Territorial Practices: A Conversation About Art, Sound, Land, and Fire
Territorial Practices: A Conversation About Art, Sound, Land, and Fire
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts is excited to partner with Tulsa Artist Fellowship to present Nawa / 🫱🏼🫲🏾/ Aha; or, The Handshake, a two-part event in Omaha, NE on August 1.
Nawa / 🫱🏾🫲🏼/ Aha; or, The Handshake is organized by Tulsa Artist Fellowship Awardees Gavin Kroeber and Warren Realrider and artist Lydia Cheshewalla, on the occasion of Realrider’s residency at Bemis Center. It is part of a series of related gatherings Kroeber is organizing this year, with others planned in California, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
Anchored by a public talk and a concert, “The Handshake” will bring together a diverse group of visiting artists who are making land-based work and, in various ways, engaging territory: moving back and forth across vast ecoregions, tracing the migration paths of other species, restoring Native fire landscapes, and deranging settler-colonial spatial regimes. Participants include sound artists, prescribed and cultural fire practitioners, former Nebraska residents, and Pawnee and Otoe-Missouria descendants visiting their ancestral homelands.
The first part, Territorial Practices: A Conversation About Art, Sound, Land, and Fire, will take place at Bemis Center from 2–4 PM. This roundtable will feature brief presentations by visiting artists Max Brotman, Juan William Chávez, Lydia Cheshewalla, Alex DeRoin, Kole Galbraith, Gavin Kroeber, Jess Price, and Summer 2026 Bemis Sound Artist-in-Residence Warren Realrider, and open up into a wider dialogue with members of the Omaha community, exploring land-based approaches to art and artistic approaches to territory.
The second part, Confluencing: A Sonic Burnout, will take place at The Church Arthouse from 7pm–10 PM. Featuring sound performances by Kole Galbraith, Doom Flower (solo), Complex Crown, Warren Realrider & Sholeh Asgary, and Juan William Chávez, this concert will be an immersive, sensory counterpart to the afternoon’s discussion.
These public programs will also be “wrapped” by several days of private exchanges, site visits, and artistic fieldwork at sites across Southeast Nebraska, bringing visiting and local artists together to build relationships with one another and with the land.