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Welcome
June 2024
To Friends of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now:
We’re writing to you in June, which is Pride Month. A global phenomenon, Pride Month is observed through parades, symposia, concerts, and other events that serve as demonstrations against violence and dehumanization, and as recognition of courage and triumph over injustice for LGBTQIA+ people. In this issue of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now, we’ve included links to articles about aspects of the struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights, and to writing and documentaries that explore individual and collective efforts toward the realization of justice.
June, as well as the months just before it, have collectively been a time of several “firsts” that we share with you through reflections and links to essays and reviews:
- The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) honored the first-ever winner of its INSPIRE Art Award in April. More than 100 artists whose work engages with the lived experience of violent conflict and/or migration submitted applications. Dr. Katarzyna Grabska, a research professor at PRIO, introduces us to some of those artists, and to the moment in Norway when the winner was announced.
- The first-ever print edition of Yemeni-British musician Intibint’s online magazine Al Yamaniah, celebrating Yemeni culture through a female and feminist lens, has just been produced. Intibint (Noha Al Maghafi) is a singer who has worked with the Scottish Refugee Council and the organization Migrant Voice, and founded her magazine to focus on art and other aspects of Yemeni culture, in part to add dimension to representations of her homeland, which tend to be limited to the ongoing war there.
- A Deepest Blue, the latest creation by Cambodian choreographer Prumsodun Ok, had its first-ever performances in April, too. A collaboration with musicians from Japan, this dance explores the depths of despair – at one’s plight, and at the state of the world – and ways one might reach beyond oneself for inspiration and hope. Prumsodun Ok is the award-winning founder of Cambodia’s first and only all-gay Khmer classical dance company.
- Another award-winning artist, playwright Catherine Filloux, premiered her How to Eat an Orange, in New York in May. A one-woman show, it brings to the stage the stories of Argentinian human rights activist and artist Claudia Bernardi.
Beyond these “firsts,” we’ve included a note about a recent summit presented by Artists at Risk Connection and Art At A Time Like This. These two organizations brought together a stellar international cohort of artists, cultural workers, and scholars to examine censorship, authoritarianism, and the fight for human rights.
We applaud all these invaluable initiatives as well as all the artists and others at their core. We are grateful for the opportunity to learn from them, and to share some of their stories here.
We’re also grateful for and excited about the upcoming events and opportunities listed at the end of this newsletter. IMPACT (Transforming Conflict with Arts and Culture), for example, is inviting people to participate in its online “Arts for Inclusive Democracy” program, focusing on ways to create hope and enact change together. And artsasfountation has opened an art space in Yerevan, Armenia, which aims to foster positive interactions between members of the local community and Armenians newly-arrived from Nagorno-Karabakh, having fled the September 2023 Azerbaijani military offensive.
We are grateful to all of you, as well, for your commitment to peacebuilding, and to the arts.
Toni and Armine
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June is PRIDE MONTH around the world
Pride Month celebrates and honors LGBTQIA+ communities across the globe, as well as their history, accomplishments, and ongoing struggles for justice and equality. LGBTQIA+ people and allies alike continue to advocate for rights – often creatively – and to amplify their voices as LGBTQIA+ individuals are facing renewed or increased attacks on their visibility and safety, and on the right to be who they are. One way to counter this is by supporting - and voting for - leaders who advocate for queer and trans people. Please check out the articles and short documentaries we’ve listed below in recognition of Pride Month. We start with pieces that shine a light on specific situations of precarity or danger, and move on to essays and films that highlight creative contributions to initiatives that thwart repression and erasure.
Gay rights activists call for more international pressure on Uganda over anti-LGBTQ law
By Risdel Kasasira/Associated Press, PBS News
“Ugandan gay rights activists asked the international community to mount more pressure on the government of Uganda to repeal an anti-gay law which the country’s Constitutional Court refused to nullify” in April of this year.
Balancing Trauma and Joy While Teaching Queer Theatre History
By John Michael Diresta/HowlRound Theatre Commons
“As a white gay man in my early forties, I do not know what it is to walk through life as a lesbian, or a trans person, a nonbinary person, or a person of color. Many of my students fall into those categories, and I don’t claim to have answers for them as to how to process their lived experiences. I am also something many of my students are not—a queer person who risked losing everything when he came out and who put himself at risk of HIV conversion with every sexual encounter before the advent of PREP. I am glad that so many of my students now come out into the open arms that I did not find and can live lives less fettered by sexual anxiety. But I am afraid that these strides have stolen from my students the opportunity to connect with the long history of queer liberators that came before us.”
Click for more essays and stories.
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Daria Pugachova, "Cities of War", performance, 5 hours, International Court of Justice, The Hague, 2023. Photo: Hosein Danesh
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INSPIRE Art Award – collaborations with artists from across political spaces of marginalisation and war-zones
By Katarzyna Grabska, PhD, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
Walking through the exhibition hall of Nitja Centre for Contemporary Art in Lillestrom, outside of Oslo, I was wondering about the powerful ways in which art can address the most difficult human experiences of political violence, war, displacement, memory, belonging and home. Key questions popped out: What inspires and motivates artists coming from such contexts to engage in creative practice? How do artistic expressions inspire and move others to action for social justice during and after war? How do artists, art and activism intersect in and after wars in countries engaged in armed conflicts, and amongst exiled artists around the world?
Read the full story.
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Prumsodun Ok, Otonashi Fumiya (left), Kunimoto Yoshie, Ota Yutaka, and Venerable Nuiya Toshiya (rear), A Deepest Blue, Laurie Theater, Brandeis University, 2024. Photo by Ethan Hortelano
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The Premiere of A Deepest Blue – a Reflection
By Kalie Jamieson, PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology, Brandeis University
On the evening of April 18, my partner and I crowded into the Laurie Theater at Brandeis University with numerous others – students, faculty, community members – to witness the premiere of A Deepest Blue by Cambodian dancer Prumsodun (Prum) Ok and Japanese musicians Ota Yutaka, Venerable Nuiya Toshiya, Kunimoto Yoshie, and Otonashi Fumiya.
In the car ride over, my partner asked what kind of show this was to be; I was unable to provide an answer. Though a dancer myself, I was not familiar with classical Khmer dancing. I had briefly discussed classical Khmer dance with my advisor, and the organizer of the event, Toni Shapiro-Phim – she told me that Khmer classical dance was traditionally performed by women, how it told the stories of the gods, and how it was deeply intertwined with spirituality. We compared it to our own artform of ballet as both require strenuous, strict training to perfect the delicate, precise movements and body placements. Toni also told me about Prum and how he was among the few men to perform roles usually reserved for women in this style of dance, how he started his own company of gay male dancers, and how having queer people perform this technique was a way of insisting on their place in the heavenly stories as well. Yet, beyond this baseline, I was going into A Deepest Blue with no idea of what I might encounter.
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The cover of the first print issue of Al Yamaniah. Source: The National
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The Premiere of How to Eat an Orange – two reviews
Award-winning playwright Catherine Filloux’s latest play premiered in New York City in May of this year. The piece introduces audiences to the remarkable life and work of Argentinian human rights activist and artist Claudia Bernardi (Bernardi has just been selected as the inaugural Justice Brandeis Practitioner-in-Residence at Brandeis University.)
“How to Eat an Orange”
Review by Naranjani Reddi/Theatre Beyond Broadway
“‘How to Eat an Orange’ by Catherine Filloux is an intimate, soaring one-woman show that showcases an entirely different perspective of those who endured the military junta in Buenos Aires. So many disappeared – but who is there when their bodies reappear?”
“How to Eat an Orange”
Review by John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards/Thinking Theater NYC
“While there is chronological progression built into the show’s structure, it works in tandem with a more memorial type of movement, looping back to certain events or feelings or moving in unexpected directions, as when, in the beginning of the show, Bernardi is in fact showing us how she eats an orange when some flowers on her table divert her to childhood memories of her and her sister, Patricia, or Patri, eating citrus blossoms in the belief that it would make them beautiful – an act that also, in their father’s admonition to give the flowers a chance to mature into fruit, figures the cutting short of lives and their potential.”
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Omaid Sharifi (with mic), founder of ArtLords in Afghanistan, in conversation with Octopizzo, Khaled Jarrar, Coco Fusco, and Mari Spirito, Dangerous Art, Endangered Artists, BRIC, 2024. Photo by Toni Shapiro-Phim
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The Dangerous Art, Endangered Artists Summit
By Toni Shapiro-Phim, PhD, Director, Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts, Brandeis University
I was lucky to attend the Dangerous Art, Endangered Artists Summit held in Brooklyn, New York, on June 7 & 8 of this year. Presented by Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) and Art At A Time Like This (ATLT), and convened at BRIC, an arts and media institution whose work includes visual and performing arts, media, and civic action, the gathering put a spotlight on censorship imposed on artists by authorities the world over, and highlighted creative means by which individuals and communities counter suppression, advocate for artistic freedom, and champion human rights.
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Upcoming Events
Join IMPACT (Transforming Conflict with Arts and Culture) for a thought-provoking virtual event delving into the complexities surrounding the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, using a systems theory approach. Against the backdrop of shifting political landscapes, IMPACT invites you to explore the trends fueling authoritarian tendencies in various parts of the world.
The discussions will lay the groundwork for understanding the multifaceted challenges confronting democracy worldwide.
While navigating this landscape, the conversation will pivot to a crucial question: How can artists and cultural workers serve as catalysts for inclusive democracies? Through intimate small-group conversations, the participants will brainstorm innovative strategies and partnerships to foster resilience in our communities.
Together, we will envision a future where creativity and collaboration intersect to amplify voices and fortify democratic values. Join IMPACT in shaping the agenda for future events, as we embark on a journey toward meaningful impact and lasting change.
Register online.
Production: The Secret Sharer
DNAWorks (Dialogue and Healing Through the Arts) presents the dance-theater piece The Secret Sharer, based on the novella by Joseph Conrad. “Considered an early Queer text, The Secret Sharer integrates dance/music/text/projections and will be performed in an open-concept space with audiences co-creating the environment and the narrative. In an extension of our community storycircle practice, audience members share their stories during the performance, interspersed at critical moments in the narrative. This devised work is an exploration of fragility, tenderness, and intimacy in times of personal danger and societal discrimination – the narrative of a silent, shared connection between two outsiders in the face of violence. In response to an increase in both hate crimes and LGBTQQ2SPIAA+ youth suicides worldwide, we are creating spaces for resiliency and healing.” The production will begin touring in August 2024. Click on “The Secret Sharer Info Pack” on the left side of the web page for more information.
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Opportunities, Announcements and Resources
Book: The Cultural Dimensions of Peacebuilding
By Marty Branagan
“The Cultural Dimensions of Peacebuilding details aspects of cultures, including language, films, journalism, political economics, museums, education, parenting, gender, artistic activism, and spirituality, which can contribute to either more violent societies or more peaceful ones. Solutions-oriented, it aims to inspire deep understanding and reflection, empowerment, and grassroots action in cultural spheres.”
See more information here.
Art and Social Transformation Lab /artsasfoundation
Deadline: June 30
"For its first international activity in the Living Room, artasfoundation invites artists, art educators, researchers, and cultural practitioners in an Open Call to join a seven-day laboratory on art and social transformation. The laboratory is designed as a learning and experimenting space for 12 participants to create artistic practices engaging with communities, encouraging them to take control of their lives and deal with past, present and future struggles through creative methods.
Apply online.
Lab time: August 6-12, 2024
Location: The Living Room – Arshakunyats 26, 0023, Yerevan, Armenia
Application Deadline: June 30, 23.59 CET"
Explore more resources and opportunities.
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Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts
Global Community Engagement, COMPACT
Brandeis University
415 South Street | MS 086 | Waltham, MA 02454-9110
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