Synopsis: Carrying Breath Between Ancestors layers the Pine Barrens wetlands’ textures, decay, accumulations, and field recordings with a ceremonial hand dance in the sky to create ancestor time and tactile invitations. The word Papashèi, a Lenape word meaning the way breathing moves the body while sleeping/dreaming opens the video. The work speaks to moira’s tactile memory, ancestral land and legacies of familial refuge and disabilities connected to the wetlands. The installation version includes a touchscreen and VibraTech that vibrates with the field recordings.

Artist Bio: moira williams (they/them) is a disabled artist, disability cultural activist, access doula, curator and dreamer of Lenni Lenape, Kickapoo, Wyndat, and Sami descent. They believe in and initiate embodied research, access as art and celebratory crip resistance and joy in their daily relationships.Their often co-creative work is transdisciplinary, weaving together IndigiTech, eco-somatics with participatory movement, gatherings and civic engagements. Most recently moira has received a Emily Hall Tremaine Innovators Grant, Movement Research Accessibility. Play. Movement. Residency + Fellowship, Disability + DANCE NYC Social Justice Fellowship, Landscape Research Group Fund with Naomi Ortiz and a United States Artists Disability Futures Fund. Their work has been at Tangled Arts + Disability Gallery, Toronto, Blackwood Gallery, Toronto, CUE Art Foundation NYC, MoMA PS1 NYC, Articulating Space Research Center, UK and ARoS Museum, Denmark. They recently co-wrote an open access and accessible digital essay with Aimi Hamraie called Remote Access: A Crip Nightlife Party 2023 CripPandemic Life: A Tapestry Issue 12.1 (Spring 2023). Their scores have been moira is honored to be featured in Eliza Chandler’s upcoming book, “Disability Arts Across Turtle Island,” Routledge Press.

Online Premiere