Nyabinghi Lab presents

“The Resiliency Garden is a reimagining of space and an example of what can happen when Black people take control of space and regenerate it as a catalyst for freedom, healing, and liberation. The space lives at the intersection of food, climate, and racial justice and is an homage to a future that serves us all, not just a select few.” – Duron Chavis (urban farmer, educator, change maker)

Day 3 of the programme highlights Black ecological imaginaries and the pivotal role of Black communities in different parts of the world in the fight for radical ecological justice. The invited guests will explore the intersection of racial and environmental justice, the significance of agriculture in decolonial struggles, and the power of new environmental imaginaries.

Programme

16:00-18:00
Workshop “Food of the Gods: Cosmology, History and Biology of Cacao” mit Aouefa Amoussouvi
Registration required at tickets@hebbel-am-ufer.de

19:00-20:45
Panel with J.T. Roane, Duron Chavis and Ama Josephine Budge, moderation: Anguezomo Mba Bikoro

21:00-22:00
“Queerdom” – Performance by House of Brownies 

With “Queerdom”, the Hamburg-based collective House of Brownies presents its first independent, full-length work as a complex but inclusive experimental arrangement. With “Queerdom”, the collective creates its own space that turns the binarity of backstage and stage on its head. A formal experiment in which orders are dissolved. Emergence / Becoming are not hidden as stylistic devices, but worked out. Thus new forms of being together emerge, questions of authenticity and identity are reformulated in a moving way. In the following gala all performers do what they do best: They present their art. But the collective swirls many more binary orders: Gender, race, class and diverse dance styles.

22:00, CAN Bar
After party with DJ set by Nissa (SLIC Unit)
Nissa’s style is influenced by the Soul, Disco and early Rap her parents introduced her to, the Pop and RnB anthems she worshiped as a teen and the dark sounds hailing from Atlanta, Houston and Memphis that seeped through her brother’s bedroom walls. Combining bass and club music from all over the world, her sound is a diverse sound collage featuring international gems. 

The participants

Ama Josephine Budge is a speculative writer, artist, curator and pleasure activist whose work navigates intimate explorations of Blackness, art and queer ecologies. Ama is the initiator of the Apocalypse Reading Room project, a member of Queer Ecologies collective with Hari Byles and Linden K. McMahon and Lead Artist on the MycoLective project with Chisenhale Studios and Feral Practice. Ama is a PhD candidate in Psychosocial Studies with Dr Gail Lewis at Birkbeck University of London. Her research takes a queer, decolonial approach to challenging climate colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on inherently environmentalist pleasure practices in Ghana.

Duron Chavis is a community activist and founder of Richmond Noir Market, McDonough Community Garden and the summer health and wellness festival; Happily Natural Day. Chavis started his career in community advocacy as first a volunteer then an employee of the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of VA. In 2003 he founded the highly acclaimed Happily Natural Day festival, a weekend-long experience held annually in both Richmond VA and Atlanta GA that focuses on cultural awareness, health, wellness and social change. Presently Chavis is engaged in coordinating innovative and dynamic initiatives around the topics of urban agriculture and food security in a culturally relevant way. In 2009 Chavis launched the Richmond Noir Market, a Saturday farmer’s market targeting low-income communities located in what the USDA has designated as food deserts in Richmond Virginia. 2012 marked the development of the McDonough Community Garden, an urban agriculture project that promotes sustainable food growing, horticultural therapy and environmental stewardship.

J.T. Roane is assistant professor of Africana Studies and Geography and Andrew W. Mellon chair in Global Racial Justice in the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and he is a 2008 graduate of the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia. His book “Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place” was published in 2023 with New York University Press. Roane’s short experimental film “Plot” received support from Princeton's Crossroads Fellowship. He also currently serves as a member of Just Harvest—Tidewater, an Indigenous and Black led organization building toward food sovereignty and justice in Virginia’s historical plantation region through political and practical education.

House of Brownies is an artist collective of international people. They found each other in Hamburg based on dance and their collective experiences of being Brown and Black in Germany. They are on a never-ending self-discovery journey of queerness and share their journey and their art through their social media platforms.