On December 8th, from 6-7:30pm, I will be giving a 15-minute slideshow presentation on my shamanist studies, a summarized version of “Navigating Contemporary Ecological Concerns via Traditional Dongba Culture (2019)” as part of the "Feminist Collaborations Across Arts and Bioscience Technologies" panel hosted by the AAANZ (Art Association of Australia and New Zealand).
Here is the link to schedule (info/ registration through a button on top right corner): https://www.aaanz21.live
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Our panel format:
Online panel: three individual paper presentations (15min each), followed by 15 min roundtable discussion, followed by 30min Q&A. Out of the 3 presenters, I will be presenting last.
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Paper 1: Klau Chinche
Title: Riot of Bodies: Gynepunk toolkits, radical networks and performative strategies around Ob/Gyn violence
Abstract: Gynepunk is a transhackfeminist cell: an independent research and practice of the effects and interconnections of health, technology, gender and difference; a cultural disruptor project, with an artivist hacker influence and background; a political experimentation to explore and critique embodied effects of biotechnologies' intersections. Through video, performance, zines, workshops, labware, digital archive, alchemy and self-defense tools, it’s an experience: a didactic coexistence; a visceral riot; interrelated digital organs; an ephemeral, ambulatory meeting place to share, exchange, and learn from our ailments, strengths, accidents, chronic conditions; a listening space, composed of open branches that need infrastructure and funding to continue to develop, grow, expand and mutate. We also will discuss Gynepunk ghosts, failure practices, media instrumentalization, academic vampirism, migratory glitches and fractal disruptions.
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Paper 2: Serina Tarkhanian
Title: Co-Healing and the Politics of Microbial Fluids
Abstract: A politics of antimicrobiality has characterised Western approaches to healthcare since germ theory was established by European scientists in the late 19th century. Since that time, medical and pharmacological enterprises have engaged in the quest for pathogenic immunity, a notion which now pervades all aspects of human life. Although current research has begun to re-evaluate human-microbial relationships, medical microbiopolitics continue to shape dysbiotic bodies – divorced from an understanding of our multispeciated nature. Against this reality, and against rising health inequities produced by biomedicine’s colonial/ patriarchal heritage, what new forms of healthing might enable people to reclaim biopower? Designer-researcher Serina Tarkhanian will unpack the politics around novel microbiome transplant treatments, offering an alternative vision of how microbiome treatments might be designed through the lens of feminist care ethics. Tarkhanian materialises this through a more-than-antimicrobial health praxis in The Microbial Bathhouse project, which explores microbial co-healing and how notions of immunity can be reconciled with deep human and microbial presence that extends beyond capitalist incentives of medical innovation. Tarkhanian will share her hybrid design approach, informed by ethnographic methods and vernacular health practices, talking through the complexities of transhacktivist artists and designers emerging as new care practitioners in their own rights.
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Paper 3: Frog Wing
Title: Navigating Contemporary Ecological Concerns via Traditional Dongba Culture
Abstract: Dongba-ism is a polytheistic, pagan folk belief-system and traditional practice of the Naxi ethnic group in Southwest China. Maintenance and survival of Dongba culture relies on regular conduct of rituals led by Dongba shaman-priests (always men-practitioners). Dongba priests conduct rituals for the purpose of communicating and negotiating between human societies and Nature-Spirits, which reside in the host landscapes of the Yunnan-Sichuan regions. Some examples of Nature-Spirits include: water, mountains, wind, plants, animals, etc. As a Taiwanese-American artist at the Lijiang Studio residency, Qingwa (Frog) engaged in a long-term (approx. 9 years: 2013-2020) performance-art piece, studying Dongba-ism as a non-Naxi, American-born, woman-apprentice. During the course of her studies, the artist addressed multiple points of conflict, including problems of: cultural appropriation, landscape-blindness, and alienation of urbanized/ modernized/ globalized societies. This experiment, while initially conducted to examine gender roles and the pedagogical process of shaman-priest training, eventually reveals other questions related to ecological identity, theological cross-definitions and cultural boundaries, and the relevance of national and ethnic perspectives in ontological examinations of Dongba. This work was previously presented at the Landscape Ecology and Urban Sustainability Conference (LEUS) in 2019.
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BIO:
Frog Wing (a.k.a. Rana, Dava, Frog the Parhelia) (any pronouns) is a research-based interdisciplinary artist-performer born in Monterey Park, California. Frog works seasonally at Lijiang Studio, an art residency based in Yunnan, China, where they observe and practice rituals with Naxi Dongba shaman-priests. In 2016, they received the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Fellowship to study shamanism in Mongolia as a visual artist. Since the COVID19 pandemic began, they've been living in Mount Kisco, New York/ Lenapehoking, where they make paintings, tend gardens, and work as a florists' assistant. Rana is founder/ editor of SunDogs Studio, an experimental micropress and production company.