It was the week after the election – how do we reckon with the realities of this political moment and its impacts, while envisioning other possibilities? We came together to scheme otherwise, moving beyond this system towards the world we are committed to building. Hosted by Brontez Purnell, Anaïs Duplan grounded us in meditation, STEFA* harnessed the power of sonic vibrations and galle dispelled the negative energies through an exorcism as we make way for the new world that emerges when this system crumbles.

with Anaïs Duplan, galle, hosted by Brontez Purnell, and performance by STEFA*

This was the third event in the Civic Dis/Engagment series at CTHQ (October 23, November 6, November 13).

How can you engage a system that you refuse? Can disengagement be productive? Can we build within this tension and imagine new realities, new infrastructures for equitable life? This series brought together artists, organizers, performers, healers, and writers, for lively debates to discuss how we work within, through, and/or outside of electoral politics to seed better futures, and how we stay in the fight.

Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of book I NEED MUSIC (Action Books, 2021), a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). He is a professor of postcolonial literature at Bennington College, and has taught poetry at The New School, Columbia University, and Sarah Lawrence College, amongst others. As an independent curator, he has facilitated curatorial projects in Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, and Reykjavík. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in 2021 received a Marian Goodman fellowship from Independent Curators International for his research on Black experimental documentary. He is the recipient of the 2021 QUEER|ART|PRIZE for Recent Work, and a 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction. He was also awarded a Black Visionaries Award by Instagram and the Brooklyn Museum in 2022. In 2016, Duplan founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One. @an.duplan

galle (they/she) is a trans indigenous refugee immigrant, artist, bruja farmer, cook, and tattooer based in Brooklyn. “I see my art as messages from a divine cosmic source, led by the spirit that gives beautiful life and happiness in the real world; mainly creating imagery and participatory narratives as alternatives to common apocalyptic structures. My practice is rooted in my life and in my history as an indigenous and queer refugee immigrant in Lenapehoking (New York). I am investigating and practicing the art of tattoo as a tool for indigequeer empowerment and resistance. Land Back inspiration led me to practice and study the ancestral food of the Americas, its medicinal plants, as well as to develop new indigiqueer immigrant rituals that honor both the history of my origin and my sexual liberation, as well as the land I’m stepping on; invoking respect, continental unity, and radical tenderness… I dream of opening a queer farm.” @gallermic

Brontez Purnell is a writer, musician, dancer, filmmaker, and performance artist. He is the author of a graphic novel, a novella, a children’s book, and the novel Since I Laid My Burden Down. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers’ Award for Fiction, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers, a cofounder of the experimental dance group the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, the creator of the renowned cult zine Fag School, and the director of several short films, music videos, and the documentary Unstoppable Feat: The Dances of Ed Mock. Born in Triana, Alabama, he’s lived in Oakland, California, for more than a decade. @brontezpurnell

STEFA* is a genderless, genreless vocalist, composer, educator and multi-media performance artist born and raised in Queens, NY to Colombian immigrants. Using an amalgamation of punk, experimental pop and classical minimalism with queer maximalist aesthetics and video collages, STEFA* builds worlds that offer a somatic decolonial respite for the misfits, the displaced and future generations of Brown and Indigenous radical artists of the diaspora. Their artistic practice explores concepts of home, identity, gender, borders, erased ancestry and radical trans, queer & Native futures through music, theater, ritual performance and video. stefa has shared their work, spirit and song with Lincoln Center, Queens Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Museo Del Barrio, The Kitchen, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Ars Nova, National Sawdust, Nublu, BAAD!, NUEVOFest, Abrons Arts Center, Dixon Place, Tulsa Artist Residency, Cine Las Americas, The Vienna Festival, Body Hack, Fierce Futures and more. @stefalives