Move Slowly is an interview series and visual art project featuring conversations between creative activists working to end sexual violence, about the toll activism can take on our bodies, relationships, hearts and minds, and how to create visionary and supportive communities of care. Move Slowly was the seed that grew into the collaborative Dreamseeds project with Ama Chandra.
Each interview will be paired with a portrait of the interviewee, based on their words and cyanotype prints of their hair. Through public art and collective storytelling, I am seeking to share and find insights about the relationship between movement building and self-preservation.
Click on each image below to hear the interview.
Hannah Brancato: “Move slowly.” Click above to hear her interview, an introduction to the project.
Sanahara Ama Chandra: “We can tell new stories.” Click above for her interview.
Ignacio Rivera: “Our self care is priority.” Listen to Ignacio’s sound portrait by Sanahara Ama Chandra, here. Click above for her interview.
Nuala Cabral: “Find community.” Nuala’s sound portrait by Sanahara Ama Chandra is here. Click above for her interview.
Alexis Flanagan: “Transformation begins with us.” Alexis’s sound portrait by Sanahara Ama Chandra is here. Click above for her interview.
Jadelynn St Dre: “We’re moving into our senses.” Listen to Jadelynn’s sound portrait here. Click above for her interview.
“move slowly.”
Hannah Brancato (she/her) is an artist and educator based in Baltimore, whose art practice is grounded in collective storytelling, and the creation of public rituals to bring people’s stories together. Her recent work, Inheritance of White Silence is a socially engaged project investigating ways to resist inherited white supremacy culture. With Sanahara Ama Chandra, she is a recipient of the 2021 Rubys Artist Grant for Dreamseeds.
Brancato is co-founder FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, an art/organizing collective that produced creative interventions to create a culture of consent, best known for the Monument Quilt. She was a FORCE collective member from 2010-2020, is a 2015 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow, and as part of FORCE, is the recipient of the 2016 Sondheim Artscape Prize.
“find community.”
Nuala Cabral (she/her) is an educator, activist and award-winning filmmaker, who has produced films about gender based violence and helped young people create films about the topic as well. Her film Walking Home, about street harassment, became her entry point to activism and organizing over a decade ago. While earning a Master’s degree in Media Studies and Production from Temple University in 2010, Nuala co-founded FAAN Mail (Fostering Activism & Alternatives Now!) a media literacy/activist project formed by women of color to address gender-based violence in media and in our communities. In 2015, Nuala established the consent workshop program through the University Community Collaborative at Temple University, reaching over 3,000 high school students across Philadelphia. This program was inspired by a film her high school students, young Black women, produced about sexual violence. In 2019, she co-founded Educators for Consent Culture, a collective that works to combat rape culture in schools and beyond through edcuation and advocacy. Currently, Nuala serves as Program Officer for the Independence Public Media Foundation.
“we can tell new stories.”
Sanahara Ama Chandra is a sound healer, professional singer, griot, activist, nurse, and mama of two. She is a truth seeker and Warrior who creates Medicine songs - simple catchy rhythms and messages that easily reset people to a place of love. Ama has enjoyed a life-long relationship with sound. From her roots in Southern Gospel and 90's R&B, to her journeys through World music, Neo-Soul, and Jazz, her heart and soul have shared the healing power of being moved by songs. Whether in her role as a servant/leader with grassroots organizations of her own design, performing and creating musical experiences, offering sound healing as a reiki tool, working as a nurse or parenting her own children, she brings a depth of knowledge, experience, and radical presence to her work. For more information please visit her web site: www.sanaharaenergetics.com.
“transformation begins with us.”
Alexis Flanagan is a queer Black feminist DC girl whose heart pumps to the beat of “the Pocket” that holds down DC go-go music and culture. She is a cultural worker, writer, artist, ancestral healer, worldbuilder, and generational arc mender making a life rooted in care and thriving with her partner Marquita and fury baby Boss in Bowie, Maryland. Alexis was a K-12 educator for 6 years and led programs and organizations working to end gender based violence for more than a decade. She was Movement Maker in the NoVo Foundation's Move to End Violence project and since 2017 has dedicated herself to deepening practice and embodiment of radical imagination, a culture of care, collaborative governance, liberation and transformation in her life and in her current role as co-director of the Resonance Network.
“our self care is priority.”
Ignacio G Hutía Xeiti Rivera, M.A. who prefers the gender neutral pronoun, They, is an Activist, Writer, Educator, Sex(ual) Healer , Filmmaker, Performance Artist and Mother. Ignacio has over 20 years of experience on multiple fronts, including economic justice, anti-racist and anti-violence work, as well as mujerista, LGBTQI and sex positive movements. Their work is influenced by their lived experience of homelessness, poverty and sexual trauma. Ignacio’s work is also driven by the strengths of identifying as a survivor, transgender, Yamoká-hu/Two-Spirit, Black-Boricua-Taíno and queer. Follow Ignacio’s work at Heal2End.org.
“we are moving into our senses.”
Jadelynn St Dre is a facilitator, trauma therapist and interdisciplinary performance artist, based out of Durham, NC and the Bay Area, CA. She has worked within the antiviolence movement for over a decade, seeking to uplift the voices of those often forgotten or silenced within the mainstream movement. Jadelynn’s original and collaborative artistic work has been shown nationally, internationally and in print, most recently in the anthology This is Not A Gun. Jadelynn has rooted her heart in community organizing. She was the co-founder and lead coordinator of DISCLOSE, a queer collective of artists and educators committed to organizing arts-based community engagement in the eradication of sexual violence. Nationally, she organized as part of the Leadership Team of The Monument Quilt. More information about Jadelynn’s work can be found at www.jadelynnstdre.com