Carry Forward — 2021

Summer 2021—Online

In its virtual symposium Carry Forward, CfC invited a multidisciplinary exploration of a global period of unprecedented change and upheaval by asking what would be carried forward into a post-pandemic existence.

Artists, scholars, and health professionals were invited to consider a variety of prompts. What are the tangible and intangible things we carry without our knowledge of consent? What will we choose to carry forward? What will we leave behind? Who will be left behind and how will these choices be made? What would we choose to carry collectively that could not be carried alone? In a series of multi-day, multi-modal creative engagements, participants from around the world shared insights and created frameworks for what humanity needs to carry forward into a future that works for all; that embraces an ethos of integrity, honesty, and equity.

Providence storyteller Valerie Tutson opened the virtual event with Go Lightly into the New Time. Tutson’s welcome was followed by a number of unmoderated conversations designed to decolonize standard academic practice and maintain the focus on the interlocutors, eliminating the patriarchal practice of control and interpretation by a moderator and the often rehearsed nature of such exchanges.

Perspectives from the Nature Lab included essays by Jennifer Bissonette, Interim Director, FelipeLeonardo Santos Shibuya, MFA, PhD and Dora Mugerwa, RISD BFA.

Contributors from the 2020 Symposium Generation C returned to offer their written reflections on their contributions from the previous year: Dan Hill, Douglass Carmichael, Ignacio Garnham, Hoda Judah Armani and Punitha Balamurrugan.

Find out more at carryforward.xyz