Grief with strangers

Healing through transnational kinship and promiscuous care

Thursday 18th March, 2:00-3:30 PM GMT

Social restriction rules for preventing the virus spread have fragmented us into our domestic units and digitised world. However, this doesn't stop us from caring for and supporting each other. Many of us have experienced and observed interdependent care during the pandemic. And this care practice often goes beyond the national borders and builds upon transnational kinship since we are reckoning structural damages within globally interconnected systematic flaws.

In the second iteration of Not This Future conversations, Youngsook Choi invites Annie Jael Kwan, the curator and co-founder of Asia-Art-Activism, for reflecting on the process of organising 39 grief offerings for Not This Future through transnational kinship. Further to the point, this conversation will delve into the idea of promiscuous care and experimental intimacies as an empathetic radical ground for healing worldly wounds. Prior to this conversation, Part 2: Everywhere Dead Yard of Not This Future will be screened.

Not This Future (Youngsook Choi, 2020)

The participatory performance, Not This Future facilitates a pseudo shamanic ritual as a political device by holding the grief as a site of solidarity and communal care. It commemorates and critically revisits the Essex 39 incident where thirty-nine Vietnamese were found dead in the back of a lorry abandoned by a people smuggler in 2019. As a core part of the commemoration, this spiritual performance accommodates 39 offerings from different parts of the world, gathered through the exclusive call out for those whose creative practice and research weigh on migrant justice and challenge the idea of borders.

You can watch Not This Future in full here until 31st March.

Over the period of screening, three conversations will expand on the themes of the work. ‘Grief, it takes a community’ is the first iteration, followed by ‘Grief with strangers’ with curator Annie Jael Kwan on 18th March and ‘Prayer from the ancient future’ with musician/artist Ceara Conway on 26th March.

Access information:

This event takes place online via Zoom. We will be using Zoom's webinar function which means you will be joining without your camera or microphone. Q&A will be available via the chat function. If you have any access needs or experience any barriers to accessing this event please contact us at emily@heartofglass.org.uk

We will be recording the conversation and will share with full subtitles following the event.

Please note that Not This Future includes content which deals with death, state violence and racism. Watching this performance will be an emotionally challenging experience for those whose lived experiences are in/directly related to the Essex 39.

In joining this event you agree to our Safer Spaces Policy, which can be found here: https://www.heartofglass.org.uk/safer-spaces-policy

Youngsook Choi

Youngsook is a London-based artist and researcher with a PhD in human geography. Her practice relates to the subjective position as a woman, mother, and migrant of Korean Heritage, coming from a working-class background. Including Not This future, Youngsook’s recent performances explore the concept of 'political spirituality' and intimate aesthetics of community actions by composing speculative narratives with research evidence, folk tales, mythologies and performative instructions for audience participation. Youngsook is currently the recipient of Arts Council England Project Grant for her collective healing project Becoming Forest and artist resident for Radio Arts Catalyst 20/21.

Annie Jael Kwan

Annie Jael Kwan is a curator and researcher whose exhibition-making, programming, publication and teaching practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art, cultural and pedagogical activism with an interest in archives, feminist, queer and alternative histories and knowledges, collective practice and solidarity. She is founder of Something Human, a curatorial platform focusing on intersectional live art that launched the landmark Southeast Asia Performance Collection in London in 2017, co-founder of Asia-Art-Activism, the interdisciplinary research network, the recipient of a Diverse Actions Leadership Award 2019, and the founding council member of Asia Forum 2021/2022.