UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021

UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021

UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021

UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021

UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021

UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021 UCLA MFA 2021

KIMI HANAUER  KIMI HANAUER  KIMI HANAUER  KIMI HANAUER  KIMI HANAUER  KIMI HANAUER  KIMI HANAUER  KIMI HANAUER  KIMI HANAUER

KIMI
HANAUER  

As a cultural and media-based organizer, facilitator and writer, I co-develop pragmatic-poetic [1] initiatives and resources that aim to build collective autonomy. [2] My works take various responsive forms, including workshops, publications, installations, and writing. Through group and conversation-based processes, I work to facilitate spaces of collectivity, belonging, possibility, action, and power-sharing. The most meaningful sites of my work take place in seemingly mundane, daily encounters and events of life where dynamics, relationships, and community between myself and others may take form. I am guided by the understanding that our ability to build autonomous and liberated worlds rests on our capacity to feel the inherent worth within ourselves and others as living beings of the past, present, and future. In other words, a deep commitment to community–which can be broadly and personally defined–is necessary for one’s self-actualization, and one’s deep connection to self is necessary for our collective-actualization. Thus, surfacing and deepening a sense of value within one’s own self and the collective is both a foundation and an aspiration of my practice.

This past year, I began the process of initiating the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry, a virtual and nomadic education center that nourishes a network of shared learnings, dreams, strategies, and rituals as the building blocks for autonomous and liberated communities. Through commitments to mutual aid, political education, creative practice, and collective process, the Center gathers a community of learners around liberatory practices: ways of being, sensing, thinking, and making that enact liberatory politics in everyday life. A central stake I personally bring to this project is: While liberatory practices and politics have risen out of and in resistance to structures of domination, they are not necessarily bound up with their existence. How can we define liberation, as a state of being emancipated, on our own terms? 

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[1] I use the word pragmatic-poetic to refer to processes where the material and embodied impacts of the work are interdependent and interconnected. For example, while mutual aid projects are guided by the overarching goal of meeting a community’s basic (material) needs, the success of mutual aid as a movement depends on (embodied) group processes which forge meaningful relationships that joyfully bring people into movement work for years to come. Dean Spade elaborates on this in the recent book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis and the Next, published by Verso Books. 

[2] Autonomy is not something we can have as individuals, rather it is only something we can create through deeply meaningful, self-organized, and self-defined collectivity. Rocco A. Astore elaborates on this in the article, The Importance of Autonomy in Anarchy and Statelessness, published in the Anarchist Library. 

About
‍
Kimi Hanauer (b. 1993, Tel-Aviv) is a cultural and media-based organizer, writer, and a founding collective member of Press Press. Kimi is graduating with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio and concentrated work in Gender Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Land Acknowledgement 

The work shared on this page was produced on the unceded land of the Gabrielino / Tongva peoples, the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar. The work was exhibited on unceded Chochenyo Ohlone Land at Southern Exposure, as part of the group show We Use Our Hands To Support gathered by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, alongside works by Fronteristxs Collective, Amanda Curreri, and Sam Vernon. 
‍
Links & Contact
‍
www.kimihanauer.com
‍ kimihanauer@gmail.com 

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a scan of a yellow page with reddish pink text printed on top lays on a white background. The title reads, “how is speech a desire a hope a promise” in larger bolded, italicized letters with smaller text beneath. The page reads, “this letter is my spoken refusal. and as it speaks to refuse, of course, it also does something else. speech lives in a series of daily attempts. speech tries to mark impossible to reach destinations. speech tries to shift and bend the structures that be. attempting to mold them into streams that pull and push some formation of an us into the horizons we desire. speech always tries. speech always tries and always fails at that which it says it does. speech doesn’t do what it says it does. speech says, abundance now abolition now liberation now, and as it says so, it gathers an us. it marks an autonomous zone, if only for a few minutes or seconds or hours, we want abundance now. for a few minutes or hours or seconds, we speak and our speaking echoes. we speak and our speaking echoes. we speak and our speaking echoes. in the rivberarations under the bridge on the highway where sound moves and collapses and erupts. where speech turns to voice turns to body turns to movement. there’s no romance to uprising. there are no sensible explanations. more analysis won’t help us here. let’s not try to make art out of this. did you always know you had a voice? or did you accept your circumstances and encounters as normal? did you find comfort in silence? even when it didn’t do anything to protect you. when did you first realize that your definition of violence was different than that of those around you? whose language do you speak? and what has it taught you? how has it molded your thoughts, your truths, your reckoning with the world? what parts of you does it make no room for? what parts of you does it criminalize? what parts of you does it abandon? what parts of you are even left? speech says, i refuse to believe that this language can hold me, and as it says so, it imagines what lies beyond. speech says, i refuse to believe in the construction of scarcity, and as it says so, it transforms available materials through their use. speech says, i refuse to accept everyday violence, and as it says so it demands i / you / we hold the rage in my / your / our arms. hold the rage in y/our arms, because language cannot hold us. hold the rage in y/our arms, because language cannot hold us. hold the rage in y/our arms, because it needs to be held. have i learned to assimilate into the logic of language? sometimes i feel it as my own, like a visitor lives inside my body, recoils in my vocal chords, translates itself into my innermost thoughts, as if my mindbodysoul is actually the foreigner stuck inside someone else’s corporeal shell. someone else’s could-be-home, that is, if a body could also be a home, not just a shell, a vehicle, a tool, hardened and scarred. sometimes I just want us to sit with the horror and incomprehension and not have any explanations or solutions or facts other than the sitting, just sitting, that is, if you haven’t been sitting already if sitting is a choice not a constant that molds and re-molds the curves of your aging body.i try my best to refuse, language isn’t only in the arms of a nation, a coded tongue that subjects as it subjugates as it speaks for-about-to. language can be broken down, i hope, and decompressed into the earth. where other worlds might grow. nourished by our whispers and by our screams, tools of the present, limited and essential. because i still need to speak to you. because i have a tongue, too, although it requires practice in straining the letters into noise, direct and undetectable, speech. speech is there when language isn’t. speech is there when no one is listening. speech is still there when language cannot hold it. and this language so often cannot hold it. speech is there when language drowns it out, waters it down, pushes it aside. speech is there. it doesn’t need an audience. speech is there. it doesn’t need an audience. speech is there. it’s waiting. when you can finally speak, you remember all of the things you have to say. you remember all of the moments in life where your voice didn’t save you. where absence was abuse and abuse was abuse but it was never called such. when you can speak, speech is abundant and free and flowing. speech is abundant and free flowing. speech fails with joy. speech fails with joy. speech moves with redemption. speech moves with redemption. speech liberates if we want it too. speech liberates if we want it to. speech falls short of what it says it does, while doing something else entirely. that’s because speech isn’t yet. it’s a desire. it’s a hope. speech isn’t yet. it’s a desire. it’s a hope. sit down and hear me scream. i got nothing for you but a promise. speech imagines what can be. and speech demands that it can. it’s the daily attempts at being together. it’s the space between us. it’s the desire to heal, to collapse and still hold dear, knowing that we cannot and will not feel one another’s exhaustion, knowing there is no resolve, knowing we don’t know exactly how to get to where we’re going, and still. when i speak, i am making you a promise. i am also making a demand. speech demands. it demands, we have a future. it demands, we have a future, and as it does so, it gathers us to find a way. but you know, movement isn’t always healing.”
how is speech a desire a hope a promise?
xerox flyer
2021
 Read it as a Google document or download the PDF.
Two yellow walls covered in pink, purple, and grey prints surround a series of tables. One table is lower to the ground and sits in the foreground of the image. It is surrounded by two long, pink floor cushions. There are two small screens on the walls, one on the left and one on the middle right. The space feels busy. The floor is grey and slightly reflects the yellow of the walls.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A purple wall is seen at an angle with five wall hangings on top of it. The wall hangings are made of fabric and have a collage feel. They are full of repeated letters that have been warped. The letters are white and have black backgrounds. They feel like cut pieces of paper that sit onto colorful collages. When read together, the banners spell out “abundance.”
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
Another overview image of the same space but from a more central angle. The left and center walls are yellow and the right wall is purple. The yellow walls are covered in pink, purple, and grey prints. One dominant print reads, “I want to believe in shared breath” and is covered up and then revealed by different prints that have been patterned on top. The purple wall is more bare, with a small computer set up on the right.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A computer sits on top of six redd-pinkish crates. To the left of the crates is a metallic, yellow publication stand. It has four levels and the structure feels like an accordion. Behind the computer is a purple wall that has some grey and black posters over top. The posters have bold text that says, “I want to believe in shared breath” in all capital letters. There are four smaller yellow posters with pink and purple blocks of text on top of the grey posters. They are on the wall in a horizontal line, slightly to the right of the computer. The most left wall, which we only see a fragment of, is yellow and has a few other printed pieces of text on it.
Living Resources Library at the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry’s temporary home
at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A computer screen is large and at the center of this image. It is sitting on three red-pink crates. The brightness of the screen makes the surroundings feel darker. Shades of purple and pink surround the screen. On the screen, there is an open folder with PDFs inside and one document open. The document is open to a yellow page with small hand written text on top that reads, “The Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry….2021 <3”.
The Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry: A Proposal, PDF document
2021
‍Download the PDF and explore more mind maps.
Two images sit side by side. The left image has a scan of a yellow notebook sitting overtop a red to purple gradient that flows from top to bottom. The yellow notebook as a piece of tape over top with handwritten text that says, “the center for liberatory practice & poetry… 2021 <3” in black sharpie. The right image has an open notebook page with two mind maps falling out of it. The title of the first mindmap says, “what is a living resource?” and mostly covers another map that lays underneath. We can see a glimpse of words from the bottom mindmap that say “an object”. The maps have orange and purple lines that connect to pink, yellow, and green ovals and circles. They feel fluid and include small handwritten text and type.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
An overview of the main space that centers on two yellow walls covered in posters. Two work tables stand in the middle, they are made of wood and have fabric draping over them that doesn’t cover the entire table top. The posters on the walls have pink and purple blocks of text over yellow and orange backgrounds. Other posters are grey with bold black text overtop that reads, “I want to believe in shared breath.” Two small screens are also hung above the posters. One screen shows the image of feet floating in the air, the other screen shows an image of legs in movement. The floor is grey and slightly reflects the light from the yellow walls.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A closer look at two books laying on a table. The table top is made of OSB with a fabric draping over its center diagonally. The left and right sides of the tabletop are revealed. The fabric is white and black and feels like a xerox print of warped lettering. The most left book is a large yellow zine with reddish bold text that reads, “Calling all Denizens”. The other book has a red and white, abstract collage.
Calling all Denizens Resource Book
‍letterpress, xerox, screen printed, handbound books published by the Women's Studio Workshop
2019
Download a PDF of the resource book
Two images of the same book sit side by side. The left side has an image of the cover of the book. It is yellow with a very slight orange to yellow gradient on the background. Bold reddish brown text reads, “Calling All Denizens” across the cover with hand drawn underlines. Two hands are placed at the bottom edges of the book. On the other side, the same book is opened with the hands caught mid-flipping the pages. The right page shows an orange gradient with yellow letters that read, “to those for whom simply being is an act of dissent and discord.” The background is white and light grey.
Calling all Denizens Resource Book
letterpress, xerox-printed, screen printed, handbound books published by the Women's Studio Workshop
2019
‍Download a PDF of the resource book
Two images of the Calling All Denizens Resource Book sit side by side on a white background. The left image opens to a pink page with an essay laid out in black text. The title is big and reads, “What if all Citizens were Denizens?”. Two hands appear on the left and right sides of the image, as if holding the book, with a red pencil on the right side. The left image opens to another spread of the same book. The pages are now off white with what looks like an enlarged, grainy xerox print of a newspaper in the background. The title reads, “Archive of Racial Prerequisite Cases.” In the bottom, grey text appears in the background that reads, “what are you ashamed of?”
Calling all Denizens Resource Book
letterpress, xerox-printed, screen printed, handbound books published by the Women's Studio Workshop
2019
‍Download a PDF of the resource book
Three books sit on a table. The table top is made of OSB with a fabric draping over its center diagonally. The left and right sides of the tabletop are revealed. The fabric is white and black and feels like a xerox print or scan of warped lettering and hands. The book on the most left side is red and black, the middle book is yellow, and the book on the right has scans of light green plants and a black line with a few white letters overtop that say, “as bo” and are cut off.
Series of Daily Attempts & Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry: A Proposal
‍xerox-printed and perfect bound coverless books
2021
Series of Daily Attempts
xerox-printed and perfect bound coverless books
2021
Documented by Kyle Tata
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry: A Proposal
xerox-printed and perfect bound coverless books
2021
Documented by Kyle Tata
Series of Daily Attempts
xerox-printed and perfect bound coverless books
2021
Documented by Kyle Tata
A corkboard covered in prints sits on top of a yellow wall. The yellow wall has prints hung up with yellow push pins. The cork board has four horizontal prints of open notebook pages and mind maps that brainstorm the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry. Most legible from this picture are two pieces: the first is two hands holding a card with a pink and blue gradient that reads, “what does liberation feel like?”. The second most legible image is of an envelope with handwritten text that reads, “take care of your loved ones now & always”.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A close up of a wall of posters. The posters have yellow, orange, and white backgrounds with blocks of warped text overtop. The text blocks range in purple to blue shades with yellow and white letters. Most visible text reads, “abundance now”. The posters all look similar to one another excluding one poster with much clearer text that reads, “To those who embrace wandering from within and without diaspora” in bright yellow-orange bold letters, over a pink background. This poster is put up with pushpins rather than stapled like the rest.
Xerox-printed and spray painted posters
as part of the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A yellow wall with a few posters on the right side. There is a screen hung on the middle of the wall with headphones that hang underneath. On the screen we see legs floating near the trunk of a tree. There are shades of green, blue and grey which sharply contrast with the yellows, pinks, and purples that surround. Above the screen we see the bottom of large posters that are hanging over top that read, “breath, breath”.
Find a Portal
video
2021
With words from Malaika Aminata.
Find a Portal
video
2021
With words from Malaika Aminata.
Two metallic, yellow publication stands sit at the corner of two walls. The walls are covered in grey and yellow posters. The publication stands are structured like accordions and have different books in each section. They have four sections to put books and magazines in. They are colorful and each section looks different.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A screenshot of a website appears. The webpage has two main columns, the most right column is pink and features the contents of the site. It says, “introduction, prep work, ground work, growth work, expanded work, about the project” in a list form in bold white letters. The right colum is green with some yellow blobs of color on top. In the same bold white font, it reads, “Toolkit for Cooperative, Collective, and Collaborative Cultural Work”.

Toolkit for Cooperative, Collective, & Collaborative Cultural Work, co-published by Press Press and Institute for Expanded Research, digitally printed and perfect bound, 2020. Toolkit is based on two workshops which gathered Baltimore-based people who are involved in cooperative, collective, or collaborative cultural work, including Allie Linn, Amy Reid, Bonnie Jones, C Kim (E'NB), E Cadoux, Tanya Garcia, Georgia McCandlish, Adriana Monsalve, Haniel Wides, Jacob Marley, Joseph Lee, Khadija Adell, Lu Zhang, Markele Cullins, N'Deye Diakhate, Priya Bhayana, and Rose Buttress. The workshops were facilitated by Valentina Cabezas, Kimi Hanauer, Bomin Jeon, and Bilphena Yahwon. Toolkit is initiated and composed by Kimi Hanauer using notes, transcriptions, and audio recordings from the workshops and additional research. Toolkit is edited by Lu Zhang and copyedited by Rebekah Kirkman. The digital publication is designed and engineered by Eleni Agapis.


The oppressor’s language
‍xerox-printed and perfect bound book
2020
Documentation by Kyle Tata
a screen hangs on a wall covered in various prints. The screen shows the image of a person’s face looking downward, very close to the trunk of a tree. The person is whispering to the tree.
Nourishment
‍video
2021
Nourishment
‍video
2021
A close of one of the pieces on the yellow wall. The image shows a black and white banner with golden grommets hanging. In warped and somewhat legible text, the banner reads, “but i need it to speak to you” in black letters over top blocks of white, which sit over top a mostly black background.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A white print is hung on a yellow wall with a yellow pushpin. In bold letters it says, “Sanctuary is not yet an experience, it is the horizon.” Underneath it is a small cut out that says, “movement” also put on the wall with a yellow pushpin.
Sanctuary is on the Horizon by Press Press
included as part of the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry’s temporary home installed at Southern Exposure
as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
‍Download a PDF of Press Press’s Sancutary Manifesto
A wooden shelf sits on the floor on top of concrete blocks. It has a few stacks of newspapers on top of it and two black megaphones sitton the edge. The wall behind it is yellow.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
Five colorful collages are taped to a yellow wall. The same shelf sits below with piles of newspapers and a jar with pink and purple pencils. The collages have shades of purple, pink, white and black. They have a few strips of black with white letters repeated on top. Together, the pieces read, “aaaaaabbaabbbbuuuunnnndddddaaannnccceeeecccceeeee”.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
A wooden table sits lower to the ground. It is surrounded by two long, pinkish floor cushions. The table looks like a work table. It has cards laid out on it on to top of a whtie and grey fabric. The floor is grey and we see a glimpse of a purple wall behind.
bless our breath
‍digitally printed deck of cards and newsprint broadsheet
‍bless our breath is initiated and designed by Kimi Hanauer and organized in collaboration with Gas. It is based on ideas and phrases generated through an online workshop including artists, writers, academics and organizers alea adigweme, Gordon Hall, Jovonna Jones, Malcom Peacock, Ceci Moss, Kimi Hanauer, and Alice Yuan Zhang in the summer of 2020. Download a PDF of the deck.
bless our breath
digitally printed deck of cards and newsprint broadsheet
bless our breath is initiated and designed by Kimi Hanauer and organized in collaboration with Gas. It is based on ideas and phrases generated through an online workshop including artists, writers, academics and organizers alea adigweme, Gordon Hall, Jovonna Jones, Malcom Peacock, Ceci Moss, Kimi Hanauer, and Alice Yuan Zhang in the summer of 2020. Download a PDF of the deck.
A purple wall with a screen. In front of the wall and on the floor sits two concrete blocks pushed together to make a seat. On top of them is a pink square, pink cushion. On the wall, to the left of the screen, is a wall hanging that is orange, black, and red. The screen shows a foot with the edge of a yellow pant, pushing up against something.
practice abundance, redirect force
video
2021
practice abundance, redirect force
video
2021
a close up of the wall hangings. We see a fabric hanging off of the purple wall and a close up of a string of ‘E’’s in white warped text that sit over a block of black. The banner hangs loosely, not very constrained to the wall.
Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry
a temporary home installed at Southern Exposure as part of We Use Our Hands To Support
2021
Documentation by Minoosh Zomorodinia and Southern Exposure
A group of people sit on the floor in a gallery. Two readers face each other at the edges of the circle, each holding the speaker component of a megaphone and looking downward at a text. They read this text together. Others sitting around in the circle are holding yellow flyers with the text, so they can read and speak along.
how is speech a desire a hope a promise?
‍a collective reading performed in collaboration with Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
2021
‍View a video of the performance
Documentation by Minoosh Zomorodinia and Southern Exposure
three pencils in lavender, bright pink, and light pink sit together on top of a wooden / OSB board background. In white text, each pencil has a line together reads, “a series of daily attempts; a desire a hope a promise; some formation of an us.”
some formation of an us
‍pencils and words
2021
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