FROM SURVIVAL TO SANCTUARY | QUEERING THIRD SPACES: Blueprinting Futures of Care

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | The final roundtable in the From Survival to Sanctuary series brings together thinker-makers approaching their shared vision for futures of care across a range of modalities: radical faith, healing work, creative practice, public media, and local politics.

In this forward-facing conversation we invite you to dialogue with these innovative thinkers about what Speculative Solidarities looks like infrastructurally—on every level. Meaning: what work do we need to do to solidify the internal, spiritual, emotional, interpersonal, collective, creative foundations upon which the next steps might be built? And how might some of our existing systems and/or practices—especially those in our liminal “third spaces”—offer meaningful materials for our next steps?

Here, you’ll find our host (Public Action Fellow, artist-researcher Elæ Moss) joined by radical faith leader Micah Bucey, interdisciplinary performer and activist Kiebpoli Calnek, and theater producer and director Dina Janis. We'll also speak with members of Moss's advanced Archive + Access - Public Urgent Action working group, as well as graduating senior William Greer who has been working with Moss for a second semester in the space of a Queering Third Spaces tutorial —Greer is already actively putting their commitment to evolving rural politics to work in VT as a justice of the peace and as Secretary of the Vermont Dems. What we have in common is more than you might think—giving us fertile ground for this conversation about the different forms change-work takes, and the types of performance we all participate in to move the collective forward.

We’re asking:

• Where and how does care become an ecosystem?
• Who develops, builds, and models these interpersonal infrastructures?
• How do our bodies learn to practice these modes of relating -- and to unlearn the divisive strategies we believed were necessary to survive?
• What role do third spaces, a radical rewriting of faith as a human technology,  healing modalities, and creativity play in this work?
• We hope you’ll join us for this evening, as well as the whole series, where we consider together what it will take to get us from a survival state to one where we believe sanctuary can truly be found – and built. 

Learn more about the series on Instagram @thetroublewithbartleby.

COLLABORATOR BIOS:

ELÆ MOSS (host, they/them) is a cell-cluster learning to person. They are comforted by nonlinear time. They always think of “Borges and I” when writing bios. Their ministry is to be a webmaster and system administrator, but not in the ways you might think: this is to say, a collector and spinner of story, a recorder, a mapper, and a builder of infrastructures and tools for future possibility. Elæ’s preferred medium is questions, and depending on these two (“who is it for?” and “what is it for?”) they work across text, image, sound, performance, institution, system, code, body, and whatever else might be necessary.

In the more official language you may be looking for, Elæ is a queer nonbinary multimodal artist-researcher, curator, information worker, and producer committed to radical pedagogy and practice. They lead Autonomous Mechanics Studio and are the founder and creative director of The Operating System and Liminal Lab. Elæ is a Professor at Pratt Institute where they are the coordinator of the hybrid Architectural Humanities and Media Studies first year program. They are completing two years as a Public Action Fellow at Bennington College in the Spring of 2024. Elæ publishes, performs, and produces media and programming widely, and is currently dedicated to research on retrofitting radical faith institutions and other third spaces for liberatory future building.

MICAH BUCEY (they/them) serves as Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, a congregation committed to curiously seeking the intersections between expansive spirituality, radical social justice, and uncensored creative expression. At Judson, Rev. Bucey developed and continues to oversee “Judson Arts,” which has commissioned, presented, produced, and promoted the creative output of hundreds of poets, actors, playwrights, composers, musicians, dancers, choreographers, painters, photographers, sculptors, and many others, upholding the belief that artists have the potential to serve as society’s modern-day prophets. Rev. Bucey also serves as the Artistic Director for “Judson Commons,” the secular justice and arts hub housed within Judson, and is the author of The Book of Tiny Prayer, available from Fordham University Press.

DINA JANIS (she/her) Most recently Janis directed the new play reading of The Complicated by Cusi Cram for the LAByrinth Theater Company Summer Intensive in NYC. She served as the former Artistic Director of the Dorset Theatre Festival from 2010 through 2023. During her time at the Dorset Theatre Festival, she directed many mainstage productions as well as developmental readings and workshops, including Scarecrow by Heidi Armbruster, and Gorgeous Nothingswritten and performed by actors Mary Bacon and Purva Bedi. Janis oversaw Dorset's New Play Development Programs including the acclaimed DTF Women Artists Writing Group, Pipeline Series of New Plays, and the Festival’s Commissioning and Fellowship Program. Janis's Main Stage productions at DTF include the acclaimed production of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill by Lanie Robertson, The Whipping Man by Mathew Lopez and Out of the City by Leslie Ayvazian. As part of the Pipeline Series Janis has directed A Stage of Twilight by Sarah Schwab, starring Karen Allen, and A Life in the Theatre by David Mamet, starring Treat Williams. Janis serves as one of the contributors to the Kilroy List.  Janis trained as an actor getting her start with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, then heading to NY where she studied acting with Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, and most importantly- Kim Stanley. She is a lifetime member of the Actors Studio. She taught acting at the School of Visual Arts for several years while developing her career as a director of new work for the theater. Janis has been a faculty member at Bennington since 2000.

KIEBPOLI CALNEK (they/them) is a gender-expansive queer Black creative generating nuanced performances and artistic direction seeped in poetic elements. As an actor, aerialist, and writer, they focus on narratives that reflect the cultural fluidity of Blackness, queerness, and the mental health industrial complex, through relationships interwoven with spirituality, current events, and sociopolitical issues. They are founder and artistic director of Black*Acrobat, a social enterprise that empowers fringe communities through the vertical world of aerial acrobatics and devised theatrical performance - Kiebpoli fuses arts & activism by depicting what seems impossible.Their works received generous funding and support from Elizabeth Streb, Astraea Foundation, Asian Arts Initiative, Silver Sun Foundation, and The New York Foundation for the Arts. Member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, SAG-AFTRA, and Actors’ Equity Association. Recent credits include: audiobook narration for How To Get Over The End Of The World by Hal Schrieve; playing “The Oracle” in Up Until Now Collective’s sensory installation midair for some time at JACK; directing Nkenna Akunna’s cheeky little brown at Brown University; and playing “Malcolm” in Maggie Cino’s Macbeth adaptation, Unsex Me Here.

The Queering Community Spaces for the Public Good | Year One Special Projects tutorial was developed out of Elæ’s current research for collaborative advanced work with graduating senior WILLIAM GREER (he/him), who joins us for this panel. In addition to completing his final semester at Bennington, where he is writing a thesis on rural politics in Vermont. Will is currently serving as Secretary of the Vermont democratic party as well as a Justice of the Peace for the Town of Bennington. 

The Advanced Archive+Access - Social Practice / Urgent Public Action Tutorial and Working Group grew out of the Fall Archive + Access - Publication and Mutual Aid for Public Action seminar with students dedicated to developing further projects and initiatives on campus. These students will discuss their experiences researching and working on a Time Bank and a Free Press at Bennington this semester.

Instagram handles and hashtags: @thetroublewithbartleby, @the_operating_system, @revmicahb, @mx.ira.rain, @williamgreervt, @judsonchurchnyc, @judsoncommons

#FromSurvivalToSanctuary, #SpeculativeSolidarities, #YearOne, #ArchiveAndAccess, #MovingAndBeingMoved, #AutonomousMechanics, #QueeringThirdSpaces #FuturesOfCare