Bwa Kayiman – Lakouzémi

In the organizer's words:

In Haitian Creole, the word lakou refers not only to a piece of land or a small farm, but also to the place where all the important aspects of community life take place. It is a home, a place of kinship. Based on this holistic social institution and following on from the reflections undertaken in the past two years on the political, philosophical and cultural heritage of the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean region, the Bwa Kayiman Festival2025 is entering its third edition.

This year's festival addresses the notion of sovereignty by taking the Lakou as an anchor point to reflect on practices of collective (re)construction and the rejection of dehumanization, and to develop new ideas for return and belonging. A lakou involves living together and making a long-term living on a small, shared piece of land. It often includes matriarchal and intergenerational family structures where community and spirituality are intertwined with everyday practices. The Lakou model, which emerged from Haiti's colonial plantations, was adapted after Haitian independence and survives today in Haiti's rural areas despite ongoing exploitation and destabilization. Together with the Creole garden, the Creole language, Haitian Vodou and various artistic practices, Lakou is part of what Jean Casimir called the counter plantation system.[1] In all these elements, the Haitian people emphasize their sovereignty, which is expressed in the invention of radically new social institutions and relationships that reject colonial systems and customs in order to build communities based on reciprocity, mutual care, rootedness and respect for plurality. In addition, Bwa Kayiman - Lakouzémi: On Sovereignty as Relational Practice presents traditions and histories of self-organized and pluralist communities and shows how such dynamic worlds of thought have produced life forms of respect and dignity over time.

The three-day program reflects on the conditions of sovereignty - how it is practiced, asserted and defended. The term Lakouzémi refers to the work of poet, thinker and community organizer Monchoachi, whose project of the same name from 2007 to 2009 included both a journal and an annual series of encounters.[2] Monchoachi explains:

Lakou is the place of exchange, the place from which language unfolds from difference and keeps it collected and in harmony. Zémi is the spirit, the demand for height and depth, for density. Lakouzémi is thus a thought that explores the spirit of places in everything ... Lakou can open the way to a model of 'democracy', if we are so attached to this word, in any case to an astonishing creativity in all areas of life, from the organization of life in the community, in architecture, bokantaj [exchange] ... in short, a poetic way of living.[3]

In contrast to the monoculture of the plantation, Lakou recognizes differences and mutual support as essential factors for resilience and sustainability. A similar understanding of sovereignty as a relational practice emphasizes the interdependence between land and both human and non-human life. This relationship is seen as an irreducible part of a support network whose life-sustaining balance requires constant (self-)adaptation. What is important here is not only the mutual understanding between the beings, but also the strength of their cooperative relationships. Manthia Diawara's reading of Édouard Glissant's Poetics of Relation echoes this sentiment: "... difference is more constructive when it is seen as a by-product of solidarity and reconciliation ... relation and difference link entities that need the energy of the other to exist in beauty and freedom."[4] Seen in this way, sovereignty is not only the capacity for (self-)domination, but a practice that sustains relationships that are both political and poetic, as they emanate from difference to create richness in all senses. This form of sovereignty transcends the state, which since its invention has enabled and perpetuated dynamics of imperialism, racism and exploitation on a global scale.

In contrast, Bwa Kayiman - Lakouzémi deals with sovereignty that is rooted in the community. The program opens with the invocation of Eleguá (Legba), Ogún & Obatalá by the Mambo Silvia Garde and her son, the Houngan Yeser Sipriano. The two come from a family lineage shaped by Haitian labor migration to Cuba, where their lakou continues to cultivate spiritual and communal life across borders. Together they invoke the guiding spirits of connection, justice and clarity to support the work of the festival. On the second day, Garde and her community reappear in the film Una Sola Sangre ( 2018), which serves as a prologue to a congossa about migration, exile, diaspora, and the impossibilities and creative potential of return. The guests are Toronto-based director Ésery Mondésir, Port-au-Prince-based poet, novelist and songwriter Lyonel Trouillot and Dakar-based writer Ken Bugul. Una Sola Sangre is one of the two films from Mondésir's Radical Empathy Trilogy that will be shown as part of the program. The other, What Happens to A Dream Deferred? (2020), will be shown as an installation and illustrates the resilience of Haitians stranded on the border between Mexico and the US, defending themselves against racist and exclusionary policies and infrastructures through their ancestral cultural practices.

The first evening will continue with Souveraineté, de quel côté es-tu? [Sovereignty, which side are you on?], an exploration of how sovereignty has been adapted to different social, economic and geopolitical realities. The conversation will be led by playwright and poet Wole Soyinka and Port-au-Prince-based author Évelyne Trouillot, both of whom have worked extensively on the political history of their countries and the abuse of state power. Afterwards, multidisciplinary artist Julien Creuzet and choreographer Ana Pi, in collaboration with a vocal ensemble including soprano Makeda Monnet, will present the world premiere of Quatuor & Quantum - Larmes marées de la lune (2025), an extension of the texts and movement scores created for Creuzet's exhibition in the French Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024). This work reflects poetically and sensorially on water, seas and oceans as vehicles for the multidirectional movement of peoples, ideas and cultures, as well as their exchange and hybridization.

On the same evening, as part of the Tongue and Throat Memories program, Toronto-based chef Craig Wong revisits his Jamaican and Chinese family roots and conjures up a cuisine of conviviality that could emerge through Asian migration to the Caribbean. The introduction of exploitative systems such as indentured servitude capitalized on the displacement of members of various Asian communities who had little or no ability to return to their regions of origin, perpetuating the logic of the plantation beyond the abolition of slavery. The presence and exchange of these communities gave rise to alliances, hybridizations and new forms of cultural expression that became an integral part of local customs - for example, the use of curry and many Indian spices in Jamaican cuisine, or the Diwali festival of lights, which is celebrated in Guyana, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago. Later in the evening, the audience will be welcomed to a gathering entitled Plidetwal [Starry Rain] - Enacting Lakouzémi with poetry readings by Évelyne and Lyonel Trouillot, Ken Bugul and Jean D'Amérique. The evening will end with VIBRATIONS, TRANSLATIONS ( 2023), a performance by DJ and artist Slim Soledad, who uses sound and ritual practices to build a bridge between material and immaterial experiences, or the so-called human and the spiritual.

The second day of the program begins with Looking back to move forward: Boukman Eksperyans, resonance to the dissidence, a conversation between Ésery Mondésir and Manzè & LòLò Beaubrun. Both are co-founders and part of the family from which the celebrated band Boukman Eksperyans emerged at the end of the 1970s. Their mizik rasin (roots music) mixes many other Afro-diasporic rhythms and inspired spiritual, political and social forms of resistance in Haiti, particularly during the period of military rule in the late twentieth century. The name of the band refers directly to Dutty Boukman, freedom fighter and Houngan, who together with Cécile Fatiman led the Bwa Kayiman in 1791: the revolutionary ceremonial congress to which jazz musician Jowee Omicil dedicates his album Spiritual Healing: Bwa Kayiman Freedom Suite (2023). Both artists will perform in a double concert that simultaneously closes HKW 'sSonic Pluriverse Festival and the second day of Bwa Kayiman - Lakouzémi , deepening the interlinked sounds of ritual, protest, procession and carnival.

On the final day of the program, a movement lecture by Laura Beaubrun will frame the Yanvalou - Ceremonial Dance of Water, inviting an initiation into Lakou and reinforcing the connections between body, voice and community. Beaubrun's formative years practicing the Lakou model as a member of the Boukman Eksperyans family are central to her pedagogical and artistic work. The festival closes with the European premiere of the film The Man Died ( 2024) by Awam Amkpa, based on the book The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka (1972), a narrative about the twenty-two months the writer spent in prison after trying to prevent Nigeria from descending into civil war. After the screening, Ampka will talk about the making of the film and the political implications of artistic expression.

Bwa Kayiman - Lakouzémi invites us to reflect on sovereignty as a relational, poetic and communal practice, taking as an example the historical and contemporary forms of collective feeling, thought and action in the Caribbean. It is a history and present of reciprocal influences, of experiences of exile, of longings and the unfulfilled desire to return, of currents through oceans, of vulnerability and of alliances that have changed and created worlds.

[1] Jean Casimir, The Haitians: A Decolonial History, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

[2] The term Lakouzémi was coined by poet, thinker, and community organizer Monchoachi, whose project of the same name from 2007 to 2009 included a journal and an annual series of gatherings in the agoras of disused cockfighting pits in Sentann, Martinique. The events included poetry, discourse, dance, music, theater, art and gastronomy, among others, and took place on three historically significant dates, including August 14, the date of the ceremony at Bwa Kayiman that launched the Haitian Revolution in 1791. Participants in the project creatively and critically engaged with the relationships animated and exposed by the Creole language by engaging in a (poetic) discourse on the burdens inherited from colonial regimes and explored how they can (re)gain their sovereignty by drawing on the remarkable legacy of their ancestors' emancipatory practices. More information about the project at https://lakouzemi.blogspot.com/.

[3] "Lakou c'est le lieu de l'échange, c'est le lieu d'où la parole se déploie depuis la différence et la tient rassemblée et accordée. Zémi, it is the spirit, the exigence at once of a height and a depth, of a density. Lakouzémi, therefore, is a pensée en quête de l'esprit des lieux dans toute chose. ... Lakou can open the way to a model of "democracy", if one uses this term, and in any case to a creative prodigy in all areas of life, in the organization of life in common, in architecture, bokantaj... in short, a poetic mode of living.", "Entretien avec Monchoachi : la parole sauvage à l'assaut de l'occident", reproduction of an interview for the newspaper France-Antille, lundimatin (September 14, 2016), https://lundi.am/Entretien-avec-Monchoachi-la-parole-sauvage-a-l-assaut-de-l-occident.

[4] Manthia Diawara, "Édouard Glissant's World Mentality: An Introduction to One World in Relation", South #6 [documenta 14 #1] (2015), https://www.documenta14.de/en/south/34_edouard_glissant_s_worldmentality_an_introduction_to_one_world_in_relation.