With a 21-day programming, Per°Form Open Academy of Arts and Activations 2025 expands its range beyond previous iterations with The Mentor Series, Workshop, Opening Studio, and Closing Studio.

POA Opening Studio: Contemporary Indigeneity (Sheelasha Rajbhandari)
As part of “Untamable Dankini”, an interactive/sharing session crafted by Per°Form Fellow Sheelasha Rajbhandari, participants are invited to rest, play, and reconnect through sensory experiences. This gathering encourages an intentional slowing down, engaging with colours, textures, and grounding rituals as acts of resistance.

POA Opening Studio: Contemporary Indigeneity (Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu, and Priyankar Bahadur Chand)
In Nepal, a collective amnesia seems to have obscured the trauma of the conflict years, with reflections on reconciliation often reduced to hollow rhetoric. Drawing on the legacy of “Mutik Dagar”, Per°Form Fellows Lavkant Chaudhary, Indu Tharu and Priyankar Bahadur Chand present recent collective efforts of resisting and remembering as active sites of cultural production.

POA Opening Studio: Contemporary Indigeneity (Subas Tamang and Mekh Limbu)
Per°Form Fellows, Subas Tamang and Mekh Limbu, reclaim histories obscured by colonisation, displacement and forced labor, tracing the fractures left by the erosion of cultural ties. Grounded in ancestral knowledge, they engage intergenerational memory and spiritual practices, creating spaces where healing and resistance converge.

POA 2025 Opening: Mapping Faded Dreams — Keynote by Hit Man Gurung
Drawing on Per°Form Fellow Hit Man Gurung’s longitudinal cartographic inquiry into migrant aspirations and disillusionment, this session maps the deeply personal repercussions of extractive political and social systems. The keynote ends on migratory patterns of both human and non-human, based on his recent continuing research on birds.