Gatherings

practice built during Tracing Ancestral Spaces

We have built these gatherings with the guidance of ‘Research is ceremony‘ by Shawn Wilson; the help of Samuel Baidoo, Nawel Kalbi, Joran De Roover and Dounia Mahammed; and the intuitive knowledge coming from our own experiences and the ancestral knowledge speaking through us.

Why we gather
Because we have missed it and still do. In European/Western capitalist, colonial society there is little space to come together and connect with our ancestors. We feel this need not only in ourselves, but also in our families and communities. We want to create space to hold each other with all our memories and experiences. So we may celebrate, grieve, feel, (re)connect and remember together. These gatherings can unlock forgotten or repressed ancestral knowledge/memories/emotions we carry within our bodies and within the connection to our ancestry. This may inform us on the importance of remembering and feeling, and on how to create space for this in our personal lives, but also within art and politics.
We are deeply grateful for the people who joined our gatherings so far. Gathering with you in a circle was momentous. These first gatherings will always be precious to us. We want to thank you for your honesty, your openness and your willingness to travel with us into the depths of our memories and lived experiences. We thank you because for us it is so extremely important to create these safe and sacred spaces and we felt that you all held this wish dearly and made it your own.

Coming together as a sacred practice
Gatherings are ceremonies consisting of rituals. The purpose of these rituals is to connect deeper with oneself, with each other and the ancestors. Rituals help to bring the participants and spaceholders within a specific state of body and mind that makes it easier for those connections to establish themselves. This is sacred work, in the sense that it is important, meaningful and may transcend time/space/material limits.
This way of coming together is vulnerable and needs care. The practices shared are therefore taken seriously by us, the spaceholders. We value the meaning and purpose of each practice deeply and try to transfer this meaning as much as possible. We also greatly welcome every experience coming out of this and hold it with attention, gratitude and consideration. The same goes for the drawings, writings and sculptures made during or after the practices. They are all sacred to us.

Making it safe
Making the space safe is never an afterthought, but actually the first step of gathering. We do this by:
•Making a code of conduct
•Having a care person during the gatherings. This person’s responsibility during the gathering is to help create a safe environment by (1) being approachable about extra needs (2) giving extra care or having a confidential conversation when someone asks which can be done in a separate space (3) addressing unsafe situations during the gathering if they occur (4) can refer to professional help if needed (4) may be approached after the gathering for feedback, expressing experiences, when needing a talk.
•Starting every gathering with a check-in and reading the code of conduct. Needs can be shared during the check-in, but also throughout the gathering.
•During the gathering, the spaceholders and the care person are continually responsible for the safety of the entire group. We ask the participants to also take up this responsibility by upholding the code of conduct.
•Asking permission for incorporating the material made during the gatherings in our artworks. We often record the gatherings, but never without permission of the participants. We always give an explanation of how we will use the material and the recordings and explain the context. Participants are of course allowed to change their mind after giving permission and ask us to delete the recordings and to not use their material in the artworks. We are open to feedback about how we approach this and always want to be mindful and evaluate this way of working.
•Assigning roles to the spaceholders.

Spaceholding
As spaceholders we are part of the research and active participants. We also take part in the practices shared during the gatherings and speak from the heart. While being both responsible for the gathering and trying to be fully emerged in the experience is sometimes hard, we believe it is important to try to be vulnerable and authentic and to not position ourselves as hierarchical experts or teachers detached from the participants and the ceremony. Especially because we are still building this practice and don’t want to create a false sense of omniscience. Moreover, we adhere to the principle of the indigenous research paradigm outlined by Wilson in ‘Research is Ceremony′, which asserts that the researcher should always position themselves within the research and honor the relationships they have with both the subject and the participants.
This way we try to be actively involved in all the aspects of the gathering, to truly also meet our ancestors and to build honest relationships with the participants.

During the gathering we assign the following responsibilities:
•Precare: One/Two of us give the spaceholders (and careperson if they wish) precare. This consists of guided exercises and setting intentions. This way we collectively connect with our body, intuition and get ready for the gathering.
•Moderator/Team manager (we don’t like these terms and are looking for a better one): This person maintains an overview of the entire gathering, tries to be in contact with the flow and the needs of the group. By connecting to their intuitive nudges, they might where necessary: give extra information, care and/or attention. They help change the course of the gathering if time runs out or emotions need more space.
•Practice sharers: These persons explain and guide the practices, e.g. visualisation, intuitive movement exercise, circle talk, crafting, etc.
•Guiding the beginning, the end, the check-in, introducing the careperson.
•Time keeper: This person makes sure we stay on schedule.

Building the practice - continuing research
After letting it all sink in, we will evaluate our experiences, tools and the knowledge we have gathered so far. We will list everything we wish to gain more insight into and the tools we wish to learn, knowing there will be much more added to this list as we do more and more gatherings. In the future, and rather sooner than later, we would like to sit with other spaceholders so we can share knowledge and experience.