Cultural Mediation
I’ve discontinued taking new contracts for arts/cultural mediation.
I’m focusing exclusively on counselling, trauma recovery, and acupuncture.
Curatorial Collective for Public Art (CCPA)
Future Perfect Talks
In 2021, I appeared with Berlin-based collaborators B_Tour, who create nomadic curatorial platforms for contemporary performance artists. We met for a curatorial and dramaturgical research project, examining the staging of speculative futures in the field of public art.
Future Perfect Land
A site-specific exhibition in Berlin featuring artists from across Europe presenting future possibilities and speculative realities in response to climate change. I created the mediation concept as well as recruited and trained the mediation team.
“We aim to collectively develop conceptual and artistic imaginaries of the world after the climate catastrophe has unfolded or been mitigated. Specifically, we are interested in the use of technological and artistic strategies for augmenting reality as a method to make the future experienceable.
―Lianne Mol, Curatorial Collective for Public Art, founding member
Learn more about CCPA.
Club Real
Jenseits der Natur (Beyond Nature)
Jenseits der Natur (Beyond Nature in English) is the umbrella project containing within it various projects. It is a collaboration of Club Real, a Berlin- and Vienna-based collective of artists working to make ecological, participatory, immersive, durational, political performances and curatorial platforms.
Volksherrschaft im Garten (Republic in the Garden) Berlin, is one such result of this project. A constitution for a small, burgeoning forest-garden in Wedding, Berlin has been ratified, which forms a Parlament of Organisms, an Executive, and a Constitutional Court.
In 2019 there was a sitting of the first Parlament of Organisms, an executive action day in the garden, and a hearing of two constitutional complaints from various organisms in Ballhaus Ost in Berlin.
In 2020 we improvised because of Corona regulations and had the second sitting of Parlament via Jitsi Meet and YouTube Live. The Executive + Court proceeded on-site, albeit with masks and distance in accordance with regulations at that time.
In 2021 this maturing and growing project will continue, with the Constitutional Court happening at Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Learn more about Jenseits der Natur.
Learn more about about Club Real.
Cohabitation Talks: Organisms Democracy
I sat on a panel discussion about inter-species communication and participatory curatorial platforms for performance and public art. I specifically focused on design by indigeneity, wherein curatorial platforms are developed as a system, with structures and agreements which support the agency of all stakeholders in the system. I apply assemblage theory in building participatory forms of performance.
This conversation was facilitated by the editors of Arch+ Magazine (only in German, unfortunately) and hosted by Club Real at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin on 2 November 2021.
Works Council of Living Beings (Betriebsrat der Lebewesen)
As of 30 October 2021, Organisms Democracy has arrived in Leipzig.
We have been thrilled to work with Schauspiel Leipzig, as part of their theater line-up Humus im Treibhaus der Daten (Humus in the Data Hothouse, in English).
Club Real in collaboration with the Museum of Natural History in Leipzig, charted the organisms currently living in the areas of the Spinnerei — an historical complex of studios, galleries, and theatres in Plagwitz.
With the installation and ratification of a Works Council (Betriebsrat in German) non-human species, the structures of the place, and humans can begin to collaborate on possible futures in which inter-species and non-traditional spaces for performance can be co-created.
This research and collaboration continues in March 2022.
Podcast on Deutschlandfunk Kultur
I play a principle role in the newest radio drama by David Lindemann, recently broadcast on Deutschlandfunk (German Public Radio). It is in collaboration with Club Real, part of our project Jenseits der Natur.
“Oslower Straße: Die erste Berliner Organismendemokratie”
Now streaming on Deutschlandfunk Kultur.
(The broadcast is primarily in German with some short passages in English)
Photo © Club Real and Deutschlandfunk Kultur
My first novel
A work-in-progress (98% complete), the working title of my first novel is, “Travelling Light”.
It is a fictionalized memoir of an Indigiqueer Cherokee and Jewish woman, reconciling with her transness in a non-trans world. She learns to speak the language of her own authenticity by transforming personal and ancestral trauma, vacillating between romantic relationships, and spreading herself a little too thin across an ocean and maybe… beyond.
Real Women, Real Stories Series
“Real Women, Real Stories” documents experiences of feminine people in the health care system.
My piece in the series can be read here: Accessing Competent Care While Trans.
The unedited version can be read on my Medium.
Photo © HealthyWomen.org
Because I’m an anomaly, continually my in-betweenness, my transness, is reduced in hopes of making me fit into a range that the system can comprehend. In the case of my transness it is reduced to the conversations that people who do not have my lived experience demand that I have.
―Aurelie Richards