IMPULSE Forum: Beyond Solid Ground

Join us on Tuesday, 5/5, for IMPULSE Forum, a round-table participatory discussion.

Moderated by Andrius Alvarez-Backus, "Beyond Solid Ground: Towards a Fluid Formation of Identity" unfolds in conversation with the group exhibition Waves of Knowing, featuring artists of the Metcalf Chateau group from Hawai‘i. Drawing on Astrida Neimanis' essay "Hydrofeminism" and Lawson Fusao Inada's poem "Memory," the forum will explore the archipelago as a framework for understanding the world through interconnection, mobility, and fluidity rather than fixed or singular identities. In keeping with the exhibition’s themes, the conversation will also challenge dominant perceptions of islands as rural or remote, asking how such framings have marginalized island-centered creative production and rationalized colonial projects. Together, participants will consider questions such as: How might we understand the body as porous, relational, and oceanic? What does the ocean make possible as an epistemological space that land cannot? And how might visual abstraction follow fluid, oceanic logics?

Doors will open at 6pm and the conversation will begin by 6:30pm. RSVP to receive reference materials and a discussion guide in your inbox!