Peter Morin and Ayumi Goto guide us through a performative introduction to bodies in spaces

The O k’inādās residency began with an in-the-round introduction of participants, facilitators and guests. Ashok Mathur and Katherine Pickering led an overview to the calendar of events -an evolving, dynamic document- as well as material and networking opportunities. The mix of practical and conceptual orientations hinted at the infinite potential to unfold over the next 6 weeks.

Stephen Foster traced the history of the summer intensive, a project that began as a response by the local community to provide credentialing to processes and practices that thrived outside of conventional academic space. Over the past 11 years, the once-institute-now-intensive has been continually rethought to take shape in it’s current iteration: a ‘low and slow’ ethos, accommodating a convergence of energies, activities and engagements to unfold.

Peter Morin and Ayumi Goto introduced us to O k’inādās, a Tahltan word referring to a body walking on the land; in this context becoming a moment, a forum, a body where we can be together. This space, the term, is a provocation, one embodied in a performative action by Goto and Morin, who gave a breath to each of us, in our salmon-shaped clasped hands, for us to hold or let fall before we all dissolved into our individual trajectories for the day.