Conversation with Tabita Rezaire
December 10, 2020

Unfortunately, Tabita Rezaire was unable to attend the live zoom session of Frameworks and Futures. Instead, we recorded a conversation with Rezaire and Clara Halpern, who curated the …this is not made of language but energy series.

Speaker bio:
Tabita Rezaire is an artist-healer-seeker working with screens and energy streams. Her work highlights the ways that the tools and networks that comprise the internet are deeply entangled with systems of extraction and exploitation. Rezaire has pointed out the parallels between the layout of submarine optic cables (the architecture of the Internet) and colonial trade routes, noting the irony that the origin of computing science has been traced back to African divination systems. Rather than simply critique the foundation of these systems Rezaire actively proposes visions for the future grounded in alternative spiritual technologies. Her cross-dimensional practice envisions network sciences—organic, electronic, and spiritual—as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness. Navigating digital, corporeal and ancestral memory as sites of struggles, she digs into scientific imaginaries to tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality that affect the songs of our body-mind-spirits. She has shown her work internationally at Centre Pompidou Paris, MoMa NY, MASP São Paulo, Gropius Bau Berlin, ICA, and Tate Modern London. Rezaire currently lives and works in Cayenne, French Guiana, where she is birthing AMAKABA.

…this is not made of language but energy was a speculative exploration of our present and future through topics including toolmaking, modes of circulation, frameworks, and more broadly, our digital lives. The series was curated by Clara Halpern, AGYU Assistant Curator, in collaboration with Jenifer Papararo, AGYU Director/Curator, and Orit Gat. The series title, “this is not made of language but energy,” is a quote from “Dream 2,” a poem by Eileen Myles. We would like to offer thanks to the artists, writers, and curators who contribute to this program, which was deeply informed by their work. We would also like to thank our partners InterAccess, Toronto, and Rhizome, New York City, for supporting the presentation of sessions in this program. Graphic design by Marta Ryczko.