“togetherfire” - Tickets on sale 9/27
Join us on October 28th, 2023 for togetherfire, a site-specific interdisciplinary performance event with artists Crystal Sepúlveda, Justin Morris, Ray Anthony Barrett, María Regina Firmino-Castillo, Tohil (Fidel Brito Bernal), Nohely Gomez, Latipa, Camilo Ontiveros, Estrellx Supernova/EHQS, taisha paggett, and meital yaniv.
togetherfire, curated and hosted by taisha paggett and meital yaniv, contemplates home as a hearth, an archetype of fire, and an alchemist of private and social realities. It will take place at yaniv and paggett’s abode located on the home and gathering place of the Cahuilla, Tongva, Serrano, and Luiseño, colonially known as Riverside, CA. This is an indoor/outdoor event and takes place on Saturday, October 28th from 3:30-7:30p, during a full moon and at a time when the veil separating the worlds is its thinnest.
“togetherfire came about through the sharing of poetry, scores, bread, and stories amongst friends, rooted in the tensions of home, land, and belonging.” –meital yaniv and taisha paggett
Set beyond the county line, togetherfire is a special event that de-centers the geographical boundaries of the LA Art world to foreground the work of performing and visual artists who contribute to the vitality of our arts and culture while living, working, and contributing to the arts and culture in and across the Inland Empire. As such, togetherfire is an occasion that obfuscates boundaries and welcomes audiences to come experience site-specific work by artists at their home. It is an invitation to draw closer, linger, and participate as togetherfire unfolds over the course of four hours in a gathering of dance, writing, nourishment, and performance encounters that offer the fire as spiritual, physical, political, and ancestral sustenance and contemplation with the following offerings.
Dancer and choreographer Crystal Sepúlveda will perform on the outdoor patio and among the plantlife of the garden to a score and immersive sound installation by Latipa and Camilo Ontiveros. Embodying a score that centers stories of displaced people, Sepúlveda will explore movement practices that withstand and brace for the impact of colonialism, specifically the people and land impacted by environmental injustices in the Inland Empire. Her questions draw on the efforts made by climate scientists, policy-makers, and activists pushing for climate mitigation and adaptation, and writer Vinita Srivastava’s powerful words, “Instead of calling people resilient, let’s instead look at solutions for those things we should not have to be resilient for.”
Visual artist and chef Ray Anthony Barrett will nourish guests, cooking over live fire in an intimate performance that embodies his assertion that communities are built through communion, and as such, gastronomy is inherently a social practice. For togetherfire, Barrett will prepare a site-specific ephemeral sculpture––a dish featuring ingredients from Southern California’s Fall harvest and inspired by the hosts garden. Guests are invited to bring their own spoon to participate.
Transdisciplinary artist, Justin Morris, in collaboration with a written score provided by Estrellx Supernova/EHQS, combines elements of soft sculpture, movement tasks, and verbalizations that center the theme of etching. The theme of etching is in response to Estrellx Supernova/EHQS’s central catalysts for the mover to communicate both verbally and non-verbally as a process of digesting and deepening that which is known, unknown, hard to digest, and hard to utter. Morris responds to this provocation by questioning how words, text, and the moving body’s labor—both during and before the performance of the practice—can etch (make hollow, mark upon/within/around, dig, etc) into space and be in discovery of the power of impermanence and that which resides. This will take Morris and others on a journey through several rooms within the house that have their own history of etchings.
During the twilight, María Regina Firmino-Castillo & Tohil (Fidel Brito Bernal) will engage in High sea, high c Listens for the ocean: gathering fire, joining twilights, freeing stones, uncovering sky, hearing earth…. This is not a performance. Instead, it is “an experiment in crepuscular corpo/poiesis” happening “between earth and sky, and in the shadows of togetherfire,” wherein Firmino and Tohil, responding to their own score, will “edge spatiotemporal dimensions and sound the depths above and below” to connect the land upon which the home resides to past, present, and future twilights. Collaborators include ocean and river waters, 13 stones, 11 co-conspirators of twilights past, and every being present.
Interspersed throughout the event, artists Nohely Gomez, taisha paggett, and meital yaniv will offer a multi-part movement and video work titled, \sweet/suites\sweets/ for \7/ directions. For this work, paggett and yaniv will perform seven “mini duets of tenderness” in seven directions, traversing the margins of their space, place, and home, exploring how they “taste the fire and prayers of another” as togetherfire’s hosts, curators, and contributing artists. Choreographer and filmmaker Gomez will capture the itinerant duets and project them for an alternative experience for audiences.
Tickets for togetherfire go on sale Wednesday, September 27th. For additional information, please visit our website and join our mailing list.
Additional Details
homeLA events require proximity and are intimate events that include live video recording and photo for documentation and accessibility purposes.
COVID: In fostering a community of care, we ask that you keep the following in mind: This event will be held indoors and outdoors. Please mask at your own discretion. We will have masks on site for folx who want to mask. If you are feeling sick at all, we ask that you please stay home.
Accessibility: homeLA is dedicated to ensure that our events are as accessible as possible for our disability community members and artists. Please fill out this form to let us know about your access needs. We will do our best to meet those needs. This event will be indoors/outdoors and includes loud sounds and music. An ADA portable bathroom will be on site. There may be a portion of performances that take place in non-accessible places. In this case, a live-stream video projection will accompany this proportion of the programming. Images of the location along with their image descriptions are available upon request. Please let us know about your access needs by October 20th and reach out to us with any questions: info@homela.org.
togetherfire is supported through the generous support of our donors. homeLA is fiscally sponsored by Fulcrum Arts.
About Crystal Sepúlveda
Crystal Sepúlveda is an interdisciplinary dance artist and somatic practitioner based on Cahuilla, Luiseño, Serrano, and Tongva unceded land. Her movement research focuses on emergent practices of healing and self-determination from a boricua diaspora, post-Huracán María, and anti-colonial positionality. Sepúlveda maintains an ongoing performance practice in improvisation and works collaboratively and across disciplines to compose sound, movement, and video projects for live performance and installation. Her choreographic work and collaborative projects have been presented at Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Highways Performance Space, Human Resources LA, The Women’s Center for Creative Work (Los Angeles); Center of Music and Audio Technologies (Berkeley); dança em foco Festival International (Rio de Janeiro, BR); Lake Studios Berlin (Berlin, Germany); Centre Dürrenmatt (Neuchâtel, Switzerland) and at Musée des beaux-arts (Le Locle, Switzerland). crystalsepulveda.com
About Latipa
Latipa is a Pilipinx (Maguindanao/Pangasinan) artist, filmmaker, writer, and Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her interdisciplinary praxis works toward community healing and empowerment through radical media forms and memory work. For the past twenty-five years she has developed large-scale media installations, experimental documentary films, artist's books, expanded cinema performances, boundary-crossing writing, and intergenerational popular education initiatives. Latipa's ongoing political education grows out of a deep commitment to seeking relation and living across difference so that vibrant languages of memory and transformation may be seeded and nurtured for the past, present, and future. She is the founder of the Memory and Resistance Laboratory, a collective initiative to evolve accountable, nurturing, and politically uncompromising media practice across all stages of development, production, postproduction, and distribution. She is also the co-founder of the Communities of Memory publishing imprint which offers a platform for community organizers and engaged artists to share their work in book form.
About Camilo Ontiveros
Camilo Ontiveros is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who has sustained an interrogation of migration, value, law, politics, and economy across the Americas for the past two decades. Born in Rosario, Sinaloa, México, Ontiveros immigrated to Southern California in 1993. In the early 2000's, Ontiveros was part of a vibrant cultural scene between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. He co-founded Lui Velazquez, an artist's run space next to the San Isidro border crossing that was a vital hub for cultural production and international artistic exchange in the region. During this period, he also initiated bold public projects such as CAUTION (2005) which intervened in freeway signage on the U.S. side of the border. Ontiveros’ work is at the forefront of cultural discussions concerning migration. His practice bears witness to lives upended by deportation, creates space to process and mourn immigrant lives, and forces cultural institutions to reckon with the borders they themselves maintain.
About Justin Morris
Justin Morris (they/them, fluctuating pronouns) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Southern California. They began cultivating their practice at a young age at family functions and have continued to tie and ground their work in black and queer aesthetics, playfulness, and ratchedry. Justin has performed/collaborated in performances and dance-based works with artists Jay Carlon, Sue Roginski and Kirsten Johansen, Bernard Brown, Kevin Williamson, Alex Shilling, Colleen Thomas, visual artist David Lamelas, Rebecca Bryant, Rosa Rodriguez-Fraiser, and Summation Dance Company. Justin holds a BFA from CSU Long Beach’s Department of Dance, a MFA from UC Riverside, and is teaching Artist for Conga Kids and an adjunct faculty member with the Fine Arts and Humanities department of Compton College.
About Estrellx Supernova/EHQS
Estrellx Supernova/EHQS embodies a they/them energetics and is an Afro-Guatemalan-American choreographer, performer, curator, and writer. Choreographically, Estrellx integrates club spaces as sites of generative dissonance and asks, "Are we celebrating or mourning or both? What do you really want and how exactly do you want it? How can quantum entanglement support us with co-creating alternative and equitable futures?" They implement task as meditation, Qi Energetics, divination, subtle Butoh energy, and eco-drag into their ritualistic performative language. They are currently in the process of distilling their research into a tarot deck called El Tarot de Quebrantamiento, which they are aiming to officially publish by Fall 2025. Estrellx has recently received a New Jersey Individual Artist Fellowship Award (2023), Djerassi Residency (2022), Creative Capital Award (2020), San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Individual Artist Grant Award (2019), Princess Grace in Choreography Award (2019), an Impulstanz danceWEB Scholarship (2019), a National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures (NALAC) Individual Artist Grant (2019). @estrellx_supernova
About María Regina Firmino-Castillo
María Regina Firmino-Castillo uses words, objects, light, sounds, and movement to ask questions, to think, to feel, to experiment, and to dialogue. As an artist, researcher, writer, and educator, she likes to juxtapose and transgress in an attempt to conjure. She works in a way that is conceptually and geographically nomadic, tracing nonlinear paths between areas of study and praxis, while following relational connections across borders. Born in Guatemala of a mother from the border with El Salvador and an Italian father, she wonders about forgotten, or perhaps abandoned, ancestors (who perhaps wonder about her, too). In these lands, and beyond, she is grateful for her inherited and chosen kin, with whom she is queerly enfolded. As a faculty member in the Dance Department at the University of California-Riverside, she researches the body as a material site of ontological production, destruction, and transformation, especially in the context of colonialism and its ongoing repercussions in Guatemala and Mexico. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, her research, and the courses she teaches, critically engage with dance and performance studies, Indigenous and Latinx studies, Black critical theory, and gender studies, but through a transdisciplinary approach that works against colonial taxonomies of knowledge and being. https://dance.ucr.edu/faculty/maria-firmino-castillo/
“Alto mar, alto c Escucha en espera del océano:” juntando fuego, uniendo crepúsculos, liberando piedras, desvelando cielo, escuchando tierra…” es un experimento en corpo/poiesis crepuscular, en bordear dimensiones, y en sondear profundidades. Sucede en el filo entre tierra y cielo y día y noche: en el trasfondo, en las sombras. No es un espectáculo; el proceso y los resultados son desconocidos (e inescrutables). Una colaboración entre Firmino, Tohil, la casa, las 13 piedras, lxs 11 co-conspiradorxs de crepúsculos pasados, (y todxs lxs presentxs).
-- María Regina Firmino-Castillo & Tohil Fidel Brito Bernal, 2023
About Tohil (Fidel Brito Bernal)
Tohil Fidel Brito Bernal is an Ixil Maya artist, from Naab’a’ (Nebaj), El Quiché (Tu Tx’ich), Iximulew (Guatemala), currently living on land long cared for by Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano peoples. Art has been the nexus to his ancestors and community in Guatemala and it is also a medium of camaraderie with others in the shared struggle to survive. His work explores alternate temporalities through Mayan philosophies of time, space, and being through images, sculpture, texts, and performance to interrupt imposed colonial structures of time and relation while experimenting with alternative connections between cosmos and earth and among earth-beings on a living planet. He studied archaeology at the University of San Carlos, in Guatemala, and visual art in Guatemala, México, and Cuba.
https://tohilfidelbrito.wordpress.com/
About Ray Anthony Barrett
Ray Anthony Barrett, is a visual artist and chef, living and working in Los Angeles, California. Since 2018, Mr. Barrett’s pop-up, CINQVÉ, has been devoted to tracing the evolution of Soul Food from California to its West African origins. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, an ongoing project commissioned by Active Cultures, interrogates the legacy of White Supremacy, its imperialist visions of manifest destiny and its influence on climate change through the lens of food justice. His projects have been featured at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Underground Museum, Dak’Art: African Contemporary Art Biennale in Dakar Senegal, and his work has been profiled in Hyperallergic, Compound Butter, and the Los Angeles Times.
About Nohely Gomez
Nohely Gomez (she/elle/he) is a brown, queer, dance camera, movement, & performance artist. Nohely submerges in the art of dance corporeally moving, touring, and queering what it means to be of this time. Their recent works study the connections between the internal and external, the visibility, and tangibility of materiality. Learning, unlearning, and redefining what notions and ideologies of movement and the body connote. Through lens, with words, and existing sounds, Nohely finds accessible ways to play, unearthing multiplicity in the art of storytelling. Ella con fuerza (she with strength) trusts to reveal and grounds to dismantle and heal.
About meital yaniv
meital yaniv (b. 1984, Tel-Aviv, israel) is learning how to be in a human form. they do things with words, with moving n still images, with threads, with bodies in front of bodies, with the Earth. they are a death doula tending to a prayer for the liberation of the land of Palestine and the lands of our bodies. they are learning to listen to the Waters, birdsongs, caretakers, and ancestors as they walk as a guest on the home and gathering place of the Cahuilla-ʔívil̃uwenetem Meytémak, Tongva-Kizh Nation, Luiseño-Payómkawichum, and Serrano-Yuhaaviatam/Maarenga'yam.
About taisha paggett
taisha paggett: as in taishaciara mildred mcghee paggett. i am the continuation of Cheryl Yvone McGhee and Arveal Paggett Jr and all my relatives who’ve held me. i respectfully reside on home and gathering lands of the Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano, colonially called Riverside, CA. i am a Black, queer, gender-nonconforming living entity. my background roots itself in dance, politico-somatic presencing, improvisation, and performative installation. words too. i think of dance, choreography, and its methodologies as something to be broken open, utilized, breathed into, and as a lens and lung through which to engage ideas. i dream of being a garden(er). i'm here to learn new ways to meet myself, my creative process, and my work with rigor, curiosity, and care.
