“Vunja! A Gathering of the Seeds” in Great Barrington
(August 6-8)
A three-day multi-species gathering amidst the systemic failures of our time. An ecology of fugitive practices listening at the cracks ; a carnival performed as mbari: a ritual of decay.
Convened by Bayo Akomolafe, as part of his 2024 W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship, alongside many Co-Conspirators.
Where: Racebrook Lodge and select venues in and around Great Barrington, MA
When: Tuesday, August 6 (from 1 PM) to Thursday, August 8 (closing at 4 PM)
Registration is required. (Wednesday’s Town Hall will be simulcast online for those who cannot attend in person.)
Event Description
Based at an impromptu village brought to life around the grounds of Racebrook Lodge, Vunja will be a panoply of song, discussion, ritual, and hands-on activities. This family-friendly gathering unfolds over three days, including:
Tuesday, Aug. 6th | Race Brook Lodge, Sheffield, MA
- From 1PM on Attendee arrival at the Carnival venue
- 1:00 to 5:00 welcome and multiple festive activities including ritual, processions, creative booths such as mask making, and mbari construction
- 3:30 PM elders’ council, childrens’ council, elemental council
- 6:00 PM dinner with all gathered, organizers’ remarks
- 8:00 PM fire ceremony, story telling, music and celebration
Wednesday August 7th | Downtown Great Barrington, MA
- Morning (suggested) Explore Great Barrington and sites connected with W. E. B. Du Bois’ Life and Legacy via self-guided tours
- Lunch (suggested) Exchange US dollars for BerkShares local currency at local banks (list of area eateries to be provided)
- 1:30 – 5:30 “Down by the Riverside” Town Hall at Saint James Place Bayo will be joined by Orland Bishop, Resmaa Menakem, Victoria Santos, Erin Manning, Saidya Hartman, V (formerly Eve Ensler), Nora Bateson, Tiokasun Ghosthorse, and Sara King in conversation on our uncertain human future.
- 6:00 PM return to Race Brook Lodge to join their Wednesday night Reggae by poolside with taco dinner. (Or, arrange your own dinner off the menu at the on-site Stage Coach Tavern.)
Thursday August 8th | Race Brook Lodge, Sheffield
- 10:30 AM “The Trickster & Possible Edges” session led by Resmaa Menakem
OR “Against Normopathy” discussion led by Erin Manning (simultaneous: choose one activity) - 1:00 PM All gather for lunch at Racebrook
- 2:30 – 4PM Farewell assembly and ritual closing of mbari
“Vunja! A Gathering of the Seeds” is a practice beyond solutions, beyond hope, beyond justice, beyond resolution — at the bewildering edges of a world that is always in excess of itself.
Join us in the Southern Berkshires for this exploration of the non-legible, in this performance of the absurd, in this sensuous practice of making sanctuary for the impossible – a timely intervention in troubling times.
Registration
The cost of registration ranges from $200 to $1,000. (Children under 10 may accompany a registrant at no charge; note that no formal child care is being offered).
Please self-select the ticket price that best matches your ability to pay.
Registration includes activities and select meals (noted above), but does not include lodging or transportation. As on-site accommodation is not available, those coming from outside the area will need to arrange their own local lodging and transportation.
About Mbari
An indigenous tradition of the Igbo people of West Africa that invites collaboration with the more-than human, mbari is a dance with decay, a falling away, a carnival with possibilities — a play of termite and wind and yam and wine to mark limitations .
It is the ceremonial seeding of a series of planetary technologies of decoloniality inspired to convene new sites of potential, to attend to other sources of power-with-the-mysterious-world. Mbari is queered here to serve another gesture: making sanctuary for the monstrous: for the thing that gets in the way, for the failures we often try to tuck away so we can fit in, and for the neurotypical conventions that rope us into patterns of repetition.
This carnival is a co-inquiry, an attempt to stay with the minor gesture, an invitation to inhabit the thin places where we don’t know what to do — where all we can do feels like a reinforcement of all we are attempting to escape — and where our identities are not so much ours as they are the world’s.