedbymariasideri #MariaSideri @marsideri #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #LeAndraLeSeur #LydiaMatthews @ellechien #AVR5

What do we leave behind each time we experience? Can thought or feeling be a remnant? Is it only valued as such when it becomes words that are either written or orated?
“Blue is darkness made visible”
140 Handmade slides
2019
In 2019, I started shooting slide film each time I stepped outside and looked up at the sky. The end result were different images of the sky – some extremely hard to read. My focus wasn’t on clouds or shapes. Just on the vastness of the sky and the ever changing nature of its color. Of its blue.
“Blue is Darkness Made Visible.”
“I feel seen. I feel seen.”
“Am I free?”
“free?”
Read More
These excerpts are from a stream of consciousness later written out in my performance piece “There are other hues of blue”. The act of writing this out on top of slide film forces memory and acts as a way to manifest feeling seen in a moment of self reflection. Each slide was taken while looking up at the sky and giving myself time and space to feel my body present. The idea of feeling seen is a prominent one throughout the work because it enforces my quest to feel freedom through my existence alone. Leaving remnants of that quest for liberation in the work.
#PostedbyLeAndraLeSeur #LeAndraLeSeur @ellechien #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #MariaSideri @marsideri #LydiaMatthews #AVR5 #SomaticExperience #Somatics




about remnants, remains and residues
@ellechien asked “What do we leave behind each time we experience? Can thought or feeling be a remnant? Is it only valued as such when it becomes words that are either written or orated?”
Between November and December 2018 I was in an arts residency in the Villa Empain in Bruxelles. At that time I was researching around the idea of topographical restrictions in regards to gender and I was interested in the ban of women from the Mount of Athos, a monastic community that includes 20 orthodox christian monasteries in the North of Greece. I was trying to find women’s narratives around this topic and I bumped into a book called “one month with the men” (un mois chez les hommes), published in 1931 by the journalist Maryse Choisy, who disguised into a man
and travelled to the Mount Athos, where she claims that she spent a month with the monks without them figuring out she was a woman. I was fascinated by her story and by the fact that through words she has created an imaginary but actual experience of resistance.
Some months later, I was invited from CIFAS to develop some work starting from the idea of topographical restrictions and the way women experience it in the city of Brussels. I facilitated a workshop and a performance that was cancelled due to lack of participation and due to bad weather conditions.
With the support of CIFAS, “Take me to your Favourite Place”, occurred as the result of these thoughts, processes and “failures”. It marked my passage from the city of Bruxelles through these various encounters, a workshop and interviews with 7 women passing from or living in Brussels, who through subjective geography anonymously describe their own physical and embodied restrictions.
Image for Take me to your Favourite place by Bea Borgers
Design by Aline Melaet
#Postedbymariasideri #MariaSideri @marsideri #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #LeAndraLeSeur #LydiaMatthews @ellechien #AVR5

In honor of cross shares, I want to honor the work of a dear friend, Gyun Hur (@gyunhurstudio), that has done something quite beautiful in response to the acts of violence against AAPI recently in the US.
“There is a land beyond the river (저 건너편 강 언덕에)”, 2021
Gyun has transformed grief into reflection. Tragedy
and violence into a meditative space meant to honor what is beautiful around present life. And for that I am forever grateful to her work and practice. To be able to look beyond the violence inflicted and see love and care as points of immediate reflection. The act of transforming and transcending beyond violence is an act greater than most.
The raindrops honor the victims from the Atlanta spa shooting on March 16, 2021. Yesterday was the anniversary of this shooting.
I have gone through so many anniversaries of death, of violence. I sometimes find myself not fully present in the honoring of life because I have become so accustomed to experiencing violence and death.
It is acts like these. The making of remnants of memory and grief that allow us to reflect. To take time to remember the person rather than the act inflicted on that being.
Within this post, I only ask that every person viewing take time to honor a life today. Whether it is a life that was lost, a life that is still here, or a life that will be. Honor life today.
Love to you Gyun
#PostedbyLeAndraLeSeur #LeAndraLeSeur @ellechien #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #MariaSideri @marsideri #LydiaMatthews #AVR5 #SomaticExperience #Somatics






Thinking of remnants of resistance and symbolic acts of solidarity in times of war, today I am using this space to post the work of the artist and activist Nastia Teor who is currently in Kiyv. I met them during a workshop in Aytonomi Akadimia in Athens this summer.
Nastia Teor is a (non-binary, s/he) Kyiv-based feminist, visual artist, independent graphic designer and volunteer. Their artistic, design, and activist practices are constantly overlapping. In their artworks s/he uses graphics, text, and video. Nastia is a member of komaxa collective and Room to Bloom and Avtonomi Akadimia community.
I am sharing the posters that they created in the first two weeks of war. Their texts along with the posters are published two days ago online in e-Flux notes. https://www.e-flux.com/notes/455902/a-t-t-e-n-t-i-o-n-air-raid-sirens-in-kyiv
#Postedbymariasideri #MariaSideri @marsideri #somaticarchive #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #LeAndraLeSeur #LydiaMatthews @ellechien #AVR5
Posted by LeAndra LeSeur
I’ve always thought of remnants as a type of physical object left behind. But it’s more than that. It embodies memories, thought, potential. It is the fiber of how we move through life. It is the residue from every interaction with ourselves and others.
Yesterday, I spoke on Gyun’s piece. Thinking about what remnants are left behind beyond violence. Is it possible to transform violence into something beautiful? And if so, is it wrong to think of the aftermath of violence being beautiful?
To be quite frank, we as living beings are always in that aftermath, or in the wake, as Christina Sharpe so elegantly states. We are the remnants and if we find beauty within ourselves, then the answer is yes.
In 2020, in the aftermath of two very public and violent murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, I tried processing what it could feel like to transform rage into joy. To leave a remnant of love beyond the violence.
In the midst of processing those two murders, another took place. A young man by the name of Sean Reed, was fatally shot and killed. All on a FB live video. I watched the video twice. The first time noticeably feeling my body overheat. My muscles tense up. It was a familiar feeling. During the second playback, I noticed my eye move towards the top right section of the screen. As the phone dropped, the front camera’s lens pointed up towards the blue sky and was hit by the sun causing a lens flare and various hues of blue to appear. My body felt transcended in that moment. I was no longer in pain as I watched this public display of violence. I felt free from it.
What came from that moment, is a piece titled “There are other hues of blue”. The visuals taken from that small corner of the screen. Slowed down extensively.
A remnant I hold dear to me.
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Posted by Maria Sideri
Responding to @lachienne who shared her thoughts about transformation and violence and closing this week’s visual exchange, I am thinking of what remains from violent departures and I am sharing today a small clip of this song I composed entitled “The Union” that was played as a recording with the lights off at BIOS Athens 2015.
In 2015 I was invited by Lisa Alexander to respond to a provocation and take part in the project Love Letters to a (Post) Europe. To quote Lisa’s Alexander description of the project
“TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU: Love Letters to a (Post)Europe is a gathering of love and dissent that seeks to connect, exchange and witness through performance and assembly, and through the action, idea or form of a love letter. A programme of performance gatherings, discussion and a new publication. In the midst of rapid change, polarisation and crises of social imagination in the UK and mainland Europe, TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU suggests that small acts of imagination and friendship can become radical interventions. The programme builds on Love Letters to a (Post)Europe that took place at Bios, Athens in 2015, in which twenty six artists created short works in an act of gifting and assembly”.
In the occasion of the publication Lisa Alexander has invited and commissioned 3 years later over 20 artists to perform in the event TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU in Artsadmin Toynbee Studios in London on 4 October 2018. I was invited and I have decided to perform the song live on the piano found there. I added a new part in it and dedicated the song to Zackie Oh, a drag queen and activist brutally assassinated in Athens by mobs and the police just a month before that performance. Some greek friends who were in the room as audience clapped and shouted their support and emotion. The song became also a moment of honouring Zackie’s life and the queer community of Athens that still today are actively fighting for justice for Zackie’s violent assasination.
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AVR5 Curatorial Reflection #2 – Remnants
Week 3: Ghostly Listening
Posted by LeAndra LeSeur
“Passing time with Grace”, 2020
This was the only work I physically created in 2020. It was a year of extreme grief. For all of us. I had lost so much that year. But felt more so that I had lost myself.
I was faced with forcing love and grace onto myself in order to get back to me.
My great grandmother. A matriarch in her own right. Her name – Grace. She gave to my family so much of herself. She gave us so much grace.
How could I not shower myself with that of the same.
It wasn’t until this moment that I realized the beauty of extending her to myself and others. The beauty of extending Grace.
This work was me speaking life back into myself.
a deep listening experience.
“From Grace…you must fall from Grace. From Grace. You were there all along. You were there all along. You were there all along. You were there all along….
You just didn’t know Grace…You just didn’t know you came from Grace.”
I have so many words I could speak of this work. But I’m unsure if this platform has capacity to hold space for me doing so.
I will say that I tend to the spirit more frequently now. I no longer ask questions when I receive signs. I listen deeply to the words of others (here and gone). I am continuously being spoken to in ways I used to think were unimaginable. And I move in this world knowing my steps are not taken by mistake. I move more so with Grace.
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Posted by Maria Sideri
Today I want to refer to a soundpiece entitled “her name”, created last summer and presented at the island of Anafi as part of the exhibition Phenomena. The sound piece was commissioned by State of Concept and the exhibition organized by the Phenomenon Association and the Kerenidis Papa Collection.
Inspired from the work of the anthropologist Margaret Kenna who has worked in the island of Anafi for many years and specifically from her book “The social organisation of exile: Greek political detainees in the 1930s”, this work referred to “Displacement”, (ektopisi in Greek) a peculiar hostage taking, a violent and forced change of residency that was practiced during the dictatorship of Metaxa in Greece(1936-1941). The practice of displacement has functioned as a mean of pressure that along with the use of psychological and physical violence, had as an aim the renunciation of one’s political and ideological ideas and aimed at intimidating and inactivating citizens who staffed unions, democratic political bodies and scientific and artistic associations.
Through the book of Margaret Kenna, I found out that between 1938- 1942, a number of women were displaced in Anafi. Workers in factories of tobacco, silk or craft enterprises, tailors, one of them a teacher, mainly coming from the north of Greece, very little is known about their stories, their revendications for equal pay and equal salaries and their feminist actions during the Metaxa dictatorship. Margaret Kenna, informs us that there are no testimonies from women themselves about their own displacement in Anafi during the Metaxa period. The little information of their time in exile derives from written testimonies by men.
Displaced in the islands and displaced from history, I wanted through this work to recall their names and stories and mark their trace in the island of Anafi. The piece recounts their biographies and recalls their names, along with a selected soundtrack with songs of the period in between the two world wars.
Video by state-of-concept.
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“Libérer”, 2019
Speaking of spirit….
Libérer – the french word for release showed up in my dreams one day. I remember writing it in my notebook and imagining a visual – a mosaic – of cracked pieces of a vessel shattered across the floor.
I created this piece a few months after. Shattered pieces of clay dispersed throughout the soil. The word only appearing clearly as you look down and see an image of yourself in the water emerging from the soil. How are you releasing? What are you releasing? And who is with you as you partake in this release?
Spirit is present in our rebirth. We just have to listen.
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Vibrant Matter/ La Métachorie is inspired from the work of the female French artist of the early 20th century, Valentine de Saint Point. It is a solo piece made as homage for her contributions in the arts that still remain largely unnoticed.
Vibrant Matter/ La Métachorie is a dialogue between Valentine de Saint Point and myself, which raises questions around vibration, gender, matter and dance. The work was produced after an extensive research on her life and work in various archives and museums in Italy and in France and was presented at the 3rd Thessaloniki Performance Festival as part of the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art at the VIS MOTRIX studio in Thessaloniki and in ArtsAdmin Studio 3 in November 2014 in London.
These stills represent moments in the performance where I invite her spirit to appear in the room and take over my body. Possession became a methodology to understand her work and life and vibration, the manifestation of her spirit.
in her own words : “Nature vibrates, pants, shakes, sprawls, creeps, runs, flies, floats, dashes forwards, steps to the side, gives herself up, to sustain equilibrium, to define its existence. Lines have guided me towards the surface, the surfaces to the solids, the solids to interior and exterior, drama of sensibilities and forces”.
Valentine de Saint Point (16 February 1875, Lyon – 28 March 1953, Cairo).
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”Art on My Mind: Visual Politics” was one of the first books by bell hooks that I had the pleasure of reading…
hooks speaks so beautifully on the work of Alison Saar, an artist I admire to the depths.
Some words that I feel speak to the spirit as “ever present witness” and the sentiment “the holy spirit as part of our daily life” are what I feel speaks to your question around what spirit we choose to listen to and how…
…the spirit is always with us and we are always listening…
“This work bears witness even as it demands recognition of the reality that black people were and are more than merely our pain. This ‘more’ can be understood only in a context where the soul is recognized – where the experiences of the body are not seen as the only markers of personal integrity. The state of being that surpasses the body and encompasses the soul is the ontological understanding that has always provided exploited and oppressed folks both the hope for and the concrete experience of transcendence.”
“…the soul must be acknowledged – cultivated and cared for – if we are to become self-realized human beings.”
“Saar’s poetics of soul is situated within the context of everyday life, for it is there that our spirits dwell and stand in need of comfort and shelter. Rather than depicting the metaphysical plane as existing in some evolved higher state beyond the ordinary, Saar’s work seeks to reveal the presence of holy spirit in our daily life.”
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an excerpt from the album “Voices Of Haiti” recorded in 1953 during ceremonials near Croix Des Missions and Petionville in Haiti by Maya Deren.
Maya Deren notes on the record: « The belief that the proper performance of a sacred formula of symbols or sounds is the means by which man achieves contact with divine powers is a basic principle not only of Voudoun, but of every religion. Such formulae were known as mantras in ancient Sanskrit, and this is still the term for all such ritual action, whether the chants of the Muslim muezzin or the saying of the Catholic rosary. The use of
mantras is as ancient and as universal as man’s desire to improve his condition and secure his destiny. It is as prevailing as the proud conviction of each man that his weaknesses and inadequacies are, by and large, common to all men and that, consequently, the power which is sufficiently superior to sustain and fortify him is one which is superior to man altogether. In times of need a man may seek to enlist such assistance by magic means. (…) If the songs and drumming achieve the compelling power which I believe is represented in this album it is because the microphone, lashed to the center post of the ceremonial peristyle, has captured a record not of men and women at play, not of their relaxed spontaneities, nor of their effort to create an art work for other men or for the satisfaction of any employer. It is a record of labor, of the most serious and vital effort which a Haitian makes, for he is here laboring for divine reward, addressing himself not to men but to divinity. They are singing for the gods. It is a privilege to have overheard and to have recorded it. » Maya Deren
what are the ghosts that we choose to listen to and how?
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Posted by LeAndra LeSeur
A small excerpt from my six-channel piece titled “Maybe rainbows do exist at night”
When there is no sun…
A gift from Sun Ra played as this video was captured. I set up a makeshift studio with one blue light shining from above.
The camera was my only viewer.
I extended my neck in the first scene pushing to break open my airwaves and allow something other than myself to be present. What took place was a deep seeing of myself. I stared into the camera in that moment for close to three moments. Unflinching.
I don’t think I’ve ever stared at myself so intensely. To see your eyes then to see past them. To see the things behind you, within you. To see your spirit.
In the song…Sun Ra repeats the phrase,
“The sky is a sea of darkness
When there is no sun
The sky is a sea of darkness
When there is no sun to light the way
When there is no sun to light the way
There is no day
There is no day
There’s only darkness
Eternal sea of darkness”
The spirit is darkness. It is not seen but it is present. I’ve had to realize darkness is a companion to light. The spirit is a companion to me. Ever present. And ever gracious with gifts of self realization.
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Posted by Maria Sideri
@ellechien said :
“The spirit is darkness. It is not seen but it is present”.
Last summer in July, I have participated with an audio paper and a performance lecture at the International Walking Encounters Conference in Prespa in Greece. Using the technique called “method of loci”, originally made in order to memorize the points made in a speech, in this performance lecture I used 3 non imaginary objects that helped me “walk through” the stories of my family’s archives in the region of Prespa. Going somehow against the rule of mnemotechnics, I chose 3 real objects that would help me learn and remember the histories of my family with the help
of my father, and specially their movement in this remote region of Greece specially during the Greek civil war. The 3 objects that I chose were a) a sign of Agios Germanos of a zantrougka (an architecture that hosted an extended family, allowing to share the crops and harvest under the same roof) that connected to the house of my great-grandfather in the village of Antartiko, b) the written testimonies of my great-grandfather and my maternal uncle and their “forced” exiles from Greece during the civil war and c) a collection of portraits from the women in my family.
Presenting here an extract of the recorded version of the introduction, with the music from my brother, Thanos Sideris,
the performance concluded like this :
“ to trace even an imaginary route is to trace the spirit or thought of what passed there before.” Rebecca Solnit, “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”.During this last part of the performance I have commented on the 3rd object:
“I don’t know much about the women in the family, except from my grandmother, Persefoni.My father told me all of them were wonderful and heroic women.
Raising their own children but also other people’s children. I just want to say their names to trace their spirits during this walk.
Sofia, Zacharoula, Mamaki, Stefana, Persefoni”,
and the room filled with their presence…
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“Light brushed against her face…fleeting…she exists”, 2019
“Yoruba peoples have one of the highest incidents of twin births in the world. As a result, twins are regarded as extraordinary beings protected by Sango, the deity of thunder. They are believed to be capable of bestowing immense wealth upon their families or misfortune to those who do not honor them. Powerful spirits in life, twins are honored
with carved memorial figures when they die. These figures, known as ere ibeji (literally meaning ere: sacred image; ibi: born; eji: two), remain a point of access to the spirit of the departed individual. The mother provides ritual care to the figures, bathing, dressing, adorning, and feeding them. Such daily handling is responsible for giving their surface its distinctive patina.” – a description of ibeji sourced online
I tend to think of the twin as duality. Duality exists within us. Not having a twin but understanding that we exist with lightness and darkness, we honor either one of these at any point in time. I also understand that parts of self can no longer be part of who we are today or who we aim to become. A death and rebirth of sorts. Through this, I ask what are we honoring from our past self(ves) and in what ways does that honoring exist in how we move through the world. Are we caring for all parts of self like Ibeji?
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Posted by Maria Sideri
Today I am writing from Berlin and from the conference and exhibition entitled, “The Whole Life, Archives and Imaginaries” taking place at the Haus de Kulturen der Welt (HKW). The “Whole Life: An Archive Project” is a long term cooperation between different institutions concerned in archiving and the development of various perspectives of collecting, structuring and researching archives.
As we are closing our visual exchange for this week on the theme of Ghostly Listening, a fortunate stroke of serendipity made today that Avery Gordon is giving a seminar along with Doreen Mende, Katharina Warda, moderated by Lama El Khatib, entitled “ Unofficial America Goes to the Conference ” : A Missed Seminar on Eslanda Robeson”. The panel discusses the black radical practice of Eslanda “Essie” Good Robeson, an anthropologist, writer, photographer, chemist, pan Africanist, communist, manager and spouse of the US actor and radical activist Paul Robeson, though archival material of her life.
I am sharing some documentation from the seminar happening now in the auditorium of the HKW in Berlin. Thinking of Ghostly Listening and the words of Avery Gordon from Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination : “making a contact [with ghosts and with what is beyond here] that changes you and refashions the social relations in which you are located. It is about putting life back in where only a vague memory or a bare trace was visible”.
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AVR5 Curatorial Reflection #3 – Ghostly Listening
Week 4: Undo

Speaking of Language…
One part of my practice has been reading poetry by others and from myself and rearranging and combining to re-contextualize meaning.
I do this as practice. As a way to re-imagine words and thought and meaning.
The following passage is from multiple authors – all
different poems – presented together with a few words redacted and one word added in parenthesis.
What becomes interesting about this practice is the understanding that words are communal. In reading this passage, we do not know where one’s words begin and where one’s words end.
How we speak about life is universal if only we take time to deeply listen.
The anthology I am taking from is titled “Moving to Antartica”
Words by:
Barbara Kevles
Audre Lorde
Marge Piercy
Toni Ortner Zimmerman
Elizabeth A. Meese
Angela Peckenpaugh
Robin Morgan
Polly Joan
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Posted by Maria Sideri
This week is about finding actions to loosen, actions that allow undoing, actions of release.
Today I am reading text from the book ” the Nation and its Ruins : Antiquity, Archeology, And National Imagination in Greece” and from the chapter “ From Western to Indigenous Hellenism », written by the archeologist Yannis Xamilakis.
The texts refers to the incident of the arrival of king Otho in Athens and how his arrival was weaved around the reconstruction of the monument of the Akropolis as imagined by the german architect Leo Von Klenze.
I am focusing on the speech of Klenze today reading it both in Greek and in English, reminding that way that when the speech was pronounced it was in German and the people of Athens couldn’t understand it. Undoing that today, repeating also what needs to be undone by marking it through repetition.
The monument of the Akropolis is acting here metaphorically as the nation and its restauration was used as a tool for national awakening based on constructed facts, while omitting a part of the diverse populations and their realities in Athens of that times.
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Posted by LeAndra LeSeuri
On Violence…
Some thoughts on the bridge I’ve experienced between violence and language. And the ways I imagine addressing/redressing the violence that feels as if it has been embedded into the very makeup of my body…
Thinking about an excerpt (written here in sections) from Saidiya Hartman’s book “Scenes of Subjection” where she states:
“…redress concerns the articulation of needs and desires and the endeavor to meet them. It is an exercise of agency directed toward the release of the pained body, the reconstitution of violated
natality and the remembrance of breach. It is intended to minimize the violence of historical dislocation and dissolution – the history that hurts. Redressive action encompasses not only a heightened attention to the events that have culminated in the crisis but also the transfiguration of the broken and ravenous body into a site of pleasure, a vessel of communication, and a bridge between the living and the dead….In this regard, the body is both the “eroding witness” to this history of terror and the object of redress…Yet the very conditions that have produced the broken and disciplined body…ensure that the work of restoration or recompense is inevitably incomplete. The limited means of redress available to the enslaved cannot compensate for the enormity of this loss; instead, redress is itself an articulation of loss and a longing for remedy and reparation. It is impossible to fully redress this pained condition without the occurrence of an event of epic and revolutionary proportions…”
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Sharing snippets of process and thinking of how to create scores that can be initiated from objects that I carry with me or that I find around me. The combination and usage of these objects and their manipulation or what they represent for me allow for instant compositions and associations that give space for different performances to emerge.
Here is a list of them:
1. A ring that my friend and writer Iman Hamam bought for me in Sayeda Zeinab in Cairo.
2. The book of Iman Mersal “ How to Mend Motherhood and Its Ghosts”, a gift that I have received from another friend and cultural manager Sarah Bahgat in Cairo.
3. My earphones.
4. The crumbs of a cookie from Corsica that I have eaten this morning together with the fellow artist musician Youmna Saba.
5. My driving license (I have it, but I still haven’t properly driven).
6. Flowers from the botanical gardens of the MUCEM that remind me that spring has sprang.
7. My portable speaker.
8. Keys and an artist pass to access art spaces in the museum MUCEM in Marseille where I am currently in residency with the School of Sonic Memory, a project of Theatrum Mundi.
Using this digital space for a month and interacting visually and through words with the fellow artist @ellechien, I am reflecting on her words today on how to transform violence. I am thinking of artistic practice and community and how important it is to make time for what connects to joy and pleasure and to what keeps us going. Through these objects I have selected here, I am reminding myself the importance of game, of experimentation, the pleasure of moving, the ways texts, sounds and music allow me to connect with friends and community. Also, reminding me how grateful I am for these moments of research and experimentation that allow to me to loosen, undo and also heal. I am so thankful for these words of @ellechien that resonate so deeply, as these words are also a reminder that our practice is not only a form of resistance to violence to all forms of oppression but also it is a path of continuous transformation.
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Today I want to highlight the work of an organization, Lead to Life (@lead2life).
While I have their statement listed below, I want to say a few words around my love for the work they are doing. I was moved the first time I met brontë velez (@littlenows) and learned of the work they are doing within this amazing org.
When I think of transformative radical work considering care and ritual, this is the exact framework that gives me hope for what feels like a future that focuses on transforming violence and
building communal practice that takes into account accountability and reconciliation. I believe brontë and the folx organizing with Lead to Life are continuously asking and answering the question around how we reconcile violence? How do we continue to care for ourselves, others, and our communal land in the wake of violence.
Lead to Life has led ceremonies in community spaces throughout the US, taking in guns at sites of violence, melting those guns down, and rebuilding them into shovels to plant trees (new life) in the aftermath of those violent acts.
Thank you brontë and everyone involved with Lead to Life for your work. I am grateful to be a continuous witness.
—
Lead to Life is a trans-local collective led by black-diasporic and queer artists, healers & ecologists devoted to embodying Mark Anthony Johnson’s prayer that “Black wellness is the antithesis of state violence.”
Bridging racial and environmental justice through ceremony and art practice, we explore our commitment to decomposing systems of oppression through what we call applied alchemy – wielding alchemy to provoke radical imagination toward justice.
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This week is about finding actions to loosen, actions that allow undoing, actions of release.
Today I am sharing some stills from an action I have filmed with the visual artist Bryony May in June 2021 at the region of Euvoia, in the thermal springs of Aidipsos, just before the wildfire broke up this summer. These pictures are a preview of the work “Postures of healing” that is not yet published and looks at repeated postures of healing in nature, the shapes and curves of healing while thinking of the mistreating of environmental bodies.
And these words followed my actions:
Think of the water and how old it is
we are bodies indebted to the water
leaking
permeable
intercorporeal
as Astrid Neimanis says,
we leak beyond humanity
expanding our waters
the waters we come from
the waters we leave behind
we carry our wounds, watery wounds
our hydrotrauma
the traces of an amphibian life, we have not yet lived we carry
our embodied collective memories of aquatic vertebras.
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For my final post, I’m posting two works I created for and about my parents.
“I looked up…”, 2021
“My Black Mother Birthed Me into the Blues”, 2019
For the past 4 weeks, I’ve spoken deeply about processing grief and trauma and the ways in which we heal from ongoing violence. This is what my work has continuously spoken to.
But there is something to be said about the things my family, specifically my parents have taught
me…which has brought so much joy in my life.
When and if you ever see me in person, I tend to smile bright. This is because I realize life is nuanced and as much as I process the things that are hard to speak to within my work, I try my best to live life focused on moments of joy. And I truly have my parents to thank for this.
My father has taught me Grace. He has never once given up on himself and has always looked at the world with love and laughter regardless and in spite of. These words from this piece were taken from a letter he wrote me while incarcerated in 2001 post 9/11.
“I looked up and saw the clouds moving fast against the blue sky and knew God is with us…”
In the midst of everything he was personally dealing with and in the midst of everything that was going on in the world at that time, he was able to look up at the sky and see hope and feel grace.
My mother has taught me resilience. She has taught me love and given me tools to see the world in a nuanced way. When I made this work about her, i questioned how I could create a portrait of her and the depths of pain and beauty it took for her to raise me. She has brought me joy in moments of sadness. Laughter when I wanted to cry. She has been my rock. And she did this knowing how the world could shape how I view myself. She has affirmed me in every way imaginable. And I love her for it. And I thank her for it.
I live everyday in thanks and in honor of my parents and the way their lives have shaped how I live mine.
Joy is present with me everyday because of them.
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Posted by Maria Sideri
Thinking of actions to loosen, actions that allow undoing, actions of release, today I wanted to share some ideas on knots and memory. As an act of remembering but also as a support of stimulating one’s memory, knots have been used in various occasions to preserve memory of songs, genealogies, historical traditions and religious laws but also as a way to record dates and numbers. As a memory tool, knots constitute this binding to the past and to our fleeting memories.
Closing this week’s theme that also marks the closure of our residency, I would like to propose an action of “undoing”, of “thinking otherwise” around the dominant ways with which we are taught to remember events and mark time.
Honoring these encounters of this online residency, I made this humble knot calendar, as a symbolic offering to our 28-day residency. Every knot, the distance between each one of them and the length of the string, allow me to reflect on the different aspects of time, the time in between, after or before our meetings and also to give a body to this space we held with our thoughts, feelings and ideas.
Thank you @ellechien, @lydiamatthews, @arcathens for making this journey possible.
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AVR5 Curatorial Reflection #4 – Undo