Meeting at the Corner of Chaos and Divine

On a dark and cool Tuesday night, and under the cover of the October new moon, eighteen artists huddled together at the street corner, pouring out water and libation and returning the altar items we’d borrowed from the land: milkweed pods, spruce branches, and beach pebbles, among other items. Guided by fellow MicroCosmos participant paris cian cyan, we acknowledged the ancestors who had been with us for this gathering and offered gratitude to the land and to each other.

When I try to recall the magic of the MicroCosmos convening, what comes to mind most vividly is this closing ritual at the crossroads and our final moment as a group in quiet, sacred togetherness. I want to begin this report by lingering at the end of our gathering, to acknowledge that our closing at the crossroads was a kind of beginning. In the words of Nina Angela Mercer, “We enter here at the corner of chaos and divine.” The work of the MicroCosmos group was a meeting at that corner. Chaos, as in existing in a world filled with tumultuous upheaval and bone-deep, seemingly apocalyptic grief. Divine, as in artists and cultural workers are well equipped at imagining other worlds and practicing alternative ways of being through embodied, collective, and liberatory work.

From 19-22 October 2025, eighteen artists from the mainland United States—and about half from Maine—gathered in Bath, Maine for the MicroCosmos convening. Our conveners were HowlRound Theatre Commons and javiera benavente, Matthew Glassman, and Nick Slie, the stewards of MicroCosmos: a multi-year, interdisciplinary exploration of artist-led inquiries focused on small scale, relational, and place-based work—artistic models centered on the micro—that still hold within them seeds for liberatory change. This meeting was an opportunity for us to gather, connect, and get curious about the grief and joy of being an artist working in this particular moment of societal and ecological upheaval. The convening, like the HowlRound series under the same moniker, was an invitation to dream into otherwise unimaginable worlds and possibilities by asking a series of questions:

• What questions and callings am I living?
• What are the places, spaces, and relationships that are undergirding me and my work?
• What seeds am I planting and tending?
• What are the practices that would help me (that I’m leaning on or looking for)?
• What are the experiments I yearn to conduct?

Each day, our little group gathered in the beautiful annex space of the Chocolate Church Arts Center and were in deep practice of listening and “being with-ness” (as beautifully described by javiera) together. Over the course of the three days and four facilitated sessions of conversation, each participant took turns sharing about the stakes of their work right now. Each day also held space for invitations for spontaneous play, to share short practices, and explore nature.

Day One: Grounding in Place

We arrived in Maine Sunday afternoon, alert and curious. After a quick welcome and brief round of introductions, Jennie Hahn and Devon Kelley-Yurdin led us to the Kennebec River to greet the river and the land. Jennie and Devon introduced their work as members of the In Kinship Collective, an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural group of Indigenous and settler-descended folks centering Wabanaki stories and traditions. Standing in a circle at the water’s edge, we collectively read a land acknowledgement, naming the Wabanaki lands we would be gathered on for the next three days. We listened to an audio clip of a Wabanaki community member sharing a story of the river, and then we were all invited to introduce ourselves to the river through speaking, song, movement, or just being still and taking in what we notice. This was the first of our practice/encounters, an encouragement to show up with embodied ways of knowing.

Once we returned to Chocolate Church, directors Matthew and Jeremy Eaton gave us a tour of our home for the next three days. They explained the radical history of this building and its importance in the community of Bath, as the arts hub also serves as a center for culture, connection, and mutual aid in the city. Matthew and then-HowlRound director Jamie Gahlon also explained that the impetus of MicroCosmos was built from the lineage of HowlRound’s strand of Arts, Culture, and Commoning work, as well as the Art and Survival biannual convenings (2013-2023) initiated by Matthew at Double Edge Theatre—a reminder that art and culture are linked to our livelihoods.

Over dinner, Liza Bielby led us through a toast practice, encouraging the group to make mini speeches and toasts for each other. The room quickly erupted into giggles and raucous proclamations. This was the first of many impromptu celebrations and a warm way to introduce ourselves to each other.

Day Two: Being With-ness and Moving at the Scale of Intimacy

Our second day was the beginning of our sharing sessions, a chance for each participant to respond to the questions of the gathering: naming what values and legacies undergird their work and sharing what seeds they’ve been planting and storing via artistic practice. Our two sessions were beautifully and skillfully facilitated by javiera benavente, who reminded us that sharing our stories is a practice of being in relation to one another. Throughout our time together, we’d be giving each other the gift of attention, attending to a practice of deep study via listening. In this way, each session felt like we were cartographers sharing our creative maps and dreaming up new routes towards collective liberation.

Session One

The first session included Jeremy Eaton, Fowsia Musse and Yun Garrison, Devon, and javiera. Most of the themes of our first session were: anger, the role of art in mental health and community making, the role of collaboration in world building via storytelling, and the power of moving at the scale of intimacy.

Jeremy started us with the hard-hitting question: “What to do with consequential anger?” She continued, “Deep, community, cultural anger. I’m scared about our world.” After twenty years actively making art in a tight-knit theatre ensemble, Jeremy has found herself in a new community and has noticed conversations where people feel unmet. Her answer to rage is to make art more accessible via the Chocolate Church’s Art Lab and to create a resourcing space that centers mutual aid needs in the community. This question of rage is not about making a more rageful world but investigating how people interact with societal rage.

Fowsia followed this with a powerful story of war and exile as a Somali refugee. She shared her personal story about the death of family members and intimate experiences of violence that left her spiritually and physically wounded. Fowsia and psychologist Dr. Yun Garrison bonded over personal connections to generational grief. With Yun’s support, Fowsia developed the theory of Ka Bogso (being healed), represented in five phases towards wholeness: Running, Resettlement, Residual Stagnation, Reconciliation, Resolution. Yun collaborated with Fowsia to develop these “five Rs” into writing and visual images, developing a language beyond words that expressed the inner world of healing. They developed these into a digital art exhibition, highlighting oral storytelling, images, and Somali artifacts, a representation of Fowsia’s own journey towards holistic healing. Fowsia, in her role as the executive director of Maine Community Integration, now encourages art and therapy to immigrant new Mainers.

Devon spoke about their role and capacity in world building as a visual artist, naming the power of “beauty as a strategy to make something accessible.” As someone deeply practiced in collaboration and culture tending, they spoke about the power of moving alongside others in supporting creation. In their words about collective creation: “If you know what something is going to look like going into it, you’re doing it wrong.” In addition to their work with In Kinship Collective, Devon is the former creative coordinator of the Walks for Historical and Ecological Recovery (WHERE), which surfaces suppressed histories of enslavement, colonization, joy, resistance, etc.

javiera named that as a facilitator, their current practice is one of listening and being-with/being witness to land, stories, and culture. Born in Chile three months after a military coup, javiera described the silence around what was happening in her own home country and how that silence felt stifling and stagnant. Three years ago, she began a project about making space for other Chileans to grieve together and share stories. The project began first as a conversation with three Chilean elders, then a collective reading of the Chilean constitution that was not ratified “as a prayer for what could be someday,” and finally an organized exhibition showcasing some of these oral histories. Reflecting on the pace and scope of her work, javiera reminded us: “The size and shape of the work have to happen at the scale of intimacy.”

Session Two

Our second session included Jennie Hahn, Matt Fluharty, Mikhu Paul, and Samaa Abdurraqib. Each participant spoke about answering the call to experiment with new forms, the power of the poetic, “learning in public,” and guides in the form of dreams, birds, and plant allies.

“What should I dare to try next?” Mikhu shared her journey as a writer has always been about subverting old forms as a way to break the world: first in her youth as a storyteller, then establishing herself as a poet, and eventually as a playwright. “I wanted to do everything I could do to reestablish and reclaim indigeneity in Maine.” Mikhu was introduced to Spinning Wampum, a group of artists and scholars creating arts events to center Wabanaki experiences and stories. Mikhu shared that this is the three-hundred-year anniversary of Dummer’s Treaty, where the Wabanaki lost most of their land. She is currently creating a Commedia Dell’arte piece thinking about how to re-presence the history, using Indigenous myths and modes of storytelling.

As a settler-descended artist thinking and making performance about place, Jennie has also had to grapple with time—particularly the time of settler colonialism. She began by interrogating stories of colonial replacement, beginning with her own family’s story of being in Maine since 1636. “In order to believe that there is a future not determined by oppressive structures of domination and control, I have to believe in a version of my past that is not governed by those things.” Jennie named that creating work in positionality as a settler-descended person took a lot of intention toward learning in public, making mistakes, and practicing in awkward ways. However, to imagine a tangible future that includes a return of Indigenous stewardship of the land, there must be a revisiting of the past. As a collaborator with In Kinship Collective and the artists of Spinning Wampum, Jennie has had to learn to listen with her whole body.

Matt, a writer and curator with deep Appalachian roots, also spoke of the power of place-based work and the importance of building long term relationships. In his role as the executive director of Art of the Rural, Matt focuses on rural-urban exchange that allows for rural equity. His experience as a curator is that the curation needs to be fundamentally cultural to be rooted in care and access.

Samaa came to poetry as a grief holder by writing through their personal, societal, and ecological experiences of death. However, writing about grief became unsustainable: “I could not write my way through it, I was stuck. I couldn’t metabolize it.” After stepping back from their grief, she began deepening their study of birds and plants as a certified master naturalist. This work has felt like a calling, as Samaa has begun to dream about birds and plants. These dreams have felt like visits from beloveds who have passed on. 

After two full sessions on the power of rage and resilience, poetry and dreams, the group split off on two adventures. We were given the choice to attend the open studio at the Art Lab or to visit Popham Beach State Park. As a water sign, I will always choose the beach. Popham Beach State Park was like a visit to another world. Equipped with an assortment of umbrellas, rain jackets, and the wrong footwear, our group began the endless walk towards the water’s edge. Because we’d arrived at low tide, the waves felt miles away from the shoreline. We all left soaked, exhausted, and feeling fully alive.

Day Three: Exploring Floating Times and Lineages

On our third day, we expanded our circle by joining a group of students at the Seguinland Institute. Walking across the bridge to the Institute, Samaa pointed out plant allies along the path to those of us who lingered at the bottom of the line. She handed some of us mallow and encouraged us to crush the plant between our fingers so that we could savor the sweet fragrance. With the plant still in my pocket, I followed the group up the stairs of a large treehouse, where we were met by twenty plus young folks on a gap year, exploring what it means to live the good life.

Now that our group doubled in size, we introduced ourselves with a theatre exercise led by Nick, where we made eye contact and orbited each other in greeting. Next, we were split into small groups of Seguinland students and MicroCosmos participants and assigned various meeting points along the campus. My group gathered in a clearing by the marsh next to a statue of a crow. Our four hosts shared creative projects they’ve been working on with us, ranging from a personal manifesto, poetry, a comic, and a visual collage. Each student asked us questions about our creative practices, our communities, and our dreams for our futures. The conversation covered a range of topics, including Braiding Sweetgrass, the local clam industry’s impact on the ecosystem, Zen Buddhism, making altars out of public art, and the vulnerability of sharing art. After a nourishing vegan meal of red curry and more informal conversation, we headed back to the Annex to continue our sessions.

Session Three

Our third session included contributions from Nick Slie, paris cyan cian, Danielle Arroyo, and Eli Nixon. The conversation ranged from altars to grief; collaboration with land, coasts, and waterways; and exchanging linearity for primordial time.

Danielle describes themself as a disruptor and curse-breaker whose practice is deeply rooted in grief. After losing their mother to breast cancer, they began the heart healing work of making altars out of flowers and other natural materials and offering them back to the ocean at low tide. Danielle dreams of creating a sustainable cemetery with a grief garden.

As a clown and puppeteer, Eli makes work rooted in challenging our relationship to colonial time toward a resourcing relationship with primordial futurism. This has been at the center of their work paying homage to horseshoe crabs through writing and illustrating a book that proposes a new floating holiday called BLOODTIDE. Eli shared about their recent project to amplify public health concerns and coastal access needs along the port of Providence via ancient technologies of wind, shade, and gargoyles. How do we generate land return, reparation, and ecologies of repair to bring intergenerational normalcy to being in service to the land, especially in sites of active destruction?

Growing up in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, paris has been shaped by change and impermanence of home. As a dancer, her practice focuses on memory and rememory. Working in the legacy of Black feminist writers and land artists like Zora Neale Hurston and Beverly Buchanan, paris has been drawn to collaboration with the oyster, which has ultimately led her into collaboration with the shoreline of the Gulf Coast. In a deep practice of devotion, paris has been building a wearable oyster reef that can be worn and processed into the water in the asymptotic act of re-sourcing a New Orleans shoreline.

As a tenth-generation Southern Louisianan, Nick’s work has been shaped by the question of his relationship to the water. For twenty years, the work of Mondo Bizzaro has been about land and coastal loss, including large-scale outdoor performances. Their ongoing project, Invisible Rivers, is a floating performance in honor of floating communities, rooted in the knowledge that staying fixed is not the way. In Nick’s words, “When you move like the flood, everything moves with you.”

Session Four

By now, the synergy between each session felt palpable—it’s hard to describe how it felt in the room, but it had dawned on the group that we were all meant to be here, having these specific conversations. During the break, we made an altar to the ancestors in the middle of the room, and the rest of our conversations happened facing this altar. In the words of Marty Pottenger, “The ancestors have a bit of an attitude: thanks for making space for us, they’re sure lucky they invited us.” With that in mind, we began our fourth and final session, which included Marty, Matthew Glassman, Liza Bielby, me, and Sir Curtis Kirby. We spoke about offering reverence to chosen and biological families, lineages of artistic training and cultural traditions, and a deep devotion to study.

In a beautiful expression of vulnerability, Marty experimented with the form of the circle and called on Nick, javiera, and Matthew to each name something they appreciate about her work. What emerged was an organic conversation about the impact of her decades of making civic performance and centering community conflict and resolution. Nick shared the impact of City Water Tunnel #3 while javiera recalled Marty’s impact in creating work with faculty, students, and staff at Hampshire College while the university was in financial crisis. Matthew honored Marty’s ability to shapeshift through writing and ability to engage in deep dialogue with communities. Marty ended by stating that a civic arts practice, like her Portland, Maine project Art at Work, which uses arts to engage necessary dialogue with police and the public, is filled with “upset and possibility.”

Kirby transformed the circle into a performance space, offering us a glimpse into his solo performance exploring his mixed identity as a Black Ojibwe man, his work with urban Native youth in Minneapolis, and coming into his craft as a director under the tutelage of his mentor Dipankar. “My people believe that we’re here because of seven generations before us and we do the work for seven generations to come.” In Kirby’s moving story, he spoke about how he was his grandfather’s dream, and how his Ojibwe name reflects his Eagle heart. The power of his storytelling stayed with me during our break as those of us gathered outside the Annex watched an eagle circling above our heads.

Liza spoke about the importance of lineage in her work as a co-founding member of the Hinterlands, a Detroit based theatre company whose work is rooted in play, placemaking, and irreverent possibility. As Liza reminded us, training is also a lineage. The Hinterlands’ last piece explored family stories, white identity, and grief through song. The power of song as an embodied methodology is that it allows things to move and pass through your body. And the company’s newest work is now moving towards technology, disenchantment, and grief.

I spoke about the role of devotion in my practice as a scholar, cultural organizer, and collaborator. As a PhD candidate whose scholarship centers collectivity as a worldmaking/worldbreaking practice, I spoke about the grief and pain of showing up to the daily ritual of study on my own. I also shared about two of my collectives, UnBound Bodies Collective and Hot Bits Collective that are both devoted to honoring queer lineages through making altars in public space and curating liberatory spaces for queer, trans, and people of color (POC) embodiment and pleasure. I’ve found that doing process-driven work also means making space for change and decomposition—as in, letting go of visions of what collectivity might mean so that don’t deteriorate from overwhelm and instead create fecund futures for whatever might want to seed next.

After twenty-two years as an ensemble member and co-artistic director of Double Edge Theatre, Matthew is finding roots in a new community as the artistic director of Chocolate Church Arts Center. “How do I, as an artist with a space, send healing, medicinal something into the community?” Matthew knows intimately that grief work is intergenerational healing work. After Double Edge, Matthew began devising ensemble-based work with children, creating a grief ritual and parade. He ended his share with the moving story of supporting his father’s spiritual transition.

Grief was an anchor in the room for us, but many participants reminded us that grief is relational.

Ending in the Middle

The story I write here might have a neat beginning and an ending, but this story is really about the middle-ingspace that gives birth to beginnings and endings.

—Bayo Akomolafe

In his essay, “When You Meet the Monster, Anoint its Feet,” scholar Bayo Akomolafe defines the middle as the porous interconnectedness between living beings, despite the ways that racial capitalism feeds us the belief of a culture of isolation, extraction, and exploitation. As a gathering, MicroCosmos also offered us a middle-ing space to connect as individuals using art and community practice to survive amidst the horrors of the Anthropocene. Unlike Bayo, my reflection on this gathering does not have a neat ending, because for me, this gathering did not end on 22 October. Instead, these conversations and experiences have clung to me like a friendly haunting, reminding me of the power of gathering and witnessing each other in grief and rage and burnout and so much love. In one of our reflections, Fowsia offered us a Somali song, “I chase the world every day but I’m unable to catch it. I’m going to just trust.” Trust is a powerful tool not only for wrestling with grief, but for embracing it like an old friend.

To close, I want to recall the beginning of this report—with all eighteen of us huddled together at the crossroads, offering seeds and prayers to those who came before us and all that will inevitably come after us. The crossroads is another name for the middle, a space of intersecting possibilities. It is a space of witnessing, a space of upset and emergence. Ending our gathering on a new moon meant that we were, and are, at the precipice of something new. I look forward to seeing what shape this group takes next.