Emily Johnson / Catalyst’s new multifaceted project, Overflow Radio, is a performance, skill-share, tree-planting initiative and radio transmission taking place over 24 nonconsecutive hours within a massive quilt installation and across geographies and territories. Overflow Radio will premiere at Northrop, University of Minnesota, Oct. 9–12, running from noon to 6 p.m. each day. Pick Your Price tickets start at $16.
Overflow Radio, the performance is housed within a quilt installation that has been part of a decade-long community sewing project. Designed by Minneapolis textile artist Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe), the quilts feature handwritten messages and visions from hundreds of community co-creators.
Over 24 nonconsecutive hours, shared across four unique six-hour performance cycles, audiences and performers will gather around radios, listening to live broadcasts of stories and text from 12 First Nations and Indigenous writers speaking from their home territories. Performers Emily Johnson, Brandi Norton and Michelle Boulé will dance a score meant to shift the perception of time.
Community organizers including Tamara Aupaumut, Chino and Michelle Boulé will offer four skill-shares centered on making, body, land and protection. Each performance cycle also includes a food-share developed in partnership with Gatherings Cafe.
Contributing writers and story-sharers include:
- Dylan Robinson
- Camille Georgeson-Usher
- Joseph M. Pierce
- Sonia Guiñansaca
- Gwen Westerman (Poet Laureate of Minnesota)
- Diane Wilson
- Eve Tuck
- Hala Alyan
- Joan Naviyuk Kane
- Princess Daazhraii Johnson
- Kai Recollet
- Emily Johnson
Extending the Overflow Radio transmission into the future, the project also engages local partners to plant 1,000 trees in Mni Sota Makoce (Minnesota) and create a network of 1,000 tree caregivers in a large-scale community-care action. Mapping and archiving methods will document each tree’s location, species and fruiting cycles, teaching and inviting people to forage responsibly.
Overflow Radio emerges from Emily Johnson’s practice of creating large-scale social choreographies and features contributions from Indigenous writers and scholars, performers, local community organizers, lo-fi radio wave artists, food futurists, and land repatriation activists. It provides a space to gather in person and over the radio in ways that transcend colonial borders, languages and time—a place to practice shared commitment, gather information and create actions that move into the world and support better futures, together.
On Oct. 13–14, Emily Johnson / Catalyst, together with thought partners Brenda Child, Carly Bad Heart Bull, Kate Beane, Maggie Thompson, Mona Smith and Diane Wilson, will convene “A Gathering of Conversations,” a two-day symposium held at Owámnniyomni Okhódayapi—a Dakota-led land restoration, education, healing and connection site and organization—Wakan Tipi (Carver’s Cave), and at a bog northeast of the city. The symposium will bring together artists, scholars, organizers and community members.
Tickets & Details
Northrop Presents
Emily Johnson / Catalyst: Overflow Radio
Friday, Oct. 9–Monday, Oct. 12
Noon to 6 p.m. each day
Onstage Seating, Pick Your Price
Each performance cycle is six hours. Each cycle is unique.
2026-27 Northrop Season
Carlson Family Stage
Tickets to Emily Johnson / Catalyst: Overflow Radio are available now.
Order online, in person at the Northrop Box Office or by phone at 612-624-2345, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
