Intention setting, ceremonial fire, with ASL Centered Hang and Quiet Hour

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha offers us a crip grief transformation and witness altar.  A portal for our salt water honey rose bitter tears, wails and loss. A place to sit and breathe, remember our dead, wash our hands and leave offerings to and for loved ones we’ve lost- and for ourselves.

As guide and gift to this solstice convening, Leah joins us again in the wake of when we last gathered in 2019. Their altar will open up space for asynchronous emotions and intimate practices of mourning, space to not be alone anymore with our loss, space to get curious about our grief. Leah will be with us throughout the day, reeling in prophetic poems and prose beyond the isolation visited upon us, against all odds and healing into the evening, finding our loves never lost. Later there will be fire and a little bit of smoke. Maybe a mirror, most definitely magic. Somewhere in the blur of grief and celebration, joy and pain, this poet will wade with us in the non-opposition of life and death. The sun will set and quiet hours will commence. Come find each other forever round the fire.

Those with RSVPs are welcome to bring small offerings including pictures of beloveds for placing on the altar.

If you are in the UK the time for this event is 02:00-03:00 GMT +1 on Thursday 22 June.

ASL Hang / Quiet Hour

As the event comes to a close, we will be invited to sit with our intentions, offerings, and remembrances. After the sun sets on the longest day, Performance Space’s courtyard will center D/deaf social space, with conversational interpreters available for those who do not speak ASL. We ask that the sound volume in the courtyard be kept low during this time. This quiet hour concludes the entire event, ending at 10:00 pm.

If you have any questions or access requests please email boxoffice@PerformanceSpaceNewYork.org.

About the Artist

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Worcester femme, their grandma’s grandfemme, almost an illder, a couch witch and a traveller. A nonbinary femme disabled writer and disability and transformative justice movement worker of Burgher and Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Galician/Roma ascent, they are the author or co-editor of ten books, including The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs, (co-edited with Ejeris Dixon) Beyond Survival: Stories and Strategies from the Transformative Justice Movement, Tonguebreaker, and Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. A 2020-2021 Disability Futures Fellow, Lambda Award winner and longtime disabled BIPOC space maker, they are currently building The Stacey Park Milbern Liberation Arts  Center, an accessible residency space for disabled 2QTBIPOC writers. They still believe in the disabled future.