Bibliomancy is an interactive oracular performance created and performed by Michael J. Morris. Engaging in the ancient practice of divination with books, Bibliomancy gathers together a collection of texts written by Black feminists, transgender pioneers, queer theorists, philosophers, poets, artists, witches, and mystics, then invites audience participants to ask a question, for which they will receive a response in the forms of both text and movement. Rather than seeking answers, Bibliomancy seeks ways of being and moving with our questions, dancing with uncertainty and indeterminacy, and making meaning in the space between community, voice, text, and body.
Bibliomancy is supported by an original soundscore by Moxy Martinez.
Each performance will be approximately 1 hour.
Free and open to the public
August 10, 11, & 12, 2023
Doors open at 7:30 PM, and the performance begins sharply at 8:00 PM.
About the artists:
Michael J. Morris (they/them) is an artist, writer, astrologer, tarot reader, teacher, and facilitator. They hold a PhD in Dance Studies from The Ohio State University, and they were a Visiting Assistant Professor at Denison University from 2015–2021, where they taught in Dance, Women’s and Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and Environmental Studies. They have also been visiting faculty at SNDO—the School for New Dance Development—at the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam from 2020–2023, teaching the gender theory workshop for choreographers. Michael’s choreographic and performance work draws influences from Japanese Butoh, ritual practices, and early formalist postmodern dance and has been presented at universities, galleries, community spaces, theaters, bars and nightclubs, films, and domestic spaces. Their writing appears in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, TDR: The Drama Review, Choreographic Practices, Dance Chronicle, and the European Journal of Ecopsychology.
In 2019, Michael founded Co Witchcraft Offerings through which they offer astrology and tarot readings, movement-based rituals, and workshops to support people in cultivating more meaningful living while pursuing personal and collective healing and liberation. Along with their consulting practice, they are a contributing artist with Livable Futures, a guest teacher in the Foundations in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry course presented by wildbody somatics, a teaching assistant with astrologer Kelly Surtees, and a contributing writer for the CHANI App. Michael is based in Columbus, Ohio—the ancestral and contemporary territories of the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, Peoria, Seneca, Wyandotte, Ojibwe, and Cherokee peoples.
https://michaeljmorris.weebly.com/
https://www.michaeljmorris.co/
Moxy Martinez (they/them/he/him), a self-taught DJ & producer, has created, performed, produced, and contributed original music and DJ sets both nationally and internationally since 2003. Moxy is the founder of the Columbus Synth Slam c.2017, a synthesizer-based, interactive event focused around the joys of synthesis and sound making. Most recently in January 2023, Moxy produced and performed the one-night-only event held at Mershon Auditorium, Patchworks: Synthesize Synthcronicities, an interactive, synth-directed event focused on female/trans/nonbinary synth artists, fully supported by the Wexner Center for the Arts.
https://moxymartinez.bandcamp.com
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Bibliography for Bibliomancy:
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy: Volume 1. Translated by Eric Purdue. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2021.
Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
Athanassakis, Apostolos N. and Benjamin Wolkow, translators. The Orphic Hymns. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013)
Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
Bey, Marquis. Black Trans Feminism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.
Boggs, Grace Lee. The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.
brown, adrienne maree. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019.
brown, adrienne maree. We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020.
brown, adrienne maree. Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2022.
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