HOPE NOT, FEAR NOT is an artistic laboratory curated by artist, choreographer, and author Malik Nashad Sharpe, which invites participants into workshops, sound rooms, and talks with hope as its focal point. The laboratory is produced by Dansehallerne in close collaboration with UNION and the Danish Intersectional Folk High School.
HOPE NOT, FEAR NOT is positioned to engage with the term Hope and its discontents. It is wanting to suspend Hope in the air in order to find its function beyond necessity, on the ground. This artistic lab asks artists’ to reflect upon their relationships to Hope in an effort to create untold knowledge about what it can be, on the horizon. And what it has been today, for us all.
HOPE NOT, FEAR NOT revolves around the concept of HOPE and originates from Malik Nashad Sharpe’s own NO HOPE theory, where hope is set aside to make room for action and change. When we stop hoping, we must act on the realities and act. It’s about race, gender, and sexuality.
“Hope is a human necessity. So what happens when we say, fuck that. Just for a second. Let’s stop hoping and praying and wishing, and let’s start realising. Maybe Hope is the first step, but could that also be a lie. Why have we put so much of ourselves into this term, when we could be shifting things in the real? Hope is a market term, nothing more, nothing less. It can often suspend action. Every society has a marginalised underbelly that it never wants you to see, a marginalised thought that is woefully punished for existing. So what exactly am I hoping for? I am over it. But deep down I know that we need it, too.” – Malik Nashad Sharpe
The program consists of public events and workshops where the artists look at their work, their ideologies, ideas, critiques through the optics of hope. It is free to attend, but there will be limited places for all workshops.
Monday, November 8th
11:00 Bianca Scout, hope + decay, LISTENING ROOM
12:00 Malik Nashad Sharpe, Hope’s Violence, Opening lecture
14:30 Malik Nashad Sharpe, Abstract Commercial, Workshop
16:30 Deborah Joyce Holman, Otherwise, Besides, And Also, Lecture
19:00 DINNER and Social time
Tuesday, November 9th
11:00 Ebun Sodipo, a different kind of recognition, LISTENING ROOM
12.00 Ellen Furey, Substance from somewhere else, Lecture
14:30 Ellen Furey, Food for the Moon, Workshop
16:30 Maji Claire, Navigating dystopia, Workshop
19:00 DINNER and Social time
Wednesday, November 10th
11:00 皚桐, HOPE NOT/FEAR NOT, LISTENING ROOM
12:00 Aisha Sasha John, Snake without rage, Lecture
14.30 Aisha Sasha John, The answer? Expression., Workshop
16:30 Eve Stainton, Offerings for seclusion ( movement based workshop)
19:00 DINNER and social time
Thursday, November 11th
11:00 Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, THE BLACK TRANS GOSPEL, LISTENING ROOM
12:00 Jas Lin, dance the possible into being, Lecture
14:30 Jas Lin, Morning exorcise, Workshop
