Slow Social Club X Exquisite Pressure w./ Alyssa Amarshi & Sarah Nash Wong

Learn from rock and lichen companions with collaborators and comrades Alyssa Amarshi & Sarah Nash Wong.

The Only Animal is hosting an 'eco' edition of What Lab's Exquisite Pressure Residency. We asked 3 artist groups to:

• explore a novel creation process reflecting ‘eco-centric’ values or concepts
• initiate a process or relationship that could have a life beyond the show

This March, join us for a series of relaxed 'Slow Social Club' meet-ups to share research, experiments, and methods inspired by the artists' residencies, leading to a showing of the new works March 27-28, 2026 at What Lab.

Looking to Rock and Lichen with Alyssa Amarshi and Sarah Nash Wong

During their residency, Alyssa Amarshi and Sarah Nash Wong have been developing Future Soil, an anti-performance and collective meditation inspired by the ritual of tarot reading and the collaborative relationship between rock and lichen, who came together through slow processes of weathering to create the first soils that were the basis for all life on land. As we live through times of global socio-political collapse, we look to rock and lichen as elders, survivors, and oracles, whose collaboration models the kind of solidarity we must embody to birth new worlds from the cracks of empire.

Alyssa Amarshi and Sarah Nash Wong write:

"Our Slow Social will invite folks into our process of learning from our rock and lichen companions, first through guided meditation scores that invite our bodies into gentle movement and reflection through the acts of slowing down, listening, and zooming in. We will spend the second half of the workshop translating the wisdom we receive from the rock and lichen meditations into writing, creating collaged poems that will form a card deck, which we will incorporate in our performance. Conversations around solidarity, collective liberation, animacy, grief, and kinship will guide the session."

Cardstock, printed excerpts of text, paper, pens, scissors, glue will be provided

Accessibility and Safety

This event is masks required to protect immunocompromised artists and community members. Masks will be available on site if you do not have your own. We understand some folks may not be able to mask for medical reasons—please be in touch with us if so and we will make sure you are able to access the performance. If you are feeling unwell or have had a recent COVID exposure, please stay home!

Please see What Lab: Visual Story Guide for detailed info about parking, washrooms, wheelchair access to the space, and more.

We welcome your questions and access requests. Please email us at info@theonlyanimal.com.

Reading/Listening List

We invite you to explore these materials before or after our event:

• Lichen: The Story of a Soil-Maker, Eliza Laubach
• We Must Risk New Shapes, Sophie Strand
• The Lineages of Change tarot, adrienne maree brown, Alta Starr, chelsea cleveland, Lottie V. Spady

About Slow Social Club

Regular meet-ups to share methods for slow, process-led artmaking. Each edition responds to local themes, materials and collaborators and becomes a co-creation with our communities. We offer soft tactics to remember and repair our relationships to place. See past editions here.

About The Only Animal

Your companion through the climate crisis. Slow art & community on unceded Coast Salish lands.

The Only Animal (TOA) brings art and artists to the heart of the climate crisis. We foreground social connection and slow creation to offer a form of environmental activism that takes place in the folds of our everyday lives.

Our 'slow social' events reflect our understanding that transformation is an ongoing process, not a single experience, product, or show.

Our current projects explore how place-based creativity can set the stage for climate care and sensitize relationships between people and place. We prioritize long-term and porous relationships with the public and our artist collaborators, shifting what we do in response to local curiosities and needs.