My conversation with Azul Carolina Duque, artist, researcher and member of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) collective. This episode is 15-minute condensation of a much longer conversation recorded on September 16, 2024 in Victoria, British Columbia, the traditional territories of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples, specifically the Songhees and Esquimalt (Xʷsepsəm) Nations, and the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples. The complete conversation includes a conversation about a new book by Vanessa Andreotti, Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity and Collapse With Accountability and Compassion, that I’ll publish as a separate episode. This episode is focused on Azul’s research Reactivating Exiled Capacities project. You’ll also hear excerpts from a soundwalk Azul and I took in Beacon Hill Park, Victoria. Azul began with a powerful land acknowledgement.
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Imagine a world where art heals not just the soul, but also the deep-seated wounds of colonialism embedded within our very beings. Artist and researcher Azul Carolina Duque guides us on a journey of sound, reflection, and decolonization, inviting us to consider how art can reactivate lost capacities and foster a more accountable future.
Chapter Summary
00:00 The Artist’s Responsibility
01:20 Introducing Azul Carolina Duque
02:02 Land Acknowledgment and Connection
04:25 Sitting with Reality
05:06 Art and Culture in Crisis
06:44 Understanding Colonialism as a Disease
08:18 Reactivating Exiled Capacities
10:35 The Inquiry of Reactivation
12:09 Cultivating Service and Humility
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Behind the Story
This episode captures a segment of a conversation with Azul Carolina Duque, focusing on her Reactivating Exiled Capacities research. Azul’s work with the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective explores how colonialism manifests at a molecular level, impacting our nervous systems and relationships. Through artistic exercises and somatic practices, she seeks to “neuro-decolonize” our bodies and reclaim capacities essential for navigating complex times.
Please see the transcript of this episode for hyperlinks of cited publications and organizations. For more information on season 6 of the conscient podcast see a conscient rethink or listen to it here.
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
[00:00:00 - 00:00:54] Azul Carolina Duque
I think there is a responsibility we have as artists to relate to our artistry responsibly and that has to do with sensing into our artistic sensibility as a medicine or a gift that we were given to come into this embodiment, to become the people that we are and share this medicine with the people in our community around us. And I think it's about asking the question, what is the medicine that I can bring not from a place of heroism, not from a place of saviorism, but from a place of genuinely, honestly inquiring, asking what is the medicine needed right now that my art can bring? And sitting with that question without needing to answer that question.
[00:00:55 - 00:02:02] Claude Schryer
My conversation with Azul Carolina Duque, artist, researcher and member of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, or GTDF collective. This episode is a 15-minute condensation of a much longer conversation recorded on September 16, 2024 in Victoria, British Columbia. The complete conversation includes a section on the GTDF's new book, Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity and Collapse With Accountability and Compassion, but I've chosen to publish that as a separate 15 minute episode. So this episode is focused on Azul's research Reactivating Exiled Capacities. You'll also hear excerpts from a sound walk Azul and I took in Beacon Hill Park, Victoria. ‘Art as Medicine’. Azul begins with a land acknowledgement.
[00:02:02 - 00:05:03] Azul Carolina Duque
There is an acknowledgement of land that we do that we've learned from the Waorari people, which first involves acknowledging land as a living entity, not a resource to be owned or exploited for our own benefit, but rather a living being from with which we extend from we're an extension of land. And then there's a recognition that we ourselves are land too. And that makes us family. That makes us a very complicated but beautiful family nonetheless. And that involves not only our human kin, but also our interspecies and intergenerational kin. So we are woven through familiar ties across time and space with all species. And that also involves in acknowledging the violence that is needed for us to live in the ways we live today and for us to have this conversation today. The minerals, the mining that was necessary for the minerals to have, the technology in these microphones, the cables, all the infrastructure that was needed for you to be here and for me to be here. That includes transportation, toxic waste disposal, and other myriad kinds of modern-day slavery that sustain our lifestyles. So we acknowledge this not to bring in guilt or shame, but to bring up the reality that we're living through and to call in responsibility for our shared time together. And with that, I'd like to also acknowledge the indigenous communities that have been in relationship with these territories, specifically before time immemorial. And so in this case, it's the Cowichan speaking peoples and the Songhees and the Esquimalt.
(soundwalk)
How can we expand our capacity to sit with the reality of things, to sit with, as we say, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the messed up, in order to respond from a place of more sobriety, maturity, more discernment and accountability? In other words, we could also ask, how can we become good elders for the troubled times in which we live in today?
[00:05:06 - 00:05:53] Claude Schryer
Well, I want to talk about the two questions I sent you, but I also want to hear about what you're working on now, because I think it's more or less the same thing, thankfully. Yeah. Season six. This is the second conversation. Season six is looking at the art and culture in times of crisis and collapse. And I was mentioning to you earlier that I'd love it to be about revitalization, and that might come, but I'm not there yet in terms of what I'm feeling in the world, you know, I'm feeling the pain and I'm feeling the sadness. And then the second question are stories and examples of these things? And of course, one of your projects that you'll talk about in a minute called Reactivating Exiled Capacities.
[00:05:54 - 00:09:49] Azul Carolina Duque
Yeah. So in this year, which is 2024, at the beginning of 2024, or I think at the end of last year, I was talking with Dani D’emilia who's one of the folks that I work with in the collective, and Vanessa, who's another one of the folks from GTDF. We were talking about designing and coming up with somatic artistic exercises to bring in the somatic elements that are needed for this type of education to happen, for the type of education that we're gesturing into as a collective, and that involves thinking about the nervous system, or let me phrase it differently, that involved thinking about colonialism in its molecular manifestation. So thinking about molecular colonialism, how is colonialism seen as a neurodegenerative disease that we carry in our nervous system? And so if we see colonialism as a disease that has taken over our neurophysiology, Then what are the potential practices that art can bring that can help us neuro decolonize our bodies? And when I say our bodies, I mean our extended bodies. My body that doesn't finish in my skin, but rather that continues into the entangled web of relationships that I'm a part of. And my body that is not only the body of the present time, but a body that is in deep relationship with my ancestors before me and after me, those who haven't been born yet, and those whose legacy I carry with me, whether I like it or not. And so we're sitting with this huge question, right? And so we thought, okay, how about we start with a cohort of artists, interdisciplinary cohort of artists, and we do some research and see what potential exercises can begin to come if we ask ourselves this question of Well, this broad question. And from there I began to distill, what is it that we're gesturing into with this huge question that I just asked. And a potential title that came was Reactivating Exiled Capacities. And so what's important? One of the things that is important about this project is understanding that words are polysemic. So they have different meanings across time and space and context. And so it's not as important to be fixated on reactivating exiled capacities as, I guess, an exact title or description of what we're doing, but rather feeling into what this title is guiding us into. So I'll give you an example. Reactivating. Or let's start with capacities. What do we mean by a capacity, an ability to. A disposition to. Or what do we mean by exile? So exile referring to someone who has been expelled from their home country because they are a threat to a political project. That's one definition that we could go with. And so if we think about that someone being a capacity or an ability and our hometown thought about as our bodies, and then that this capacity, this disposition, or this ability being exiled, removed from our bodies, from our nervous systems, because it is either deemed un-useful or a threat to the political project of colonial modernity.
soundwalk
And then the question of reactivating, what does it mean to reactivate? Well, what do we have to unlearn first? Perhaps to make space for this reactivation to happen, to call back these capacities that maybe have been dormant in our bodies, but that are dormant in.
In our DNA, but that can be potentially, we don't know, but that maybe can be called back. So the exiled capacity of. Of humility, or, I mean, that's. That's very, very broad. But the exiled capacity of. Of sitting with complexity, of the exiled capacity of being with reality in its entirety, not in the. In a curated version of reality that I would like to experience. Convenient story of the present that is convenient for me, or a convenient story or idealized story of myself, but a capacity to sit with the good, the bad, the ugly, the messed up, the painful, the difficult, and really sit with it, be with it with honesty, or I will just share the last one. The capacity of service, to be of service to a greater metabolism, to be of service in the face of the unknown and the unknowable. To be of service beyond the need to be recognized for that service. Those are capacities that at least I wasn't raised with, not even close. In fact, I was raised with sensibilities that make that capacity extremely uncomfortable in my body. You know, I was raised with. In modern education with this desire to be affirmed, to be the arbitrator of justice and knowledge, to seek affirmation of my virtue and my purity. I was raised to be arrogant, and I still am in so many ways that I can't even see, and some others that I hopefully can't see. And so this is the inquiry that this specific group of artists is sitting with. How can we reactivate these capacities that are needed right now?
soundwalk
We've been testing simple invitations. So one of the things that this inquiry or this research has led us into is the. This idea of practicing, the practice of practicing. They all arrive to this conclusion that simplicity and subtlety brings depth to the practice. Yeah. And so, for example, one of the artists is working with dreams. How can we relate to the dream world with more, I guess, reverence and humility? And what does that have to teach us that can be important for these times of collapse? Another artist is working with the voice. How is our relationship with sound, with listening, with our own voice, with vibration, important to cultivate as we experience accelerating levels of grief, despair and pain? There is somebody working with clowning, somebody working with rhythm, somebody working with dance photography…