Per°Form Open Academy of Arts and Activations 2024 Opening Keynotes — Redesigning Ourselves & How to Love a Tree by Diamantina Arcoiris and Hira Nabi

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Synopsis — Redesigning Ourselves

For her keynote Redesigning Ourselves, 72-13 is transformed into a fashion atelier infusing it with elements of Diamantina’s creative workshop located in the red light district of Bogotá. The workshop is a potently regenerative and transformative space: an educational centre, a flexible activity space as well as a refuge for the community of drug users, the homeless, and sex workers she works with. Over the years the creative workshop has become a fashion house producing socially responsible and sustainable fashion brand Amor Real.

In the Singapore atelier, Diamantina curates a selection of embroidered haute couture, streetwear and blankets crafted by these vulnerable groups.

Synopsis — How to Love a Tree

In her lecture performance How to Love a Tree, Hira Nabi will weave together narratives from sylvan landscapes, misty mountain sides, the ghosts of extraction and British imperialism, inviting the audience into forest time and inhabiting multiple temporalities at once. “How to Love a Tree” (2019–ongoing) is a long-term project thinking with and about trees, disappearance, extinctions, extraction, love, care, and life and decay.

The project examines the through-line of extraction from colonial extractivist policies to an infrastructure of tourism, modernity that brings destruction with its arrival, and leaves behind extinction in its wake.

About Diamantina Arcoiris 

Diamantina is a fashion designer who uses her knowledge and skills to help those marginalised by society. In the challenging environment of one of Bogotá’s barrios, she has set up Fundación Rediseñándonos (Redesign Ourselves Foundation), which offers a welcoming community and inspiring workshops. Drawing on the therapeutic aspects of creativity and creative production, she is empowering people to explore alternative possibilities and redesign their lives.

About Hira Nabi

Diamantina is a fashion designer who uses her knowledge and skills to help those marginalised by society. In the challenging environment of one of Bogotá’s barrios, she has set up Fundación Rediseñándonos (Redesign Ourselves Foundation), which offers a welcoming community and inspiring workshops. Drawing on the therapeutic aspects of creativity and creative production, she is empowering people to explore alternative possibilities and redesign their lives.