BRONTË VELEZ on the Necessity of Beauty, Part 2 [ENCORE] /274

Photo of brontë velez by Emma McCann; Clothing by Maya Beth.

This week we are rebroadcasting part two of our interview with brontë velez (they/them), originally aired in October of 2019. We dive into the capacity for pleasure amidst times of great uncertainty and historical oppression. What does “pleasure in the apocalypse” mean? How might this conversation take on different meanings depending on whether we are talking about climate change as an abstraction versus the current lived experience of planetary uncertainty?  As brontë defines it, pleasure is what makes us come alive, so how can we create a culture that is deeply attuned to our senses and directs our desire towards Earth and each other? By feeding our senses, how might we confront the isolation and industrialization of our bodies, while acknowledging the limitations of grief in that “suffering is not accountable to the Earth.”

Part Two of brontë and Ayana’s ripe conversation explores topics including appropriating propaganda and memetics, reorienting ourselves away from the spectacle of terror, tending to erotic energy and sensual spaces, and the nuances around beauty and aesthetics in dominant culture. In closing, we are asked to assess our capacity and privilege and then grow ourselves to create pleasurable pathways, ensure accessibility to embodiment, and foster environments where people are in their senses.

“That will come from creating cultures of healthy ecstasy that bring us into trance, into listening… that jolt us into letting our bodies be channels and conduits for liberation.”

— brontë velez / Episode 274

Photo of brontë velez by Emma McCann; Clothing by Maya Beth

brontë’s work and rest is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). As a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, designer, trickster, educator and wakeworker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking, abolitionist theologies, environmental regeneration and death doulaship. they embody this commitment of attending to black health/imagination, commemorative justice (Free Egunfemi) and hospicing the shit that hurts black folks and the land through serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collective and ecological educator for ancestral arts skills and nature-connection school Weaving Earth. they are currently co-conjuring a mockumentary with esperanza spalding in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony and stewarding land with their partner in unceded Kashia Pomo territory in northern California.

Mostly, brontë is up to the sweet tender rhythm of quotidian black queer-lifemaking, ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life —"

♫ Music by Jennifer Johns and members of the Thrive Choir and Jiordi Rosales on cello, recorded at the 2019 Lead to Life Oakland ceremony, a ceremony that melted weapons into the constellations above Oscar Grant the evening he was murdered. The event closed the annual Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy March, hosted by the Anti Police-Terror Project.

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Venmo brontë @bronte-velez

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