OVERFLOW RADIO

PREMIERING FALL 2026


— an installation, performance, and action —


Emily Johnson / Catalyst's new project, Overflow Radio is a performance, skill-share, planting of 1000 trees, and radio transmission taking place over 24 non-consecutive hours within a massive quilt installation and across geographies and territories. 

Premieres at Northrop, University of Minnesota, October 9 - 12, 2026

Followed by A Gathering of Conversations, a symposium conjured as a needed guide on October 13th & 14th with thought partners Brenda Child, Carly Bad Heart Bull, Kate Beane, Maggie Thompson, Mona Smith, and Diane Wilson.

With a Constellation Gathering, Overflow Radio: Šakotayišol Nunuš Constellation, hosted by DiverseWorks in Houston from October 3–26, 2026

The Overflow is a name for what is possible - from a performance moment, a gathering, a relationship - it’s the otherwise actions we are called to take: actions that move into the world and support our better futures.

Gather with us for four six-hour performance cycles.

OVERFLOW RADIO

Overflow Radio emerges from Emily Johnson’s practice of creating large-scale social choreographies and features complex contributions from Indigenous writers and scholars, performers, local community organizers, lo-fi radio wave artists, food futurists, and land rematriative activists. We gather in-person and over the radio in ways that transcend colonial borders, languages and time; we practice shared commitment, gather what we need to know, and create our possible futures, together.

Overflow Radio is housed within 84 quilts that have been part of a decade-long community sewing project. Designed by textile artist Maggie Thompson, the quilts hold the collective volunteer effort of thousands, reflecting historic moments along with personal histories, migrations, and dreams. The quilts invite an articulation of the needs of the present. They are an archive, activated.

Across the duration of 24 non-consecutive hours we gather around radios,  listening to live broadcasts of stories and text from twelve First Nations and Indigenous writers speaking to us from their home territories. Performers Emily Johnson, Brandi Norton, and Michelle Boulé dance an otherwise score meant to shift our perception of time.Local community organizers offer four skill-shares centered on: MAKING, BODY, LAND, PROTECTION, in possible forms of self-defense, seed saving, nervous system regulation, power-tool use, and radio building. We will eat together, nourishing ourselves and community in partnership with leaders of local food justice efforts. Outside, over an extended time, we will plant and nurture 1000 trees, creating a constellatory support network and ongoing care resource.

MORE ABOUT 1000 TREES

Overflow Radio engages local partners and people to plant 1,000 trees and create a network of 1,000 tree care-ers in a large-scale community-care action. Mapping and living archive methods including zines, a living map, app, and social media, document each tree’s location, name, voice, growing/fruiting cycles, care needs, and teaches connection in relation to Indigenous lands, waters, place names. Recipes—co-created with Indigenous, Black, and POC farmers, beekeepers, and herbalists—will emerge seasonally, offering knowledge and sustenance rooted with seasonal cycles. Beyond the ecological impact, we build a growing and needed network of care.

MORE ABOUT THE CONSTELLATIONS

Simultaneous with the live performances of Overflow Radio and synchronized with our live radio broadcast, audiences and partners in further geographic regions are offered a toolkit to guide a constellation of listening gatherings at theaters, public spaces or private homes, supporting communities in co-creating Constellatory editions with local Indigenous artists, QTBIPOC and food justice organizations.

MORE ABOUT OVERFLOW RADIO RADIO ON THE AIRWAVES

In September 2026, we launch Overflow Radio Radio on the airwaves, a monthly 4-hour micro FM radio broadcast + digital stream that mirrors the essence of the live performance with the embodied themes: MAKING, BODY, LAND, PROTECTION.

Working with the natural power of radio waves and guided by Radio Waves Producer Stina Thomas Hamlin,  Overflow Radio Radio on the airwaves supports Indigenous artists, thinkers, and makers as we imagine and manifest how to live in and build our better futures. Overflow Radio Radio on the airwaves reminds us and our younger generations that radio is awesome and to lean into what we already know - the technologies, care systems, cycles, skills, speculative and physical practices we can teach one another. We listen. We build our collective power. We get to work in the overflow.

MORE ABOUT A GATHERING OF CONVERSATIONS

A Gathering of Conversations - a symposium conjured as a needed guide and envisioned to take place alongside the premiere of Overflow Radio, in MniSota Makoce, at Northrop, October 9-12, 2006.

A Gathering of Conversations convenes seven incredible, bad-ass Indigenous women in its development. We each, from our own areas of expertise and inquiry, pose the conversation we want to have right now, and with whom that conversation is with. Collectively we delve deeply into making, history in relation to place, relation with land, law, language, civil and sovereign rights. Brenda Child is an Ojibwe historian and author, Professor of American Studies and former chair of the Departments of American Studies and the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. Diane Wilson is a Dakota writer, educator, and bog steward who has published five books and served as the former director of Dream of Wild Health, a food sovereignty organization working with Indigenous youth. Kate Beane is Executive Director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, she is Flandreau Santee Dakota and Muskogee Creek and leads language revitalization and reclamation of place names in her home territory of MniSota Makoce. Carly Bad Heart Bull, who is Flandreau Santee Dakota and Muskogee Creek, is a lawyer and Executive Director of Native Ways Federation and board member of Native Americans in Philanthropy. Maggie Thompson is a Fond du Lac Ojibwe textile artist whose work focuses on heritage and identity while addressing cultural appropriation. Mona Smith is a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota storyteller, documentary producer, artist lead for Healing Place Collaborative, and creator of Bdote Memory Map. Emily Johnson belongs to the Yup'ik Nation, is a body based artist, land and water protector and organizer for justice, sovereignty and well-being.

A Gathering of Conversations will strengthen our collective understanding through in depth inquiries and time with one another, land, and water. Information on location and registration to come.

Credits

EMILY JOHNSON
Artistic Director

MICHELLE BOULÉ

EMILY JOHNSON

BRANDI NORTON Performers

DYLAN ROBINSON

CAMILLE GEORGESON-USHER

JOSEPH M. PIERCE

SONIA GUIÑANSACA

GWEN WESTERMAN

DIANE WILSON

EVE TUCK

HALA ALYAN

JOAN NAVIYUK KANE

PRINCESS DAAZHRAII JOHNSON

KAI RECOLLET

EMILY JOHNSON Writers and Story-Sharers

MAGGIE THOMPSON
Quilt Design

IV CASTELLANOS
Interkinnector & Production Manager

STINA THOMAS HAMLIN
Radio Waves Producer

SUN ROLLER Stage Manager

KORINA EMMERICH
Exhibitions Steward and Materials Caretaker

NISHINA SHAPWAYKEESIC-LOFT
Project Assistant

ANNE PESATA Executive Administrative Steward and Organizer

LEOMARY RODRIGUEZ Decolonization Rider Analyst and Strategist

CRAIG HENSALA
Producer

JANET STAPLETON Press Representative

WAVE FARM Audio Stream Partners

With local Community Organizations, Food Justice Partners, Tree Steward Network

SUPPORT

Overflow Radio is a National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Project commissioned by Roy and Edna Disney / CalArts Theater (REDCAT) and co-commissioned DiverseWorks, MASS MoCA and University of Minnesota Dance Program.

Overflow Radio is developed through creative residencies provided by MASS MoCA, Roy and Edna Disney / CalArts Theater, University of Minnesota’s Imagine Fund with support from the McKnight Foundation and Danspace Project with support from the New York State DanceForce, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts.

Overflow Radio is created with generous support from First Peoples Fund, Howard Gilman Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance and the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and The Mellon Foundation.

Header photo: Quilt Being Star, designed by Korina Emmerich; quilt design by Maggie Thompson; worn by Ty Fierce Matteba. Photo by Two Hawks Young.

Additional Photos by Emily Johnson, Erin Westover, Toby Tenenbaum, James Henry, and Douglas Mason.

 
Office, Minneapolis, MN, US612.597.7400emily@catalystdance.com

Emily Johnson / Catalyst is based on Mannahatta in Lenapehoking. We work to pay respect to Lenape homeland, people and ancestors past, present, and future by organizing with communities from the Lenape diaspora to build pathways for Lenapeyok return. We have been taught to name Lenape Nations and say cama’i to our relatives from Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, OK; Delaware Nation of Oklahoma in Anadarko, OK; Stockbridge-Munsee and Mohican Community in Wisconsin; Moravian Delaware of the Thames in Ontario, Canada; Munsee-Delaware Nation at Munceytown in Ontario, Canada; Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario, Canada. 

We strive to be in good relations with our kin—human and more than human—and in effort to support growing kinstillatory relations and sovereign, liberated futures we are anti-colonial and abolitionist in all capacities. We are committed to on-the-ground water and land protection, consistent decolonization work, and Land Back. 

Quyanaqvaa-lli elpeni to all Sovereign Nations, Indigenous and First Nations people who live in relation to and from Lenapehoking and upon whose lands we work and tour.

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