The day will commence with a screening of the film that inspired the project, Tío Yim (2019) by Zapotec director Luna Marán. 

Encouraged by his daughter, Jaime Luna (Tío/Uncle Yim) – indigenous philosopher, social leader and singer songwriter who has lost his voice – composes a new song about his tumultuous life after 15 years of silence. Yet this time he will do this alongside his family; their memories and interpretations are contradictory and painful. Tío Yim is an immersion into the identity of a family shaped by tradition, music, and communality. 

Born in the indigenous Zapotec community of Guelatao de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico, Luna Marán has worked for more than a decade in educational programs centred around feminism, diversity, and communality, in organisations such as Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (CAI), Cine Too Lab, and JEQO. She has also actively supported alternative exhibition projects in Mexican provinces, mainly via Aqui Cine and the Cine Too Theater in Guelatao. She is co-founder of Brujazul, a production company with which she produced The Blue Years (2017), winner of several awards including the FIPRESCI Prize at the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and nominated for the Ariel Award for Best First Film by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Sciences and Arts. She has also directed short films Nocturnes (2009) and I Am So Like You (2011). Tío Yim (2019) is her first full-length film.

Part II: 12.45 – 5pm

The day continues with shared listening, as well as moments of gentle discussion and nourishment. Played just once, a durational audio event brings together the voices of a community who have never met in person, but who choose to share their work and lives with each other through the intimacy of sound. The broadcast includes writing, music, found sound, and personal reflections, meandering through stories of family, grief, hedges, water, snakes, protest, futures, ghosts, and other worlds.

Artists involved in 'Radio Silence' include Alexa Mardon, Alexandrina Hemsley, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Fili 周 Gibbons, Khairani Barokka, Nahuel Cano, Omikemi, Paula Montecinos, Rajni Shah, Reza Mirabi, Sheila Ghelani, Raju Rage, and Venuri Perera.

For those not able to attend the physical event, the radio programme will be broadcast online simultaneously.

The symposium forms part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project ‘Performance Philosophy and Animals: towards a radical equality’ led by Professor Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca in partnership with the Academy of Theatre & Dance, Amsterdam. There will be a parallel event happening simultaneously in Amsterdam.