Roots & Routes Residencies
Roots & Routes is a residency programme exploring migrant and diasporic wisdom as a creative strategy for collective organising and movement building.
From Summer 2024 - 2025, we welcome Hannah Yu-Pearson and Jack Ky Tan, in conversation with Migrants in Culture’s Joon-Lynn Goh, to explore how Daoist philosophy and practice can provide guidance for living through times of (often violent) change.
Daoism manifests as a philosophy, religion, spiritual practice and a diverse set of traditions indigenous to China. Daoism’s classic text is the Dao De Jing (often translated as ‘The Way’) and is notable for being written during the Warring States period of China (403-221 BC), a time when military handbooks were the most widely circulated texts. In contrast, the Dao De Jing compiled teachings on a creative and symbiotic relationship with nature, including principles of self-cultivation, non-coercion and mutual transformation. Over 2000 years later, this lineage of thinking and practice is both wisdom and strategy for social change work.
Hannah Yu-Pearson
Jack Ky Tan
Our Residents
Hannah Yu-Pearson is a practitioner-researcher, who leads Hui 慧, a practice of food, tea and gathering as medicine. Guided by the principles and teachings of traditional Chinese medicines and healing practices, Hannah explores the convergence of Daoism, embodied knowing, seasonal observations and ecological health. Hui慧 considers the body as a porous and emergent process of becoming according to the times and spaces we move through. Over this residency, Hannah will follow the calendar of the five elements and seasons and host seasonal meals to deepen our practice of being in the presence of ourselves, each other and the elements. Each meal will capture recipes, rituals and observations of the seasons.
Jack Ky Tan works across, performance, sculpture, law and policy-making. His practice is an ongoing exploration of social justice that blurs the boundaries between, art, law, governance and consultancy. Looking toward alternative cosmologies and knowledge systems predating Judaeo-Christian or colonial narratives, Jack interrogates the legacies of empire with a particular interest in Commonwealth and Tropical epistemologies of resistance. Jack's work attempts to rethink our entanglement with the human and more-than-human world, and looks towards alternative ways of living and working. During the residency, Jack will research how we can apply Daoist world views and practices to arts governance, in hopes of creating more cyclical, compassionate, attuned and sustainable organisational systems for our future.
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