Liminal People: Guided Meditation & Film Night

About

LIMINAL PEOPLE is a Guided Meditation (led by wellness artist Tesha Murrain-Hernandez) & Film Night (films from Golding, Crooks, Blandy & Achiampong, Gabriel-Fleary), exploring thoughts and anxieties around self-actualisation in the Black British Diaspora.

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Curated by Jaz Morrison, the evening will explore how displacement and marginalisation serve as roadblocks on the journey to personal and collective self-actualisation. The films draw upon the musings and anxieties present within the Black British Diaspora – refuge from systemic violence; the tangibility of the ‘Black British’ identity; a lack of tools to work through trauma; as well as the other cultural and social implications of a postcolonial aftermath.

Ongoing displacement, Western ideals around the ‘individual’, and ‘survival/grind culture’ have left many Black Brits unequipped to engage with their heritages, work through personal baggage, or tackle the present on the journey to self-actualisation. 

This isn’t specific to Black Brits, nor is it new. The feeling of being ‘other’ is palpable in displacement, and is experienced by those on the ‘margins’ of society. This tangible and figurative space is liminal: a heterotopia for people to be systemically discarded and forgotten. 

By refusing space and resources to ‘deviants’, or the poor, or ‘inefficient labourers’, community ties can be interrupted and individuals can become further isolated.

The displaced Black Diaspora has a global presence, precisely because we are not home, nor can we return to it. The entire planet is our liminal space, temporarily inhabiting us – a LIMINAL PEOPLE, on a collective and personal journey to self-actualisation.

Personhood is often seen as an individual thing, but what if it was a relational process? What if the journey to self-actualisation required connections to the past, each other, and the future?

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GUIDED MEDITATION, 5 – 6pm

Tesha Murrain-Ernandez is a Jamaican-Montserratian wellness artist, interested in themes of community space, herbology, Afro-Spiritualities & Cosmologies, and somatic movement. With a background in teaching, autism assessment, and managing challenging behaviours in learning spaces, as well as having a migraine disability herself, Tesha is interested in finding ways to make art more accessible to herself and the wider community.

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FILMS, 6 – 8pm

• Amartey Golding, Chainmail 3, 18’22” (2018)
• De’Anne Crooks, Great(ish): Gaslighting of a Nation, 10′ (2020)
• Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Finding Fanon 2, 9′ (2015)
• Tanazia Gabriel-Fleary, Mind of Colour, 10’17 (2020)

Come for the whole evening, or drop in when you can as part of Digbeth First Friday.