Queering Surrender: Expanding, Embodying, Remembering is a practice / sanctuary / gathering for QTBIPOC to reconnect with the agency, pleasure, possibility, and bigness of our bodies. To surrender is to give up, to give in, to allow. Queerness is a tender, passionate refusal — of straight time, linearity, binary, categorization. How do capitalism, colonialism, and cisheteronormativity inform the ways we live in, perceive, or erase our bodies? This ASSEMBLY places the QTBIPOC body at the center — acknowledging it as a dynamic place where potential and transformation can be actualized and felt, where we can re-learn our autonomy and re-member our possibility. Our individual movements are not at all separate from our collective movements, and building on mutual resistance, reciprocity, and protection becomes even more powerful in the context of a community, a Sangha, an assembly. Together, we can remember, embody, and imagine ourselves beyond — from being, to being more.

This ASSEMBLY combined reflective reading, writing, and discussion prompts with action-based embodiment and movement practices that allow participants to have a more felt understanding of theoretical concepts, expanding our ability to think with the body and feel with the mind.

Organized by Jasmine Lin & Jenevieve Ting | queeringsurrender@gmail.com

Documentations/Resources

Group Members

- andy cao - stepfanie aguilar - Ava Grace - eian hsu - brandy eggermann - luisa martínez - j/jhani randhawa - jessica zhou - (alyxandra) ciale trinidad charfauros - nydia shiang - Lee Blankenship  - d/ dinah muhammad - gab/gabbi guo - rraine hanson - alyza enriquez - dongyi wu - morgan vickers - zelikha shoja - jean mary serutoke - dipaali reddy - sal rubio - ren muas - alex ayuna - mentor: Angela Seo

Organizer Bios

Jasmine Lin is a performance artist and movement facilitator committed to the life-long process of un-learning and un-teaching oppressive, Othering, and superficial ways of moving, being, sensing, and knowing. Jas is a NAVEL Collective Resident, and their choreographies and films have been shared at cultural spaces around the world, including REDCAT Theater, Power Station of Art Shanghai, Floating Projects HK, and British Museum. They also facilitate MORNING EXORCISE, a movement session dedicated to exorcising the body of oppressive socialized choreographies and decolonizing the internal and external surveillance cameras that suggest there is a Proper way to be and move in the world.
IG: @allthatjasss
Website: www.jasmine-lin.work/

Jenevieve Ting (they/them) is a queer, non-binary writer, artist, facilitator, and Libra. They are the co-editor and co-founder of Loves Me | Loves Me Not, a yearly Valentine’s Day zine featuring work entirely by queer, trans, non-binary, and women artists of color. Their work explores feelings of belonging, possibility, gender, hope, and how queerness & non-binaryness can act as guides or maps for understanding spaciousness both within & outside of our bodies. Their work has been featured in Netflix, BuzzFeed, ATTN:, Slant’d Magazine, Banana Magazine, and NAVEL. At their mooncake core, they believe that we are all fundamentally deserving of abundance, love, imagination, pleasure, fresh lychee, and gender euphoria.

IG: @tingrolls
Website: https://tingroll.space/

Image credit: Jay Are