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, healing practitioner and performer Ira Rain, theater producer and director Dina Janis, and graduating senior William Greer—who 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.

IRA RAIN (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, polyamorous, immigrant energy healer and sensorial artist from the Philippines whose work centers historically marginalized communities.

Ira’s discipline is an exploration of how healing, social justice, and art interweave through us and become embodied prayers that help us ask new questions – allowing us to transcend structures, systems, and cycles that no longer serve and to create new land that can hold the future we’ve been dreaming into existence where we are all free to live, love, and express fully as ourselves.

Ira is a performer and instructor of improvised theater, ThetaHealing® practitioner and teacher, ICF-certified transformational coach, sound worker, somatic touch therapist, and Reiki and Integrated Energy Therapy® practitioner. Prior to moving to New York from Manila, Ira held Learning and Development roles in the private sector, including Chevrolet and IBM, before shifting to community organizing and nonprofit work nationally and in the Asia-Pacific region, including projects with United Nations agencies, the World Health Organization, and The Global Fund.

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. 

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

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