A welcome and introduction to Borrowed Time from co-convenors Mat Osmond and Richard Povall.

Title and details coming soon.

A fugitive to the manicured the disciplinarity of the academe, public intellectual, lecturer, author, father of Alethea and Kyah, grateful husband/life-partner to Ijeoma, speaker, and proud diaper-changer, Bayo Akomolafe (PhD) leads an earth-wide organization-movement (The Emergence Network) as its Chief Curator and Director. The organization is set up around what Bayo calls “postactivism”, which concerns itself with an exploration of the materiality of responsibility and responsivity in critical times. Postactivism, as well as The Emergence Network, is a project framed within a posthumanist ethos and inspired by indigenous cosmologies. Bayo asks: what if the ways we respond to the problem is part of the problem? He considers this vocation to slow down, to touch the textures of urgency, to see through the eyes of the fugitive, as a shared art – an exploring of the edges of the intelligible, a dancing with posthumanist ideas, a dabbling in the mysteries of quantum mechanics and the liberating sermon of an ecofeminism text. 

Bayo hosts a course (We Will Dance with Mountains) among other offerings, teaches and speaks around the world. He is passionate about nurturing a posthumanist emancipatory movement and fugitive network that opens up other sites of power. 

Bayo is visiting professor at Middlebury College, Vermont, and has taught in universities around the world (including Sonoma State University California, Simon Frasier University Vancouver, Schumacher College Devon, Harvard University, and Covenant University Nigeria – among others). He is a consultant with UNESCO.  

Bayo has authored two books, ‘We Will Tell Our Own Story!’ and ‘These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home’, and has penned forewords for many others. 

www.bayoakomolafe.net

www.emergencenetwork.org

No booking is required. You must be registered as a Borrowed Time delegate to attend this event.

Moving with the Trouble (22mins)

Beatrice Allegranti

How long does mourning last? How long are the dead allowed to haunt us?

Developed from the legacy of the dance theatre work I’ve Lost You Only To Discover That I Have Gone Missing, this newly commissioned dance film supported by Surrey Arts and Dance21 confronts our dispossessions. It explores how we touch the alterity within, the dark matter, and invites audiences to move with us as we move with the trouble. The film, and the transdisciplinary research that informs it, grasps the social, political, and environmental inequalities of loss, trauma, voice, intimacy, vulnerability and care. In doing so, Moving with the Trouble tunes our attention to micro-activisms present in movement exchange as we show up to collective understandings of the reterritorialization of power and privilege in more-than-human ways.

Beatrice Allegranti Company produces international and politically progressive work across several mediums: performance, film, participation and publications. The company work tackles burgeoning and interrelated social and environmental issues of loss, mental health, migration and ‘othering’ — through outstanding and ethical dance practice. The company is regularly funded by Arts Council England and prioritises collaborations and partnerships across the arts, health and science sectors. 

www.beatriceallegranti.com

The premiere of a new dance film

My whole face sort of fell off

I don’t know what to tell you about death or the Anthropocene. I know no more than you. But I can tell you of my own marriage with death. I can show you something of the moonside of my pillow. 

Paul Michael Henry is a Scottish performance artist, dancer and musician. His work is informed by Butoh dance, punk rock and ritual, and is performed all over the world. Recent projects include SHRIMP DANCE (a multimedia dance work exploring the links between anti-depressants, ecological crisis and late capitalism), a tour of the United States with Laughter at Being Crushed, touring as a Butoh dancer in France and Japan, the premiere of new performance Mammy at CCA Glasgow, and a new film exploring high rates of male suicide in Scotland and globally called SMITE ME NOW. He is currently working towards a PhD at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, researching techniques for shifting our sense of self from Individual-Consumer to Interdependent- Ecological.

Michael’s themes are political, social & spiritual, dealing with love, neglect of the body, destruction of the environment and atrophy of the soul in consumerist society. www.paulmichaelhenry.com

He is also Artistic Director and creator of UNFIX, an evolving and experimental festival platforming ecologically committed performance, dance, music, film and discussion. UNFIX is intended as a contribution to the waking up of the human species to our predicament in an age of climate change, massive inequality and crazy consumerism. It is based in Glasgow and is ongoing there and in New York City and Tokyo. www.unfixfestival.com

Others say:

Utterly compelling… the astonishingly talented Henry has much to say. 
– Glasgow Theatre Blog

A singular talent of grace and power 
– Lorna Irvine (reviewer for the List and Exuent)

A disciplined, creative and unique performer to Scotland and I have not seen his like in Europe in fact. His movement has a beauty and intensity which has its roots in Japanese Butoh.
– Morag Deyes (Artistic Director, Dance Base Edinburgh)