A newsletter from ya gurl, B |
|
|
[if you're on a mobile device, it's suggested you click "view entire message" at the bottom for optimal viewing] |
|
|
"I’m finalizing the color wash on the stage with the lighting technician when the performers arrive. A classically trained Spanish guitarist and members of a hip-hop-jazz-rock fusion band shake off the snow, give me warm hugs, and ask for the bathroom. These are the same artists I have painted pastel portraits of. My world of art-making is always considered from a bird’s eye view: I’m the producer, the audience member, and the artist. When I produced the monthly music series DIN AT THE DEN in Chicago, I used performance as a tool to amplify emerging voices, build community, and engage people to shift their own consciousness. This event was designed to bond typically segregated audiences and open their minds to new perspectives. After a year of internalizing devastation and enduring isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I see live experiences as an essential medium to bring catharsis and processing to the public sphere. What was once the purview of my visual artwork has now grown into my vision for contemporary theatre: to craft engaging moments and spaces where people are invited to alter their perceptions of themselves and their reality. My vision is to design and build emotionally intelligent, transformative, and genre-bending performances. Artists such as Es Devlin, Hannah Beachler, Lee Bontecou, and Kathleen Collins inspire me to do this work through the lenses of History, American Studies, Ancestral Knowledge, and Black Feminism. Since Covid-19 hit Chicago, life has slowed to a stillness that has forced me to face the flawed foundation of America's social contract, the tenuous connections the internet provides, and the unsustainability of our global economic structure. I see the world we live in as manifested by the imaginations of outdated economists, scientists, and politicians. Still, everyone has the power to imagine. While marching in BLM actions this summer, the words of Toni Cade Bambara resounded: “the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” Thus, my role in building a brighter future for all is to create live visual-theatre that educates and inspires self-reflection. I aspire towards an international career collaborating with high-impact visionaries in visual art installations, museum exhibitions, and live music performances. My artistic career has always sought a balance between the desire to heal people and the urge to deconstruct the flawed structures they live in. Contemporary theatre is a space where I can do both." |
|
|
Above is an excerpt of my statement for my application to The Guildhall School of Music and Drama for an MA in Collaborative Theatre Production & Design!!! |
|
|
Radical Imagination It has been the timbre of this newsletter since its inception and I'll say it again: we are going through a portal of what is normal and are never to return to the past. Instead we are moving into a different time, a different shaped reality. But what lies ahead? What are we looking at? Biiiissshhh, I don’t even know. And anyone who purports to know exactly what we’re moving towards makes my face go dead pan/vapid (see below). But among so much uncertainty, devastation, confusion and chaos, I have come to be sure about one thing: we must must must have radical imaginations. |
|
|
Experiment in Body Paint and Digitally Painted Back Drop |
|
|
“Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.” - Angela Davis I feel a deep responsibility to radically imagine something other than what we are currently experiencing. I’m listening to the voices of adrienne maree brown, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Audre Lorde to remind me that imagination is a necessity, not an indulgence. So here are some ~grand but maybe not so unrealistic~ imaginings I weave into my work, and in sharing them I hope you picture what you want to see in our shared future as well. - We sense real humility and collaboration in our leaders.
- We pay more personal attention and tend to our hyper-local community, our physical neighbors, and our family more than celebrities and far-flung leaders.
- We respect and build multiculturalism: we take a look at the companies we work for, the school our children attend, and/or the community we value most, and ask, "How does this celebrate diversity in ideas and values?"
- We question Capitalism as the water we swim in
- Reparations for Slavery in the U.S.
- We acknowledge where the nature of biological sex ends and the nurture of gender begins. Everyone is able to freely express themselves in their bodies without shame, judgement or confinement of gender expectations
- Everyone feels incentivized and has full access to vote in every federal and local election - and this is the least of everyone's civic engagement.
- The U.S. health care payment infrastructure is transformed to universal healthcare.
- The Electoral College becomes obsolete.
- Funds for community resources, the public arts, and public education are plentiful, while funds for ineffective police departments are reduced across the country; Defund the Police.
- We all more openly unpack whiteness as a core and central issue to the current precarious state of the US.
- Restorative justice replaces the mass incarceration system.
- More people practice radical imagination; we are closer to these large transformations actual happening than ever before. Because honestly, it all comes down to people's belief and will. We made this all up, we can make it up anew.
- I hope to continue to become more literate, understanding and practicing on all these fronts.
|
|
|
Restructuring For the month of January, I consulted with Haymarket Books to help them determine the feasibility of pivoting their annual conference into an outdoor, Covid-safe event this summer. It came with many challenges, but I enjoyed the applied practice of imagining what can be reconstructed to fit the new future. I look forward to sharing more about my work with them soon, but until then - look at their dang authors! |
|
|
Experiment in Body Paint and Painted Back Drop |
|
|
What do you think? We're all experiencing this ongoing transformation of our relationships (to others and to our self), our ideas of American democracy, and maybe even our beliefs on what is most important in life. There’s perpetual loss, grief, new depths of loneliness, and isolation. There's conversations on abolition, the failures of capitalism, white supremacy and transphobia. But we're not all experiencing this moment the same. People are either in these conversations, witnessing these conversations, or having entirely different conversations all together! Everyone is coming from different angles and life experiences. My hope is that people practice in their personal life - in the tiniest places and in the smallest ways - the larger changes they want to see in the world. We have to treat each other and ourselves - now, in this moment - the way that we want to treat each other in that imagined future. When I write this newsletters, I am still often torn on whom I’m addressing. Am I talking to the people who swim in the same water as me, or people who I have to bridge my language to their frameworks? I think both are important. I know I’m addressing vastly different world views. But a lot of my hope for the future depends on everyone’s ability to have difficult, vulnerable, honest dialogues. Being divided and conflict-driven is not my aim. I ask that after you read this email, please consider filling out this anonymous questionnaire I’d love to hear your thoughts and reflections. Yes, you. |
|
|
NOICE THINGS! Architect Buckminster Fuller and poet June Jordan collaborated in trying to redesign Harlem in 1965 Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham discuss with Dr. Eve Ewing "the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today" Jazmine Sullivan has created a seamless, honest-as-heyl new album "Heaux Tales" and her vocal prowess is so untouchable! She shines live! AAAAAH THIS GRAPHIC SHOWING JEFF BEZOS's wealth actually stunned me physiologically. In contrast, I’m grounded by Ellevest’s mission to make sure more womxn talk about money Ok I'm sneaking in something not nice, but fricking raw. Propublica compiled the footage from the cellphones of people at the storming of Capital Hill. The raw footage is chilling. And the more videos I watched, the more struck I was by the variety of motivations and profiles.
|
|
|
In the words MLK, I wish everyone “food and material necessities for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and human dignity for their spirits." |
|
|
|
|
