Nicole Angela Pearson

Artistic Director, Researcher & Performer, the Amo Collective 2023 Dekolonial Flanerie

Beneath the asphalt of Berlin-Mitte lie hidden historical layers and untold stories. The deeper we dig, the more cracked the dominant, uniform surface becomes. Taking a closer look, we begin to notice the traces of social struggles for freedom, refuge, emancipation, recognition, and participation. These struggles have moved people around Anton Wilhelm Amo-Straße since the Enlightenment and the colonial modern, through the crimes of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, up to the post-colonial present after the 'Cold War'.

How can the decolonial futures be reinvigorated from the perspective of the past and these ongoing struggles? What happens when we recognize them not as disconnected, separate time capsules but as breathing experiences that intersect in our present? Can we become neighbors and imagine neighborhoods between histories, struggles and experiences?

Decolonial Flânerie is a format of a public, performative urban walking event, conceptualized and presented by the Amo Collective Berlin.

The Sojourner Social Club is a space for dreamers, misfits, and outcasts. The idea is to weave art, culture, community, and celebration into a practice of personal and collective transformation.

It is a curated social space where we explore what it means to be human and experiment with how we connect to ourselves and each other in service to personal and collective transformation. This space is modeled after the Abolitionist Movement of the 18th-19th centuries, the radical, international, and interracial movement for the liberation of the enslaved, grounded in Black resistance. Our goal is to fight for the most vulnerable while working to abolish the oppressive structures that diminish and destroy all life. We center and create spaces for personal transformation that lead to collective action.

www.sojournersocialclub.com

Learning to decommission our weaponized bodies.

In this 2 day workshop, we practice conscious connection with our bodies through breath, playful movement, dance, and theatrical expression. We unpack the internalized power dynamics and brutality of patriarchial white body supremacy. We look at how we embody and practice oppression. we will explore the legacies we have inherited, get familiar with the hierarchies we embody, and how these two forces shape us. We learn how our bodies impact the spaces we live in and move through and the people we encounter. We map the terrain of power and vulnerabilities that we embody and express.