ChE

A healing justice interdisciplinary residency that cultivates the artistic growth and resilience of QTGNCBI+People-of-Color artivists ages 18-26

#DignityInProcess is excited to announce that we are officially the new fairy godparents of QEAR! 

Queer Emerging Artivist Residency (QEAR) Spring 2018 is a 3-day healing justice residency/ retreat that cultivates the artistic growth and resilience of QTPOC (queer and trans people of color) artists ages 18-26. Led by #DignityInProcess Artivist Director, ChE, and Director of Freedom Freequencies, kei slaughter, artivists-in-residence dig into ancestral ritual, connecting to the powerful lineages that have sourced and sustained Afro-Indigenous activism for generations. Part 2 of The People Could Fly QEAR series, this year's theme continues to steep residents in Ring Shout magik grounding in the theme "QEARevival!"

Please note: this Spring 2018 residency is focused on the experiences of trans and queer performing artivists who self-identify as Black and/or members of the African and Afro-Indigenous Diaspora. Priority will be given to artivists living within the Bay Area as a means of centering local grassroots art-activist organizing.

#TakinBackSunday: QEARevival

A #DignityInProcess Queer Black Church Series

This year's QEAR (Queer Emerging Artivist Residency) culminates in #TakinBackSunday: QEARevival, a celebratory service centering Queer Black Magik! 

“In the midst of oppression remaining awake becomes a powerful resistance tool and a precursor to contemplation.” ~Barbara A. Holmes, excerpt from Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church

#TakinBackSunday is about stayin’ woke. Facilitated by the gender expansive aesc(th)etic duo, Black Moon Monastics, this Trans-denominational service is an artistic act of Queering Black* Church. Celebrating intersectional Queer/Trans/Two-Spirit/Gender-Nonconforming Life, we reconnect with ritual routes of Indigenous/Creole/Afro-Diasporic* origins. A #DignityInProcess Folk-medicine circle series woven with Black Feminist scripture, Indigenous Creatrix storytelling, somatic-centering, Freedom Song ciphers, and ancestor reverence—our meditation is for Liberation! We conjure healing justice by honoring the use of sanctuary as site for both sacred and social movements. We touch Afro-futurities, bending space-time as we rise in the counterclockwise shuffles and claps of Ring Shout processions. Part participatory performance, part Freedom School, part Shout House, we lean into Afro-Indigenous cultural cosmologies where the community process to Create, steward Wisdom, and Conjure are One.

Simply, we embody the Living church of Queer Black* Magik.

* You are invited to bring an item for our ancestral altar which will be returned at the end of service

More About Black Moon Monastics:

Black Moon Monastics are a Queer Black Aesc(th)estic Sonic duo weaving Soul-Folk, roots & rhythms, healing harmonies, and ancestral incantations to Awaken all beings to Freedom F(l)ight. Reflecting soular light, these expansive extraterrestrials cross genre, time, and space, conjuring unapologetic Black Magik with austronomous audacity. Impossible to confine to traditional musical methodologies, these Black Fe Folk play cast iron skillets, gumbo pots, medicine jars with sticks & stones, igniting our bones. These contemplative conjurings subversively inspire prayerful processionals that mobilize the Invisibilized. Descending with Dignity, this interdisciplinary duet brings reverence for Blackness wherever they land.

Black Moon Monastics is the collective medicine of #DignityinProcess Artivist Director, ChE, and Director of Freedom Freequencies, kei slaughter.

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