Constellating as relationality in motion lead me to a series of practices where I live on Unceded Ohlone land in what is called West Berkeley.
The West Berkeley Ohlone Shellmound has been a place of ceremony and ancestral reverence over the millennia. With the vast heritage region now a private parking lot surrounded by a fence and barbed wire, it is considered one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historical Places, and yet also continues to be a zone of contestation, recently surrounded by fencing by developers. It’s an embodiment of dispossession and a denial of sovereignty. What was the bay when surrounded by over 420 Shellmounds, and how can this be honored? After seeing artist Indira Allegra’s performance at Lake Merritt in 2021, I imagined the red material that was used for connection in their piece to transduce into weaving, heartbeat, and blood on the sacred Ohlone land. I was deeply inspired by their work, and the passages that happen through relation. Over the course of a few days by text and then together live, artists Bay Laurel, Jubilee July, and I put together this constellation. These two collaborators are both inspired time-earth creatures and we came up with this expression altogether.
