RSVP In this public program, we invite you to experience Boston Chinatown’s streets and corners as memory archives activated through live performances. In collaboration with the Immigrant History Trail, six artists will be responding to and caring for site-specific histories of Boston Chinatown through water calligraphy, dance, storytelling, and more. Participants will start their journeys at Pao Arts Center where they will be given a map and a schedule to walk around Chinatown and visit the performances. We invite you to find refuge and meditate on the deep histories embedded in the neighborhood. Performance Schedule and Descriptions View fullsize 1:00-2:00 and 3:00-4:00 / Lani Asunción ᜑᜒᜎᜓᜋ᜔ | Hilom Community Circle: Between Water & White Flowers (WAI 間 白花) at One Greenway Park 116 Hudson St Activating the history of: Hudson Street Hilom ᜑᜒᜎᜓᜋ᜔ is Tagalog for to heal, to restore, or to recover. This gathering is a call to mourn the loss of water, land, and life due to the climate crisis as a result of environmental capitalism. It is an invitation to gather to mend our communal wounds, aiming to restore balance and reconnect to one another. Between Water & White Flowers(WAI 間 白花) is a performance activation of installed work in Temple of Our Ancestral Dreams at Pao Arts Center bringing together community members from Chinatown to join this participatory performance ritual. Using elements of water, stones, banana leaves, and white flower oil community members will come together to create a space of safety, ancestral remembrance, and healing. 1:00-4:00 / Yolanda He Yang itchy grief - willowing on the rolling words at 23 Oxford St Activating the history of: Shanghai Printing Using a long, dry willow branch as both writing instrument and performative extension of the body, the artist inscribes and traces while voicing obscured narratives of Chinatown. This gesture extends her ongoing inquiry into “itchy grief,” situating the performance within intersecting ecologies of migration, labor, and mourning. Sited near the former Shanghai Print Company—the first Chinese-English print shop in Boston—the work engages the material and linguistic histories of place. It draws from field research and oral histories with Jeff Wong, son of founder Henry Wong, and Willson, current caretaker of 16 Oxford Street and owner of Sun Sun Store. 1:30-2:00 and 2:30-3:00 / Feda Eid & Jassi Murad Plantcestors, Awakening the Sacred at 8 Johnny Ct Activating the history of: Johnny’s Home Out of the sacred, the spiritual, the ancestral, our Plantcestors continue to protect, nourish and connect us to the land, our bodies and our relationship with ritual, death and birth. The land and its beings continue to witness the grief and violence of colonialism and imperialism. Eid’s performance draws inspiration from writer Layla Feghali in The Land in our Bones: "the song becomes a chance for healing through collective grief... transforming in the soulful vocalization ...
