We sense that ten is an entity that refuses to be wholly defined by what it has accomplished. As we looked “back” we asked: what was left imprinted on the negative space of the planned, roughly-sketched, always-unfolding archive of ten offerings from the past many years? It is not important whether the project “came to fruition,” gestated publically or “arrived” on the shores of success. We see each humble experiment as a learning circle.
In curating this rich archive, we asked past ten curators to share artifacts, memories, sensings, and unravelings: a different kind of body for this collection. We sifted through years of shared documents, videos, voice memos and photos to draw these many gems out of hidden caves and ocean depths and be able to share this multi-faceted tangle of stories, images and sounds with you; and re-member well that we look to the past for our prophecies and auguries about what is coming next. Below, you’ll find a brief description of each past project, as well as unfolding collection of harvests within each project area which speak to our un/learnings and experiences.
Sanktuaree
The generative ritual of Sanktuaree invites us to pay attention to the ways we collectively perform the normal, and to make room for other places of power as we welcome the outlier, embrace the irregular and weird, and stitch a politics of the impossible.
Vulture
Vulture offered participants a different shape of hope: hope not in solutions or saviours but in the smell of soil, the migration of birds, and the intense beauty of seeing each other dance at the edge of things. Vulture was an on and off-line experiential co-inquiry into the textures of our troubled times which unfolded over three months in 2019.
Vunja
Imagine other possibilities of being alive! Imagine ruptures and openings in spaces of suffering. Imagine other shapes and genres of being human. Imagine other futures! Vunja means rupture or breakage and also colloquially denotes ‘dance’ in Swahili.
Nepantla
Nepantla was the first in-person gathering / short residency program in Chennai, India held for and by ten curators, custodians, earthworms and supporters in January, 2020. Nepantla is a Nahual word which means “the place of no place”. The purpose of this encounter was: to gather face-to-face, as family and friends, in order to know one another more intimately.
Steal-a-Way
Steal a Way is a collaboration between curators Jiordi Rosales (The Emergence Network) and brontë velez (Lead to Life). Steal a Way is a practice, fellowship and convening that lives at the intersections of black traditions of fugitivity and Jewish traditions of sabbath.
Rolê-Holi
Reflections from ten curator Suélen Brito from her experience working on Rolê Holi – a project of (re)connection in the search to break the artistic barriers imposed by the Brazilian colonialist system and to research the cultural expressions and traditional knowledge in the slums of Brazil.
The Wilds Beyond Climate Justice
The Wilds Beyond Climate Justice: A gathering at the end of hope was an experimental online event to engage in different activities, actions, and conversations that evade Western logic as it defines rational climate solutions.
Meet at the Crossroads
Meet at the Crossroads was launched as a gifting circle and mycelial network of research inquiry into the postactivist implications of responsibility in our turbulent world; it was a fugitive series of monthly online gatherings hosted by Aerin Dunford and Báyò Akómoláfé and produced by Yeyo Beltrán in 2020 and 2021.
The Underground
Near the beginning of 2021, we decided to give the centre of ten some good sweet time for resting, sighing, surrendering, and listening. Time to allow the entity that is The Emergence Network to visit us in ways that may have been prohibited because of the logic of business-as-usual. We were largely still and silent for around seven months.
Dung Beetles
In 2022 ten invited seven incredible people from around the world to come together and lead the work for nine months. They served in a role we affectionately dubbed the “Dung Beetles” since the idea was that they would be rolling around dung ball questions like: “What is ten’s work to do?” and “How shall we do it?” The Dung Beetles committed to shared leadership in order to create the conditions for the next iteration of ten to be more locally-rooted, practically & audaciously experimental, and to rehabilitate exiled capacities in our rapidly collapsing systems.