Bring On The Chaos
The following are remarks shared by Rad Pereira, NET Federation Architect, at the Closing Plenary for TCG’s 2026 National Conference in Puerto Rico.
Rad + Lauren Turner Hines on a journey to the mangroves
Thank you Alan for the education on art making in the face of authoritarianism and for reminding us how much we have to risk for liberation. Much of what I will be sharing are ways we can fight back by building what comes next.
For those of you who heard my colleague and friend Alex Meda’s speech at the plenary yesterday, I’m gonna follow the metaphorical thread she began weaving.
Did you know that this place, Boriken, is part of an archipelago made up of many islands, and used to be surrounded by bioluminescence? These magical cyborg animal plant creatures that glow electric blue and lime green when they interact with oxygen from the movement of bigger creatures, like us. This is my first time here, so when I heard Captain Chiqui share this history with us, it made so much sense to me, that this place used to be surrounded by natural sparkling ocean glitter.
Rad + Julianna in Session
Because I don’t know about you, but my dreams have been so vivid here. The magic seeps in. The songs and dances we’ve been lucky to hear and see all week feed the veil between dimensions, which keeps it more porous for us to hear our ancestors and guides to influence our visions for the future. These conditions make us ripe for dreaming.
Captain Chiqui also told us that there are only three bays left with bioluminescence, and only one that you can swim in, for who knows how much longer. Overdeveloped. So the magic flickered then sank. This reminds me of what’s happening in our theater ecosystem. Overdevelopment and exploitation. We are the last bay we can swim in. My Lenape friend Joe says the sign of a healthy thriving society is longevity, not tall buildings or modern symbols of civilization, but the ability to endure, outlast and regenerate together. This requires deep humility, attunement and embracing change. How do we protect each other and regenerate what has been lost or destroyed in a more fiercely interdependent way? We have to decide together what to give our oxygen to… what do we leave in the old world, what can be transformed, and what needs to be built or preserved that’s completely separate from the dominant systems? This will require imagination and innovation. How exciting!
The mangroves
I’ve heard a few different definitions of innovation in this conference. Many of them tied to endless growth, technocratic ideals and the monetization/commodification of novelty, but what I mean by innovation is when “ancestral technology" (to quote my friends from Groundwater Arts) meets new flexible and fluid infrastructure that can meet the complex chaos of our times. Like the mangroves that surround and feed the bioluminescence, with their thick roots intertwined to brace together in the face of Hurricanes. Instead of becoming rigid and trying to tame the uncertainty, we must flow with the spirit of this complex chaos, like the mangroves dance with the hurricanes and thus weather the storms.
Folks are reaching for something and they don’t know what. I heard a lot of talk about the need for new economic models and infrastructure. I heard folks talking about the need for sharing. We can only leave the dominant economic models if we are simultaneously building alternatives and “positive visions” (like Alan said), such as what I heard from the Performing Arts Alliance session on Tuesday. Folks are:
Sharing access to different subscription services
Sharing staff remotely or IRL só together they’re FT
Sharing Offices
HR & backend
Mergers & copros
Sharing buildings and theaters
Collaborating on mutual aid hubs and emergency funds
Groundwater Arts-led session: Technology of the Imagination
This is the solidarity economy in practice.
The solidarity economy could be this alternative model and infrastructure we keep talking about building. It’s important to name that there are many ways we are already building and participating in this alternative that we are seeking. It is not a huge leap once you recognize that you’re already moving towards it.
In the chaos after what Alan called a “peak event” of 2020 during the Black Spring, we had the opportunity to make the leap but we weren’t prepared. We missed the moment. I’m sure we can all feel the growing chaos again, more “peak events” are coming which will present another opportunity to leap together and seize the moment. To mass mobilize. What are we doing to get ourselves ready for this next opportunity that’s brewing? I don’t just mean financial preparedness, what are the collective, somatic, interpersonal, skilling up we are doing to build our capacities for interdependence? As Leslie Ishii calls it, how are we building and practicing our “liberation organizing principles”. We have everything we need! We just need to restructure it for the fluid chaos we are in.
How to be a living ancestor activation
I hear there are a bunch of regional theaters building a fund to allegedly replace the NEA. I was also in a session where at its best we were talking about how to better share ownership of our art and IP, how to share the profits of what we make in the factory together, but at its worst this session was trying to teach theaters how to become tech oligarchs.
You know what these things remind me of? The fact that this hotel and all the fancy hotels still have water and the rest of the island doesn’t, and many of us had no idea.
The fact that billionaires are building bunkers to live in the delusion that they can escape climate chaos.
The rest of us will be over here preparing to take the leap together by building trust between and within our communities, connecting into a network of solidarity hubs that can withstand what’s to come. My friends in the labor movement say that the next big resistance movement must be led by artworkers and sexworkers. So join us in building an arts worker labor movement and take seriously our roles as leaders and gatherers of sacred and rageful organizing, healing, advocacy and joy!
Rad + Lani from HERE Arts
In A Theater for Public Good session they articulated the theater version of solidarity economy principles, which are all rooted in being more relational and less transactional:
Builds real power with the people it serves
Practices equity as structure
Treats culture as a right not a privilege
Leverages artistic excellence towards a greater good beyond the stage
Measures community impact that matters
Some other threads I heard throughout the conference that are embodying these principles are:
Utilizing our privileges as theaters (because we are rich in relationships) … I heard Company One are convening mayoral arts & cultural town halls, Teatro Publico de Cleveland are supporting searches for missing children, and Perseverance Theater is advocating/ educating for mmiwp2s movement
In the Global Performance Session led by the Global Performance & Politics Laboratory we heard:
In NYC, Visual Echo Theater is making work with asylum seekers to make American friends. And with immigration judges to humanize the onslaught of bullshit the new administration is advancing.
In Chicago, Worker’s Theater is making art with working class people to figure out strategies to deal with the bullshit they face daily.
At Network of Ensemble Theaters & Cultural Collectives we are:
Giving an interest free loan for our friends (like the 50k we gave our friends at the Andre Cailloux Center to secure their building as a Black led community equity fund)
4 different pilots across the country to give us portable benefits such a healthcare, retirement, pension, emergency funds, advocacy & solidarity (come for the healthcare stay for the rights)
Priya Parker told us
“There is great loss in avoidance… How do we fight with those we want to belong to? How do we hold heat?”
Clearly many of us are trying to avoid the complex chaos by clinging to the sinking comfort of what we think we know. But I say bring it on. Bring on the chaos. Bring on the heat. Bring on the fucking mess. Because visioning, dreaming, organizing and working together is lifegiving. It might hurt at times, but interlacing our roots and branches to weather these storms and regenerate our bioluminescence will feel amazing.
As my friend Annalisa said when she made this speech at the last TCG: COURAGE!
<3 Thank you Boriken! End all occupations! Free the land! Free the waters! <3