not knowing is the most intimate
This spring (2025), I am curating a performance series for FADO Performance Art Centre’s Emerging Artist Series , exploring themes of collective and personal grief, and the ways in which we might connect through shared vulnerability. Inspired by the Buddhist koan, “not knowing is the most intimate,” the series embraces the uncertainty of our contemporary emotional landscapes, inviting both artists and audiences to move into the discomfort of uncharted waters.
While reading Vanessa Machado de Oliveira's Hospicing Modernity, I was struck by the idea that domination often involves a deliberate denial of relationships and a suppression of the senses. Drawing on Dwayne Donald’s assertion that sensory atrophy is central to this process - disrupting traditional knowledge systems and relational connections—I began to consider how deeply this numbness has seeped into the fabric of modern life. What would it mean to counter this—to resist detachment—through intimacy and attunement? This question sits at the heart of this curatorial series, exploring how performance can reawaken connection through embodied presence and shared vulnerability in times of grief.
Bringing together artists whose work grapples with death, mourning, collective grief, climate anxiety, somatics, and rituals of healing, the series unfolds across live performances, an immersive book installation, a sound bath and guided meditation inspired by the tradition of living funerals. It is an experiment in shedding emotional armour - to feel, to connect, to soften. It is an invitation to let grief become a shared language that unites rather than isolates—guiding us beyond knowing and into the realm of embodied presence and relationship.
Schedule of Events
Saturday, May 10:
620PM: Performance by Sasha-Singer Wilson, What Will I Tell Her? 8PM: Sound Bath with Trish Lanns, Embracing Waves of Grief: A Sound Healing Meditation. **(The sound bath is now full — to be placed on the waitlist, please email shalonwh@gmail.com).
Saturday, May 17:
2PM Performance by Amy Hull, Grieving Circle.
An invitation to collectively hold space for personal and communal grief in response to ongoing global traumas. This offering invites the audience to reflect on the fragility of comfort and safety. Through remembrance, we can begin to imagine and move toward another possible world.
May 10, 15, 16, 17:
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM each day:
Joyce LeeAnn, take “somethymes grief goes for a walk,” for a walk.
An archivist/artist book installation + immersive walking experience.
To book a walking session time slot, please email shalonwh@gmail.com.
(For this experience you will check out the book from the FADO library for an intimate self guided exploration involving bibliomancy, release, and remembrance rituals.)
About the book: “Adrian Scott McLaurin was my best friend and my lover. When he committed suicide in 2007, what remained was documentation of many of the moments we shared through videos, photos, handwritten notes, transcribed text messages, etcetera. Self-publishing "somethymes grief goes for a walk" was my way of revolting against fleeting memory and lingering grief. I transmuted my pain through writing, so that I could keep living. My grief desired its own preservation too; every time I return to this archival text, I realize my mourning became an organism that lives within those pages to comfort other grievers.” - Joyce LeeAnn
May 10, 15, 16, 17:
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM each day:
Durational performance by Claudia Edwards. Details coming soon.
Sunday, May 18:
3:30PM: Joyce LeeAnn, Artist Talk (Online)
releasing control of how things become whole, again
Joyce will lead a sacred virtual gathering to transmute mourning into fuel for continued living. She will discuss the book somethymes grief goes for a walk and discuss her artistic and archival practice.
(Link to the talk will be available on the FADO website).
Featured Artists (L to R):
Trish Lanns; Sasha Singer-Wilson, Amy Hull, Claudia Edwards, and Joyce LeeAnn.