Ancestral Repertoires: Conjuring Archives in Uncertain Times 

The repertoire requires presence: people participate in the production and reproduction of knowledge by ‘being there,’ being a part of the transmission. As opposed to the supposedly stable objects in the archive, the actions that are the repertoire do not remain the same. The repertoire both keeps and transforms choreographies of meaning.

Diana Taylor

What are the repertoires for holding ourselves through a constantly disruptive present? 

Join us for a workshop on ancestral listening and sounding. Together we make the space for a reflective writing and ancestral listening ceremony. Guided by the idea of the repertoire we will share writing activities on oral archives, practice listening for ancestral voice, and perform an original sound work of our collective ancestral intelligences. 

We will eat together, tell stories, and convene. This workshop is limited to 20 participants. Please bring a notebook and an item that reminds you of an ancestor you wish to listen with.

The workshop is held by Romi Ron Morrison, currently artist in residence at SAVVY. 

Romi Ron Morrison is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and writer.  Their work investigates the personal, political, ideological, and spatial boundaries of race, gender, and social infrastructures within digital technologies. Using maps, data, sound, performance, and video, their installations center Black diasporic technologies that challenge the demands of an increasingly quantified world – reducing land into property, people into digits, and knowledge into data. Their current projects explore theories of Black Computational Thought, entropy, and forms of kinship that thrive in the face of uncertainty and unpredictability.  

Romi has exhibited work and given talks at numerous exhibitions, conferences, and workshops around the world including Transmediale (Berlin), The Kitchen (New York), ALT_CPH Biennial (Copenhagen), the American Institute of Architects (New York), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Queens Museum (New York), and the Walker Museum of Art. They have been in residence at Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology, The School for Poetic Computation, and The Joan Mitchell Foundation. Their writing has appeared in publications by MIT Press, University of California Press, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, and Logic(s) Magazine. 

They have taught courses at Parsons School of Design and the University of Southern California (USC). They are currently an Assistant Professor in the Design Media Arts program at UCLA in Los Angeles and a 2024–2026 Just Tech Fellow.