Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter
September-November 2025 at Abrons Arts Center

Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter, now in its eighth year, is an ongoing series created by choreographer, writer, and organizer Emily Johnson and scholar, artist, and writer Kai Recollet. Centering anti-colonial Indigenous, feminist, and gender-expansive care ethics and practices, the fires are hosted, held, and lightly curated by Johnson and Recollet, along with invited guests and community partners. This ongoing, free program has been presented in partnership with Abrons Arts Center since its inception.

The fire is central and communities are invited to gather here as we articulate our collective futures, our otherwise possibilities. It is a place to bring practices, grammars, and needs forward and through the portals that fire allows. The fire itself is process, a way to bring us out of the catastrophe of now and into the kinstillatory that is care, that is necessary. A provocation, and an offering of seed, of vessel, of protection, of becomingness.

The fall season’s Kinstillatory fires organize us around extended time—with one another, with sound, provocation, action. Gestures toward our abundant futures guide the thinking as we gather toward necessary making, skill-sharing, body, and land/attention with artists and community members Andy Jacobs, Myrna Jacobs, Somah Toya Haaland, Lauren Peters Neepawus T8nnupahs, IV Castellanos, and Hiroshi Shafer.

Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter takes place outside at Abrons Arts Center in the Mimi and Harold Steinberg Plaza Amphitheater, located at 466 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Lenapehoking. The fire gatherings are free and open to all.

Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter is a project of Emily Johnson/Catalyst. For more information, visit http://www.catalystdance.com.