Images Festival 2024 | Rehearsing Refusal

Refusal is an unwillingness to accept. In an ableist imperialist white supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy, refusal is also a mode of being that requires consistent rehearsal in order for one to sustain themselves against the violence of these interlocking hegemonic systems. [1] How might we conceptualize Rehearsing Refusal? As a practice of consecutive gestures of defiance? [2] Or, as a stepping into the power of otherwise? Might it hold the potential to speak into being healing, provocation, generation, and liberation? Maybe rehearsing refusal, though trying or inconvenient for those on the receiving end, is an act of generosity for future generations. [3] Perhaps it is the process of building a discipline of hope. [4]

Footnotes

1. bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York: Washington Square Press, 2005). See also: bell hooks, “bell hooks and Laverne Cox in a Public Dialogue at The New School,” The New School. October 13, 2014, video,1:36:08. https://youtu.be/9oMmZIJijgY?si=w_JIckIelvsXwnn5.

2. bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1989).

3. Brennan, Tallulah. “Children of the Anthropocene.” Where the Leaves Fall. Accessed September 15, 2024. https://wheretheleavesfall.com/magazine/issue-13.

4. Mariame Kaba, We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Chicago, USA: Haymarket Books, 2021). In an interview with Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstien, Mariame mentions hearing the phrase “discipline of hope” in conversation with a nun, who is unnamed in the book.

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all.

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us.

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.