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MAKING GROUND: DIALOGUES
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Conceived of as an opportunity to repeatedly gather together in creative, collective learning, we encourage you to consider registering for as many offerings as you are able. Join the cohort of fellow community members as we explore, expand, and reimagine our relationship and responsibilities to this place. All offerings are FREE, but registration is required.
In addition to these gatherings, A.P.E. will host collectively-led study groups on each Tuesday directly following the offering from 6-8pm. Join us then in the Workroom at 33 Hawley for further discussion of the materials, themes, and practices engaged.
In addition to these gatherings, A.P.E. will host collectively-led study groups on each Tuesday directly following the offering from 6-8pm. Join us then in the Workroom at 33 Hawley for further discussion of the materials, themes, and practices engaged.
SPRING / SUMMER OFFERINGS
photo by Johanna Austin
OFFERING 3: SUNDAY, JULY 6, 8pm (civil twilight) • Bramble Hill Farm
Communion
with Meg Foley
Communion is an experiment done in community. Using our relation to geology and exploring language as a formative force, Communion unpacks how we are formed—how we are shaped by and through language, place and time. An intentional and spiraling journey through the creation story of the land we are on, the family Meg is a part of, and the sensory materials of the immediate moment of the performance, Communion asks the audience to reflect on all that has accumulated into this moment and the significance of our sensing, feeling selves in this moment, now.
Communion is one part of a larger project called Blood Baby, which includes site-responsive dance performance and Queer Parent Convenings, in addition to Touch Library, an interactive, sensory archive of the project, and Primordial, a visual installation exploring deep time and queer formation, on view in early July at A.P.E. on Main Street. Blood Baby uses multiple mediums to explore the interconnected experiences of queer and gender non-conforming parenting and family-building, highlighting gender, sexuality, community, and Earthly lineage.
Meg Foley (she/he/they) makes performance projects in pursuit of radical self-determination, crafting body-based explorations of identity, belonging, and time from a queer perspective. Drawing on choreographic formalism but continually questioning what constitutes dance performance, her research asks how identity is occupied: an all-the-time, ever-shifting self, a sacred site, a portal, a prism. She often invites audiences to engage with concepts through their own bodily experiences, using movement, design, and choreographic thinking to create containers for bodily engagement and reflection on a somatic present, on the power and location of the body itself as participant. Since 2019, she has been working with fabric, foam, and textile materials to extend performer embodiment through interactive objects and installations, affording somatic life to objects and “feeling back” on and through the body, reflecting on one’s FORM and the body’s collective interiority, shape and architecture. She lives on traditional Lenape land, in southern Lenapehoking and what is commonly known as Philadelphia, where she co-runs The Whole Shebang, a home for experiment performance in Philly, with her partner, visual artist Carmichael Jones, and is a queerdo homeschooling mama in a trans family with two kids and an elderly pit bull. Raised by a single mom in the DC area, she was a creative movement kid who found her choreographic identity on the club dance floor, in phenomenological texts, and in experiential visual art. www.megfoley.org
Communion
with Meg Foley
Communion is an experiment done in community. Using our relation to geology and exploring language as a formative force, Communion unpacks how we are formed—how we are shaped by and through language, place and time. An intentional and spiraling journey through the creation story of the land we are on, the family Meg is a part of, and the sensory materials of the immediate moment of the performance, Communion asks the audience to reflect on all that has accumulated into this moment and the significance of our sensing, feeling selves in this moment, now.
Communion is one part of a larger project called Blood Baby, which includes site-responsive dance performance and Queer Parent Convenings, in addition to Touch Library, an interactive, sensory archive of the project, and Primordial, a visual installation exploring deep time and queer formation, on view in early July at A.P.E. on Main Street. Blood Baby uses multiple mediums to explore the interconnected experiences of queer and gender non-conforming parenting and family-building, highlighting gender, sexuality, community, and Earthly lineage.
Meg Foley (she/he/they) makes performance projects in pursuit of radical self-determination, crafting body-based explorations of identity, belonging, and time from a queer perspective. Drawing on choreographic formalism but continually questioning what constitutes dance performance, her research asks how identity is occupied: an all-the-time, ever-shifting self, a sacred site, a portal, a prism. She often invites audiences to engage with concepts through their own bodily experiences, using movement, design, and choreographic thinking to create containers for bodily engagement and reflection on a somatic present, on the power and location of the body itself as participant. Since 2019, she has been working with fabric, foam, and textile materials to extend performer embodiment through interactive objects and installations, affording somatic life to objects and “feeling back” on and through the body, reflecting on one’s FORM and the body’s collective interiority, shape and architecture. She lives on traditional Lenape land, in southern Lenapehoking and what is commonly known as Philadelphia, where she co-runs The Whole Shebang, a home for experiment performance in Philly, with her partner, visual artist Carmichael Jones, and is a queerdo homeschooling mama in a trans family with two kids and an elderly pit bull. Raised by a single mom in the DC area, she was a creative movement kid who found her choreographic identity on the club dance floor, in phenomenological texts, and in experiential visual art. www.megfoley.org
OFFERING 1: SUNDAY, MAY 4, 12-3pm • Bramble Hill Farm
Lay Down and Listen:
communal practices for surrender and belonging
with javiera benavente
What are we losing or have we lost that we want to attend to together?
What dreams and visions do we want to nourish for future generations?
We are living in times of unprecedented brokenness, loss and uncertainty. While our losses are deeply interconnected, many of us experience them in isolation making it difficult to imagine more generative futures into being.
Lay Down and Listen is an invitation into a communal and creative exploration in 3 parts: one part art-making, one part ritual, and one part reflection and dialogue. The purpose is to create a slow, intimate, and sacred space that allows us to attune and attend to our losses (both personal and collective), while nourishing our capacity to dream for future generations.
javiera benavente will share a series of communal practices that invite deep, whole bodied listening and making. This is an invitation into ceremony. It is a call to turn towards ourselves, each other, the land, and our more than human relatives for connection, guidance, and sustenance as we navigate these turbulent and troubling times.
javiera benavente is an artist, cultural organizer, facilitator, and educator dedicated to collective practice and co-creating new futures of care. Born in Santiago, Chile (Wallmapu) just months before the Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by a military coup, she has been deeply impacted by the legacy and failure of this utopian political project and its aftermath throughout her life.
javiera’s current work explores collective grief, loss, and memory; cultivating right and reciprocal relations with land and more than human relatives; and communal, embodied practices of surrender and belonging. She is the co-curator of Chile Nunca Más: making memory, making future, an exhibit and memory making project that marks 50 years since el golpe (the military coup) in Chile and the subsequent 17 years long dictatorship.
She serves as Assistant Dean of Collaborative and Community Engaged Learning at Hampshire College where she co-chairs the Decolonization & Reciprocity Working Group. javiera lives on the ancestral homelands of the Pocomtuc, Nonotuck, and Nipmuc Peoples with her partner, daughter, and dog.
Lay Down and Listen:
communal practices for surrender and belonging
with javiera benavente
What are we losing or have we lost that we want to attend to together?
What dreams and visions do we want to nourish for future generations?
We are living in times of unprecedented brokenness, loss and uncertainty. While our losses are deeply interconnected, many of us experience them in isolation making it difficult to imagine more generative futures into being.
Lay Down and Listen is an invitation into a communal and creative exploration in 3 parts: one part art-making, one part ritual, and one part reflection and dialogue. The purpose is to create a slow, intimate, and sacred space that allows us to attune and attend to our losses (both personal and collective), while nourishing our capacity to dream for future generations.
javiera benavente will share a series of communal practices that invite deep, whole bodied listening and making. This is an invitation into ceremony. It is a call to turn towards ourselves, each other, the land, and our more than human relatives for connection, guidance, and sustenance as we navigate these turbulent and troubling times.
javiera benavente is an artist, cultural organizer, facilitator, and educator dedicated to collective practice and co-creating new futures of care. Born in Santiago, Chile (Wallmapu) just months before the Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by a military coup, she has been deeply impacted by the legacy and failure of this utopian political project and its aftermath throughout her life.
javiera’s current work explores collective grief, loss, and memory; cultivating right and reciprocal relations with land and more than human relatives; and communal, embodied practices of surrender and belonging. She is the co-curator of Chile Nunca Más: making memory, making future, an exhibit and memory making project that marks 50 years since el golpe (the military coup) in Chile and the subsequent 17 years long dictatorship.
She serves as Assistant Dean of Collaborative and Community Engaged Learning at Hampshire College where she co-chairs the Decolonization & Reciprocity Working Group. javiera lives on the ancestral homelands of the Pocomtuc, Nonotuck, and Nipmuc Peoples with her partner, daughter, and dog.
OFFERING 2: SUNDAY, MAY 18, 12-3pm
meet at 33 Hawley St. (CHANGE OF VENUE!)
Where we go, we will have been
with Sara Smith
How is our felt experience of a place informed by knowledge of or assumptions about its history? How do layered past, present, and future moments live in, with, and around us? How might we understand ourselves as grounded in a wide expanse of space and time, and make art from that grounding?
Interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and librarian Sara Smith will share their experiences and creative practices developed from making speculative artworks and performances from archival research. In guided experiments, we will attend to sensory experience of place, discuss the human anatomies that shape this experience, and engage with, reimagine, and remix “historical” materials connected to APE spaces. Activities will include an artist presentation, group discussion, individual writing and/or drawing, and adaptable guided exercises.
Sara Smith is a transdisciplinary choreographer and librarian. Their projects consider concepts of interconnection, practices of micro-attention, and the poetics and politics of embodied and archival research. Sara’s recent exhibition at APE, Sugar Maple Glacial Lake Station, presented works from their ongoing futurist project Inside the Breath (In Network Time). Sara has been a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship award in Choreography among other awards and honors, and lives
in Greenfield (Pocumtuck land). sarasmithprojects.com
meet at 33 Hawley St. (CHANGE OF VENUE!)
Where we go, we will have been
with Sara Smith
How is our felt experience of a place informed by knowledge of or assumptions about its history? How do layered past, present, and future moments live in, with, and around us? How might we understand ourselves as grounded in a wide expanse of space and time, and make art from that grounding?
Interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and librarian Sara Smith will share their experiences and creative practices developed from making speculative artworks and performances from archival research. In guided experiments, we will attend to sensory experience of place, discuss the human anatomies that shape this experience, and engage with, reimagine, and remix “historical” materials connected to APE spaces. Activities will include an artist presentation, group discussion, individual writing and/or drawing, and adaptable guided exercises.
Sara Smith is a transdisciplinary choreographer and librarian. Their projects consider concepts of interconnection, practices of micro-attention, and the poetics and politics of embodied and archival research. Sara’s recent exhibition at APE, Sugar Maple Glacial Lake Station, presented works from their ongoing futurist project Inside the Breath (In Network Time). Sara has been a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship award in Choreography among other awards and honors, and lives
in Greenfield (Pocumtuck land). sarasmithprojects.com
The overall shape of this program was developed with insight from Trenda Loftin, Tyler Rai, Alex Ripp, and Lailye Weidman, and continues the inquiries of Making Ground, a public art project initiated in February 2023 on the floor of the Workroom at 33 Hawley that invited the public into personal and interconnected creative engagement with our relationships to land, community, space, imagination, and stewardship.
Making Ground: Dialogues is made possible through funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in Northampton.
PAST OFFERINGS
Sunday, September 29, 1-4pm • Bramble Hill Farm
OFFERING 1: JuPong Lin
Plants, Paper, Place: Conversations
In this workshop, we connect with the land and deepen relationships with plantcestral knowledge through hand papermaking. JuPong will share her contemplative papermaking practice, beginning with a deep listening plant walk and ethical harvest of plant friends, listening for who gives us permission to use their leaves or stems for making paper pulp. We will couch the wet paper on windows and/or glass, and people can come to A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton in subsequent days to pick up the paper you made (or requests can be made to mail the paper as needed).
The embodied experiences of hand papermaking—preparing the pulp, pulling sheets and couching sheets to dry—invokes a mindbodyspirit connection with these plants and their gifts. Making paper by hand slows down our experience of time and cultivates resistance to colonial urgency and the fixation on “solving problems.” Hand papermaking is a wonderful method of inquiry for exploring our relationship with plants, land, place, the life cycle of seeds and the plants that arise from them, the relationship between the creatures that disperse the seeds, human interventions into these life cycles and relationships, relationships of care and relationships that cause harm. We can explore memory: what the plants remember, how land remembers, how our memories intertwine with the memory of paper. We can inquire into the transformation of plant (life) to paper (a useful object); what is lost and what is gained in the process of transformation—is the paper alive? Did the plant “give up its life” in becoming a “useful object”? Does paper retain the medicine of the plant? How can we decenter the human narrative of loss and gain? What questions entice you in conversing with plants, people and place?
*Plant gathering will take place ahead of workshop on September 24, 5-6pm at Bramble Hill Farm. Please join us!
OFFERING 1: JuPong Lin
Plants, Paper, Place: Conversations
In this workshop, we connect with the land and deepen relationships with plantcestral knowledge through hand papermaking. JuPong will share her contemplative papermaking practice, beginning with a deep listening plant walk and ethical harvest of plant friends, listening for who gives us permission to use their leaves or stems for making paper pulp. We will couch the wet paper on windows and/or glass, and people can come to A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton in subsequent days to pick up the paper you made (or requests can be made to mail the paper as needed).
The embodied experiences of hand papermaking—preparing the pulp, pulling sheets and couching sheets to dry—invokes a mindbodyspirit connection with these plants and their gifts. Making paper by hand slows down our experience of time and cultivates resistance to colonial urgency and the fixation on “solving problems.” Hand papermaking is a wonderful method of inquiry for exploring our relationship with plants, land, place, the life cycle of seeds and the plants that arise from them, the relationship between the creatures that disperse the seeds, human interventions into these life cycles and relationships, relationships of care and relationships that cause harm. We can explore memory: what the plants remember, how land remembers, how our memories intertwine with the memory of paper. We can inquire into the transformation of plant (life) to paper (a useful object); what is lost and what is gained in the process of transformation—is the paper alive? Did the plant “give up its life” in becoming a “useful object”? Does paper retain the medicine of the plant? How can we decenter the human narrative of loss and gain? What questions entice you in conversing with plants, people and place?
*Plant gathering will take place ahead of workshop on September 24, 5-6pm at Bramble Hill Farm. Please join us!
Sunday, October 13, 1-4pm • 33 Hawley + Terrace Trails
OFFERING 2: Christa Donner
Toward a Multisensory Deep Map
Artist Christa Donner introduces the concept of Deep Mapping as a form of creative research. Through a series of ecological and sensory exercises, we will begin a multi-layered representation of place from shared noticing and knowledge.
We will begin and end at 33 Hawley for a presentation of underlying ideas and synthesis of collected forms. From there we will walk together to the nearby Terrace Trails to begin our study of the landscape.
Please wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather: we will spend half of our time together outdoors. This workshop will involve walking, listening, and drawing. If mobility, vision, or hearing are a concern, please let us know your needs in advance so that we can find creative ways to accommodate all participants.
OFFERING 2: Christa Donner
Toward a Multisensory Deep Map
Artist Christa Donner introduces the concept of Deep Mapping as a form of creative research. Through a series of ecological and sensory exercises, we will begin a multi-layered representation of place from shared noticing and knowledge.
We will begin and end at 33 Hawley for a presentation of underlying ideas and synthesis of collected forms. From there we will walk together to the nearby Terrace Trails to begin our study of the landscape.
Please wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather: we will spend half of our time together outdoors. This workshop will involve walking, listening, and drawing. If mobility, vision, or hearing are a concern, please let us know your needs in advance so that we can find creative ways to accommodate all participants.
Sunday, October 27, 1-4pm • Bramble Hill Farm
OFFERING 3: Gina Siepel
Tree Withness
“Witness trees” are living trees which have been recognized for their living presence at significant events in human history. The National Park Service maintains a “Witness Tree Protection Program,” which distinguishes trees which have survived battles, lived alongside historic figures, or witnessed the signing of important agreements. While the contemplation of these trees invites us to enter into history on a more generous arboreal clock, the overall concept is decidedly human-centered and nationalistic. What if we become tree-centered instead, and focus on witnessing the long-lasting lives of trees, so much more enduring than our own, centering these venerable plant relatives in our communities?
The event will begin in the barn at Bramble Hill Farm, with a presentation about witness trees, and then segue into experimentation with playful ways of turning the direction of our attention tree-ward. We’ll meet the trees of Bramble Hill Farm, learning more about who they are and what they are doing, learning about the history of the land at the farm, and imagining into the past, present, and possible futures of these trees and their environment. We will cultivate an attitude of “tree withness,” an experiment in interspecies empathy. Activities will include walking, writing, visual exercises, and short discussions. Wear good walking shoes, warm clothes, and bring something to write and/or draw on and with.
OFFERING 3: Gina Siepel
Tree Withness
“Witness trees” are living trees which have been recognized for their living presence at significant events in human history. The National Park Service maintains a “Witness Tree Protection Program,” which distinguishes trees which have survived battles, lived alongside historic figures, or witnessed the signing of important agreements. While the contemplation of these trees invites us to enter into history on a more generous arboreal clock, the overall concept is decidedly human-centered and nationalistic. What if we become tree-centered instead, and focus on witnessing the long-lasting lives of trees, so much more enduring than our own, centering these venerable plant relatives in our communities?
The event will begin in the barn at Bramble Hill Farm, with a presentation about witness trees, and then segue into experimentation with playful ways of turning the direction of our attention tree-ward. We’ll meet the trees of Bramble Hill Farm, learning more about who they are and what they are doing, learning about the history of the land at the farm, and imagining into the past, present, and possible futures of these trees and their environment. We will cultivate an attitude of “tree withness,” an experiment in interspecies empathy. Activities will include walking, writing, visual exercises, and short discussions. Wear good walking shoes, warm clothes, and bring something to write and/or draw on and with.
Friday, November 1, 6pm • The Workroom at 33 Hawley
OFFERING 4: Yanira Castro
"What is your first memory of dirt": Communal Meal and Art Activation
Please join us for a communal meal prepared by artist Yanira Castro. At this gathering, we will collectively experience the project audio score 'What is your first memory of dirt?', share food prepared with local ingredients, and be in conversation that centers land and remembrance as a collective tool toward liberation.
** SEPERATE REGISTRATION REQUIRED
OFFERING 4: Yanira Castro
"What is your first memory of dirt": Communal Meal and Art Activation
Please join us for a communal meal prepared by artist Yanira Castro. At this gathering, we will collectively experience the project audio score 'What is your first memory of dirt?', share food prepared with local ingredients, and be in conversation that centers land and remembrance as a collective tool toward liberation.
** SEPERATE REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Artist Bios:
Yanira Castro (she/ella) is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY) working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. She forms iterative, multimodal projects that center collective action in works activated and performed by the public. Since 2009, she’s created and performed with a team of collaborators as a canary torsi and has developed over fifteen projects that have been recognized with national awards, commissions and residency support.
Christa Donner is an artist who investigates the multispecies body as a site for conflict and adaptation, using drawing, sound, and small-press publications to create projects that are both immersive and community-centered. Her work is exhibited widely, including projects for the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (Singapore), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin); the Museum Bellerive (Zurich); BankArt NYK (Yokohama) and at galleries, museums, and nature preserves throughout the United States. For more information on her studio practice visit www.christadonner.com.
JuPong Lin dances with horseshoe crabs and collaborates with cranes, ctenophores, cedar, and two-legged artists to co-create art and ceremony that honors our beloved heartplaces. Born in Taiwan, she lives and works in diaspora within Nipmuc, Nonotuck and Pocumtuc ancestral homelands (Amherst, Massachusetts), where Taiwanese ancestors haunt her to conjure medicine for the repair and transformation of the intergenerational wounds of our people and the lands we belong to. She is a poet of the Writing the Land project and wrote her first play, “Phoenix in the Holy Land,” with the support of The LAVA Center Playwrights’ Circle. JuPong makes paper with plant friends, connecting plant allyship with advocacy for food and land sovereignty. As a faculty member of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program for 20 years, JuPong developed an academic program in decolonial arts.
www.juponglin.net/home
Gina Siepel (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and woodworker, based in Greenfield MA (Pocumtuc land). Their artistic practice reflects an engagement with place, history, queer experience, and ecology, and their work integrates conceptual concerns and craftsmanship with a focus on wood as a natural and a cultural material. Gina’s works have been shown in museums and galleries nationally, including the Museum for Art in Wood, the Colby Museum, the DeCordova Museum, Vox Populi Gallery, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and Amherst College. Gina has been a fellow or artist-in-residence at Skowhegan, Hewnoaks, the Winterthur Museum, the Vermont Studio Center, Sculpture Space, and Mildred’s Lane. Gina holds a BFA from the School of Art + Design at SUNY Purchase and an MFA from the Maine College of Art, and has taught at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Gina is currently a MacLeish Field Station Artist-in-Residence at Smith College, and a 2023 recipient of a Teaching Artist Cohort Grant from the Center for Craft.
www.ginasiepel.com
Yanira Castro (she/ella) is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY) working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. She forms iterative, multimodal projects that center collective action in works activated and performed by the public. Since 2009, she’s created and performed with a team of collaborators as a canary torsi and has developed over fifteen projects that have been recognized with national awards, commissions and residency support.
Christa Donner is an artist who investigates the multispecies body as a site for conflict and adaptation, using drawing, sound, and small-press publications to create projects that are both immersive and community-centered. Her work is exhibited widely, including projects for the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (Singapore), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin); the Museum Bellerive (Zurich); BankArt NYK (Yokohama) and at galleries, museums, and nature preserves throughout the United States. For more information on her studio practice visit www.christadonner.com.
JuPong Lin dances with horseshoe crabs and collaborates with cranes, ctenophores, cedar, and two-legged artists to co-create art and ceremony that honors our beloved heartplaces. Born in Taiwan, she lives and works in diaspora within Nipmuc, Nonotuck and Pocumtuc ancestral homelands (Amherst, Massachusetts), where Taiwanese ancestors haunt her to conjure medicine for the repair and transformation of the intergenerational wounds of our people and the lands we belong to. She is a poet of the Writing the Land project and wrote her first play, “Phoenix in the Holy Land,” with the support of The LAVA Center Playwrights’ Circle. JuPong makes paper with plant friends, connecting plant allyship with advocacy for food and land sovereignty. As a faculty member of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program for 20 years, JuPong developed an academic program in decolonial arts.
www.juponglin.net/home
Gina Siepel (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and woodworker, based in Greenfield MA (Pocumtuc land). Their artistic practice reflects an engagement with place, history, queer experience, and ecology, and their work integrates conceptual concerns and craftsmanship with a focus on wood as a natural and a cultural material. Gina’s works have been shown in museums and galleries nationally, including the Museum for Art in Wood, the Colby Museum, the DeCordova Museum, Vox Populi Gallery, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and Amherst College. Gina has been a fellow or artist-in-residence at Skowhegan, Hewnoaks, the Winterthur Museum, the Vermont Studio Center, Sculpture Space, and Mildred’s Lane. Gina holds a BFA from the School of Art + Design at SUNY Purchase and an MFA from the Maine College of Art, and has taught at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Gina is currently a MacLeish Field Station Artist-in-Residence at Smith College, and a 2023 recipient of a Teaching Artist Cohort Grant from the Center for Craft.
www.ginasiepel.com