"BITCHIN HEALS" Graphic by Alexandra Lenihan

Graphic by Alexandra Lenihan

Hydrate, Rest, Repeat

August 12th - 14th

Bitchin’ Heals is a weekend to engage in pleasure-filled activities. From August 12-14th participate in three virtual workshops and a panel led by/for disabled, LGBTQ+, and BIPoC communities centering autonomy & nourishment.

This year's artists and cultural workers remind us to hydrate, to carve out time for necessary rest, and to rediscover the levity of our inner child by providing a container for care and tools for empowerment.

Drawing of a pencil

BITCHIN’ HEALS:
CHAT BOARD

A place to share thoughts and interact with each other.

Check It Out

Bitchin' Heals:
Disabled Joy Photo Gallery Submission

Gallery curated by Sonya Rio-Glick.

contact us for access to the application and questions: info@experimentalbitchpresents.com

SUBMIT A PHOTO
 

PROGRAMMING

Friday, August 12th 3:00-4:00PM ET

Disability Dreaming: Hope as Pleasure with Sonya Rio-Glick

Sonya is a multidisciplinary artist and activist. Her approach to art and activism is informed by the principals of Disability Justice and her lived experience as a queer and Disabled woman. Fortunate to have studied and crafted dance across the United States, Sonya has been choreographing and performing on and with ability-diverse bodies and concepts since 2011. Most recently, she was a choreographer-fellow in Axis Dance Company’s 2022 Choreo Lab. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Arts Management from Purchase College, SUNY. Notably, she has danced with Full Radius dance, and is the former Co-Executive Director of Dance for All Bodies. Additionally, she is the 2022 Barbara Seegert Memorial Housing Grantee, which partially supports this work. Happiest when fostering community, Sonya dreams of and strives for a more equitable, accessible, artistically daring world.

In Disability Dreaming: Hope as Pleasure, artist and community member Sonya Rio-Glick leads participants through a series of creative prompts to sketch out what kind of community/home/village/world you would like to hold space in. This workshop invites you to dream big! Exploring and naming what a world that prioritizes your thrival- not just survival- feels, looks, sounds, or tastes like.

Friday, August 12th 7:00-8:00PM ET

Wisdom School with Isis aka Nia O. Witherspoon

Nia O. Witherspoon is a Black queer multidisciplinary artist + healing justice practitioner investigating the metaphysics of black liberation, desire, and diaspora, as they track across the space-time continuum. Combining Black feminism, indigenous epistemologies, eco-feminism, and auto-critogrophy with mediums in writing, performance, sound, and installation, Witherspoon creates portals for communion, witnessing, and coming to balance.

An invitation into the methodologies behind Priestess of Twerk: A Black Femme Temple, called Black Feminist Monastic Praxis, based on Exploring/Ideating/Discovering Black Feminist Sacred Texts + Afro-Indigenous Knowledge through Conversation + Writing + Embodiment Based Process. We will flow with what the day has to offer.

Saturday, August 13th 3:00-4:00PM ET

MORNING EXORCISE with jas lin

jas lin 林思穎 (they/them) is a performance artist and choreographer born and based in los angeles. lin stages exorcisms for purging choreographies of the learned body and shutting down internal and external surveillance cameras that suggest there is a Proper way to move through the world.

MORNING as in awakening– to our senses, our agency, our connections

EXORCISE as in ritual– for purging the body of habitualized, socialized choreographies

Through guided movement meditations and embodiment tasks, we explore new ways of moving and existing together centering embodied play and expansive movement.

Sunday, August 14th 6:00-7:00PM ET

PANEL: Collective Care, Self-Care, After-Care: Myths and Realities Moderated by x senn-yuen

Meet our Bitchin’ Heals Curator, x! 

x (they/themme, ze/hir, fae/fer) is a TRANSdisciplinary artist, Intimacy Coordinator, and curator. Selected curatorial highlights include: Dance/NYC Symposium (2022, Guest-Curator), VIRAL: A Contagious Kiss, A Transmittable Video (2020, Visual AIDS); delicate wash cycle (2019, Stigma Unbound Collective); Who Is Me? (2018, Tompkins County Public Library).

Communities of folks with marginalized identities have always lent care practices to their activism. But sometimes there are shadow sides to these concepts; with self care, the onus is always on the individual, despite the difficulties they may face following routine or dogmatic rituals. What if we implemented the concept of after-care, often applied to kink/sex, to a rehearsal, day of work, or back to back Zoom meetings? What if we shift our goals to rest and recalibrate instead of restore and recover? There is a lot in the world we can’t control; but caring for ourselves and each other may be the first step toward reimagining a softer, more equitable and accessible existence for us all

X will be joined by intimacy coordinator and sexuality consultant, bahar baharloo, cultural organizer, Emily Ahn Levy, and award-winning educator, curriculum writer and sexologist, Bianca I Laureano, PhD, MA2, CSE, CSES.

bahar (they/them) an Intimacy Coordinator and Sexuality Consultant based in NYC, bahar’s roots are in performance, theater, and sculpture. Their work focuses on pleasure, the body, queer theory, kink, consent, and sex. After years of coaching individuals privately, to conducting full-scale workshops, they are skilled in the art of holding space for deep understanding. bahar believes that there are so many ways to tell a story, and the ability to unleash the imagination and creativity to tell them well lies in a trusting environment. Through their background as an actor and a consultant, bahar is able to set the grounds for  educational, accurate, realistic, safe, and replicable intimate or otherwise high-intensity scenes for all on a set.

Emily Ahn Levy 안은옥 (she/her, they/them) is a cultural organizer at the intersections of community arts, culture and social justice. Rooted in their identities as a Korean-born transcultural queer adopted person, Emily is deeply committed to relational care and community determination. Currently they share their time with Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY(NOCD-NY), Arts & Democracy, and as a member of The Illuminator collective. Emily is a Visiting Assistant Professor with Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning & Environment (GCPE). They enjoy eye contact with dogs, hanging out with their comfort comrades, and walks in their neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Bianca I Laureano, PhD, MA2, CSE, CSES

Bianca I Laureano is an award-winning educator, facilitator, curriculum writer, and sexologist. She is a founding member of the Women of Color Sexual Health Network (WOCSHN) and The LatiNegrxs Project. Her most recent project is ANTE UP! a virtual freedom school for justice workers offering professional development and certification we need for doing the work during these challenging times. Bianca earned her BA in Individual Studies with a focus on Latina Sexualities in 2000 from the University of Maryland, College Park. She earned a Masters of Arts from NYU in Human Sexuality Education in 2002 and a second Masters of Arts from the University of Maryland in Women’s Studies with a focus on sexualities, race, and racialization in 2006.  While at UM she was a CrISP Scholar at the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity and helped create the Intersectional Research Database. She has written several curricula that focus on communities of color: What’s the REAL DEAL about Love and Solidarity? (2015) and Communication MixTape: Speak On It Vol 1. (2017) and wrote the sexual and reproductive justice discussion guide for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene published in 2018.  Bianca led the curriculum development for the Netflix film Crip Camp which is rooted in disability justice principles available at www.CripCamp.com/curriculum. Bianca has been on the board of CLAGS, the LGBTQ Center at CUNY, The Black Girl Project, and SisterSong. She currently resides in Oakland, CA with her core partner G and is an AASECT certified sexuality educator and supervisor. Bianca was awarded an honorary doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies in May 2020. Find out more about Bianca at her website BiancaLaureano.com and about ANTE UP! at www.AnteUpPD.com

Bitchin’ Heals Chatboard

A place to share thoughts and interact with each other.

check it out