Our prayers role-playing futures
Saturday 1 February, 7-9pm
Performance evening with n:u, Sym Stellium, Gisou Golshani and Byuka aka Fortune Tailed Beast.
NOTE: If sold out, email giulia.casalini@cuntemporary.org for the waiting list.
The 1st of February, also called Imbolc, is the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox - when the first subtle signs of bloom envelop our senses and our biorhythm. An opportunity to connect with the circular timezones created by the Sun, the joy of the returning light and the embodied resonance with the land and its slow rebirth.
Join our celebration of ancestrality, futurism, fire, healing and queer spirituality through poetry, movement, soundscapes and performance-rituals.
Bios:
n:u @n.u.practice (they/them) is an undisciplined atmosphere-maker. Intimacy, embodiment and healing emerge from their work contributing to freedom and liberation. They collaborate with artworkers, companion-materials, and cultural spaces - unearthing transformative ways to play (the process through which we feel and propel change) on molecular and infrastructural levels. Fundamentally, their work is to re-invest in transformative embodiment (re-member, feel, be present to, and heal our inherent wholeness) with unusual artistic experiments.
Most recently commissioned by Eastside Projects and FABRIC, experimenting between Dakar and Birmingham with exceptional artists and artworkers (2023-2024). n:u is currently a MAIA Fellow (2024-2025). They have previously been invited to make artworks by organisations including Fierce Festival (Birmingham); Ikon Gallery x Vivid Projects (Birmingham); Kutlturfabrik (Luxembourg); Coventry Biennial (Coventry); ShapeArts (London); Warwick Arts Centre (Coventry). They have given talks, mentorship and workshops at Brunel University (London); San Mei Gallery (London), The New Art Gallery (Walsall), The Theatre and Performance Research Association TaPRA (online International audience) and Grand Union (Birmingham). n:u has curated in art spaces such as Ban Workshop (Dakar), Arcadia Gallery (Coventry), Vivid Projects (Birmingham).
Sym Stellium aka Sym Mendez @systellium (they/them/it) is a movement/performance artist, facilitator and ritual maker - with the exploration of connection/communication on micro and macro levels at the core of its practice. Its work mainly revolves around bodily autonomy, ancestral & psycho-somatic roots to physical pain, and furthering collectivity - and possibilities of liberation - from the inside out. Using a combination of movement, soundscapes, chanting and meditative practices, Sym attempts to create embodied expressions of the ethereal and break down internalised colonial belief systems.
They have been commissioned by organisations - and performed in spaces - including C-DaRE, Grand Union, Coventry Pride x Belgrade Theatre, Diasporas Now, Fierce Festival, We Out Here Festival, Graves Gallery and Clapham Grand. They have led talks and workshops across the UK (e.g. Peaks of Colour, Andro & Eve, B.O.O.K, Eastside Projects, Colours Youth, UNMUTED) and have offered artistic and spiritual care support across the UK, Luxembourg, Germany & Finland.
Gisou Golshani @gisougolshani (she/they) is a London-based artist from Iran. She performs rituals of belonging and resistance through sound art, performance, and poetic chants. Her work explores fictioning, hauntology and speculative world-building to reflect on issues related to land, liberation and collective healing.
Her recent exhibitions and performances include: Bayt AlMamzar (Dubai) Iklectik Artlab (London), Deptford X festival (London), Emergency Live Art festival (Manchester) Diasporas Now UK tour (Hull) and New Art Exchange (Nottingham, UK). She is regularly invited to take over radio shows with experimental mixes, including Radio Alhara’s Sonic Liberation Front worldwide radio takeover (September 2022), to bring attention to the Jina revolution in Iran. She took part in Disturbance, an experimental residency for queer performance and video artists at Ugly Duck in London, first as an artist (November 2022) and then as a jury (April 2024). In July 2023, she was part of Lost and Found's East African Soul Train residency, with showcases in London, Gaborone and Bangalore.
Byuka aka Fortune Tailed Beast @fortunetailedbeast (they/them) is a migrant performance artist & witch, playing at the intersections of poetry, dance and film. Their work explores folk futurism and practices of queer-animist world-building through community rituals, speculative fiction, embodied ecologies & ancestral healing.
Byuka is the curator & main facilitator of Lunarrr Playgroundz @lunarrrplaygroundz - a platform exploring ritual practices for the queer community. They are the co-creator of Intimate Animals collective, in which they explore practices of multispecies mythmaking - both in performance & workshops. Through the collaborative project ‘Your pain is humming in my vertebrae’ they have been exploring transgenerational trauma within the context of post-Soviet countries. Specifically, this project wants to examine the transformative & healing potentialities of collective storytelling, experimental writing practices and ritual technologies. Their work has been shown at the Royal Albert Hall, Iklektik, Camden's People Theatre, the National Gallery, Barbican, Guildhall and Ugly Duck. They have been featured in the series ‘Witch’ on BBC Sounds.