The Current IV: Caribbean

Yina Jiménez Suriel
 

Alligator Head Foundation, Portland, Jamaica
 

Temitope Ajose-Cutting, Nohora Arrieta Fernández, Lisa and Christopher Binns, Nadia Huggins, Monique Johnson, Quinn Latimer, Maurice Lee, O'Neil Lawrence, Alex Moore-Minott, Nickie Myers, Annie Paul, Markus Reymann, Oneika Russell, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, Ina Vandebroek, Jason West, Yewande Yoyo Odunubi

 

Friday, January 10 
Blue and John Crow Mountains
Closed research group  

9:00 am–5:00 pm - Hiking trip to the Blue and John Crow Mountains
stories told by the Cunha Cunha Pass trail
With Monique Johnson, O’Neil Lawrence, Maurice Lee, Alex Moore-Minott, Ina Vandebroek, and Jason West


Saturday, January 11
Alligator Head Foundation, Port Antonio, Portland
All the activities are free of charge and open to the public of all ages. 

9:30 am–11:30 am - Motion workshop
Listening with our bodies: a movement workshop on land and sea
Led by Yewande YoYo Odunubi

11:00 am–11:35 am - Film screening (morning session)
let's swim until we become corals
With films by Nadia Huggins and Temitope Ajose-Cutting & Quinn Latimer

11:45 am–12:45 pm - Culinary workshop
Led by Lisa and Chris Binns, STUSH in the BUSH

2:00 pm–2:20 pm - Welcome remarks
With Francesca Thyssen Bornemisza, TBA21 founder, Markus Reymann, TBA21 co-director, and Nickie Myers, Alligator Head Foundation General Manager.

2:30 pm—3:20 pm - Roundtable conversation
The Caribbean Underwater: on Geo-Dialectics Relating to Constant Movement
With Monique Johnson, moderated by Yina Jiménez Suriel

3:25 pm–4:00 pm - Film screening (afternoon session)
let's swim until we become corals
With films by Nadia Huggins and Temitope Ajose-Cutting & Quinn Latimer

4:10 pm–5:00 pm - Roundtable conversation 
With Oneika Russell and O’Neil Lawrence, moderated by Yina Jiménez Suriel

5:00 pm–6:30 pm - Reading and listening session 
Hiding in plain sight: Strategies of Marronage
With Nohora Arrieta Fernández and Annie Paul. Drums by Horace Wedderburn

6:40 pm–7:00 pm - Performance
What I Hide by my Language, my Body Utters
With Yewande YoYo Odunubi. Drums by Philip Henry (Ambokele)

 

Temitope Ajose-Cutting is a choreographer, dancer and movement director who staged works for the Royal Opera House, The Place, DanceXchange, RichMix, Dancebase and the Soho Joyce (New York), among others.

Nohora Arrieta Fernández is a writer, researcher, scholar and an Assistant Professor of Afro-Latin American studies at UCLA, focused on researching the aesthetics and intellectual traditions of the African Diaspora in the Americas.

Lisa and Christopher Binns run STUSH in the BUSH, a Farm-to-Table Dining Experience in the cool hills of St. Ann, Jamaica. Since 2014, Lisa and Chris have built a collaborative, rural community-anchored venture that has risen to the forefront of Jamaica’s Ital plant-based movement through farming, cooking and product making.

Nadia Huggins is a visual artist and researcher whose photography work merges documentary and conceptual practices, exploring belonging, identity, and memory through a contemporary approach focused on re-presenting Caribbean landscapes and the sea.

Yina Jiménez Suriel is a curator and researcher with a master's degree in visual studies. Her curatorial practice is nourished by transdisciplinary research on the construction of imagination, contemporary emancipatory processes and reconciliation with the constant movement. She is the Curatorial Fellow of TBA21–Academy's The Current IV.

Monique Johnson is an Earth scientist exploring the impacts of geological hazards in the Eastern Caribbean, including the barriers and capacities for disaster risk reduction in Caribbean Societies.

Quinn Latimer is a California-born poet, critic, and editor whose work often explores feminist economies of writing, reading, and moving-image production.

O’Neil Lawrence is an artist, curator, researcher and writer. He has worked at the National Gallery of Jamaica since 2008, most recently as Chief Curator. His research interests include race, gender and sexuality in Caribbean and African Diasporal art, memory, identity and hidden archives, and photography as a medium and a social vehicle.

Maurice Lee is the founder of Kromanti Experience, a cultural tour company focused on the history of the Maroon community and culture in Jamaica to bring people from the African diaspora closer to their heritage while reviving Black history in a way that extends beyond the narrative of slavery and the colonizer's lens.

Annie Paul is editor-in-chief of the online magazine of Caribbean writing, PREE (preelit.com), and was the 2023 Lakes Writer-in-Residence at Smith College (Massachusetts). A founding editor of the journal Small Axe, she has been published in various international journals and magazines.

Oneika Russell is a visual artist working in various media, with a focus on video, textiles and print-based work. She currently lectures at the Caribbean School of Architecture, UTECH, Jamaica and the Edna Manley College of the Visual & Performing Arts and runs the art initiative Tide Rising Art Projects.

Ina Vandebroek is an ethnobotanist interested in the intersection of traditional knowledge systems and Caribbean biodiversity. She is Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Economic Botany and has published scholarly articles, as well as community guidebooks in Jamaica and Bolivia.

Jason West is a family farmer from Portland Parish, Jamaica, with deep roots in the family farming traditions of the John Crow Mountains. He has collaborated extensively with Ina Vandebroek on ethnobotanical research, advocating for greater recognition of Caribbean traditional plant knowledge.

Yewande Yoyo Odunubi is an artist, researcher and cultural producer whose practice revolves around the inquiry: “What does the body need to dream?”. Inspired by freestyle/improvisation as choreographic and pedagogical methodologies, she is interested in how we see, read, shape and practis/ce ourselves.
 

The Current IV: Caribbean: "otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua" (other mountains, adrift beneath the waves)

Curated by Yina Jiménez Suriel, The Current IV, 2023–2025, intends to contribute to the emancipatory processes in the region that have sought to bring its inhabitants closer to the Ocean and that began in the high mountains above sea level. The project will focus on identifying, studying, and spreading the knowledge of the aesthetic strategies and tools generated from the Maroon experience in the Caribbean through the production of aesthetic thought, based on the premise that this approach will bring us closer to inhabiting the mountains that are below the level of the Caribbean Sea, as they were aesthetic practices that sought to reconcile the human body with the constant movement — the Ocean.
 

Alligator Head Foundation is a Jamaican-based project focusing on the intersection of science, art, and community. It is dedicated to supporting cultural production and commissioning projects that raise ecological, economic, and social issues to the general public and the local community.
 

Dive deeper into The Current IV: Caribbean on Ocean-Archive.org HERE.