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Let Freedom Wring

on Oct 20, 2017 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Wring: the act of squeezing or twisting something; the art of wrestling, and reckoning, and teasing something out.   What is freedom? An illusion? A glass of water? A table of spilled milk? A statue in the middle of a river and a passport, a birth certificate, the ability to walk outside a home – or have a home at all – without the fear of being discriminated against, oppressed, or shot? Or is it speaking truth on the steps of a national memorial, the “Birthplace of American Government,” in front of a statue of a country’s praised reverend of alleged freedom, under a ceiling of tattered American flags, aside the steps of a building that lives sandwiched between the New York Stock Exchange and The Trump Building on Wall Street, the birth of classism for all?   I don’t know what freedom is. I know I am an American citizen, fifth-generation, fourth-generation-born. I know my...

Kara Walker’s ‘a Subtlety’… a Pop Up Poets’ experience

on Jul 8, 2014 in This is PUP! | 0 comments

Yesterday, I was honored to finally participate in a Pop Up Poets event at the Kara Walker installation at the old Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg. Little known fact about me? I really don’t enjoy performance as much as I should. I’m good at it but usually terrified the entire time. So I’ve avoided taking part in these phenomenal live performance installations that the Pop Up team curates but I couldn’t avoid this opportunity when Syreeta McFadden asked a couple of weeks ago. I was already hyper aware of the work. Walker’s daring in constructing this mammoth piece and the trauma many felt at the dismaying behavior of many of the visitors to the site were compelling to me. It was undeniable too, the idea that this art, an articulate invoking of the ancestors, an interrogation of our relationship between the black body and cash crops integral to the...