Established in 2017 as an institutional critique project for body-conscious expression and governance by transmedia poet and transcultural curator Ava Ansari, POETIC SOCIETIES produces multilocation and multilingual public and participatory art projects as an arts and healing technologies nonprofit network in Waawiiyaataanong/Detroit.
Combining ancestral and digital technologies, POETIC SOCIETIES cultivates hetero-poetic memories of somatic, sonic, and scenic liberation across the earth.
To continue its transnational work, POETIC SOCIETIES had to invest in new equipment. With the support of CultureSource and the Gilbert Family Foundation’s Digital Access for the Arts grant, POETIC SOCIETIES purchased new computer and software to support its #ForgottenNetworks media platform for aligning bodies, lands, and senses of belonging. The network is sustained by its grassroots network of poets, musicians, technologists, dancers, healers, activists, community organizers, and lawyers.
”DAAP is not only a grant, it’s an invitation to build with CultureSource in visionary and flexible ways. It welcomes imagining the unimaginable and respects grassroots technologies.
Ava Ansari
The grant also helped to partially fund the development of the latest iteration of POETIC SOCIETIES “REMOooOTE” Telepresence Healing Festival between Detroit and Palestine, directed by Ansari, that premiered at the inaugural Arab American National Museum’s JAM3A Festival, featuring an incredible group of POETIC SOCIETIES’ residents including: dancer and director Mohanad Smama and his team in Gaza, Mary Hazboun, Sacramento Knoxx, Owólabi Aboyade (Will See) in Detroit with Saeid Shanbehzadeh in France, Checkpoint303 Tunisian-Palestinian music collective, and Ya Samaar! Dance Theatre in New York with member Samaa Wakeem in Gaza. Dedicated to the Palestinian singer and songwriter, Rim Banna, the 20 minute sequential tele-protest reveals tender moments of rehearsals, workshops, studio and urban recordings, and domestic and public rituals for remote alignment in diverse urban and digital modes in Detroit and Palestine in Arabic, Anishinaabemowin, English, and Persian languages and rhythms.
POETIC SOCIETIES stands on a decade of Ansari’s remote production experience, who as an Iranian immigrant and digital organizer is no stranger to working with erased, sanctioned, and forgotten lands and technologies. But such a complicated remote production and live streaming during the active war in Gaza came as a challenge for the organization. After careful consideration, Ansari and her team began to use Studio6 for mixing sound, colors, and graphics on the go. REMOooOTE used Studio6 to collaborate across distances, and POETIC SOCIETIES residents continue to leverage the technology for future projects.
The Digital Access for the Arts program supports CultureSource members as they make new investments in technology, and seek digital solutions to organizational challenges. This work is done by providing how-to guides, grants, and opportunities to participate in research cohorts.