Ensemble 2
World social forums ... You Comin' ... The running dog
Breaking Borders Open?
2007-2020
Each drawing: 60"x40"
Tableau: 104"x180"x25"
IN FRONT of the drawings and canvas, steel flat bars link two posts: one on the left, part of “Olympia”, a work dealing with the social and architectural history of the Olympia Cotton Mill and Village built while in residency at 701 Contemporary Art Center (2009-10). The one on the right had been a marker for “Holy City”, part of “Places with a Past: New Site-Specific Art in Charleston” (1991). Holy City, an outdoor art installation, was the site of a ‘Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns‘ . It was violently attacked by a famous local painter who opposed “French-Owners-Of-A-Cafe-They-Have-Created Who-Call-Themselves-Artists” as much as the “New-York Originators-Of-Multi-Media- International-Art Installations”, curated by Spoleto Festival Places with a Past: New Site-Specific Art in Charleston. Gian Carlo Menotti, then Spoleto Artistic Director, called the whole thing “sophomoric!”…………………. Years passed …………..
It is only in 2018 that, as a ILI fellow year-II, I could feel so much home. Actually I deeply understood and appreciated how all these previous projects and participants had been essential to nourish me as an artist in the States. Yes at ILI. ILI? a home and a hub.
YOU COMIN’? The pictures are testimonies of 59 conversations initiated in NAIROBI. The original video work was made of very short dialogues between folks who never met before. They were invited to share their experience of the World Social Forum in Nairobi. The team would introduce them to each other, create those mini-encounters, and center the dialogue on two questions: Why are you here? What do you want to bring back from here?
La’Sheia had stated that she was determined to bring her son’s ashes to Africa. We shared her dream. And it came true with the support of an Alternate ROOTS artist/community partnership. Unexpectedly also we won an airline lottery!
The tapestry of videos produced by the Charleston Rhizome on the web is a performance, a patchwork of sounds and images, a world none of us had imagined. Its music is global: 120 variations on the English language. We were all thriving to create inclusive chains of exchange, exemplify diversity and alleviate fears. Such a celebration of accents was reliving our malaise from the perceptible worries of daily interactions. Listen to them at YouComin.org
These video conversations are not a documentary on the Nairobi World Social Forum. They are a visual/musical understanding of how actions and the arts can propel personal voices without the interference of a middle (wo)man, a mediator, an interviewer or a news(wo)man. “Despite our cameras and microphones, we were regarded more as technicians than journalists, since we did not lead the conversations after having explained the process.”
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE, isn’t it? it creates an openended process and the means to share power between artists and non-artists toward a dynamic situation. As an artwork an open-ended process is not a work-in-progress. It is an offering, with multiple possibilities. It should be considered a criteria of quality.
Yes, La’Sheia had stated that she was determined to bring her son’s ashes to Africa. We shared her dream. And the offering came true.
AND NOW: What do those conversations bring to us/you? Understanding? ideas? more hope? an alternative to standard academic or political discourse? dialogues to situate questions of national identity, religion, race? to possibly liberate the multiple cultures we just witnessed and policies we explore? And then?…
SAY THEIR NAMES!
Recording on analog Hi8 format allowed the creation of this unusual type of blurry stills, which were eventually transferred on canvas; a thirty five foot long canvas, which now belongs to the Avery Research Center for African American History & Culture Archives.
The Charleston Rhizome of Alternate ROOTS, an informal group of artists, educators and activists, went to the Nairobi World Social Forum (2007) following a participation in the South East Social Forum in Durham NC (2006). There, the group had experimented with this art tool designed to engage unknown audiences in a personal way. It then built up a film from multiple such encounters. We/I wish to stress how their randomness and impermanence are essential features of community building and of the Social Forum process. Viewing the rough edit of the film You comin’ was the real test. For the first time within the group, negative comments were part of the conversation. They were quickly understood as necessary, something we had earned. After much listening, a space for critical response had been created.
Charleston Rhizome team at the US Social Forum in Detroit (2010)
From the SouthEast Social Forum in Durham (2006)
Arianne made T-shirts for the US Social Forum in Atlanta (2007)
Rita Valenti (left on the picture); we had met her as part of Project South in Durham. At the USSF in Atlanta, she was leading a Health project. We partnered with her using our You Comin’ procedures to organize many recordings on subjects around health.
WE/I/YOU, all were/are on a journey. This concept of “journey” includes countless manifestations — trips from the origins of the discipline I/we were taught or we/I discovered; voyages among communities and arts practitioners whose cultures, principles or economics may be totally different from mine or yours; processes of learning how to confront resistance to justice, enabling me/us/you to transform emotional or systemic discriminatory situations; drives to understand the sharing of power; ways artists make the arts relevant to today’s world; all explorations via training, working sessions, learning exchanges, art events.
WE/I ALL, ARE ON A JOURNEY. I/we constantly pass borders, deconstruct the practice of inclusion and exclusion; respect, transgressing, decolonizing, declassifying,… This work is tentatively proposed as a Community Liaison for Social Change to affect the way “others” are treated; to further sustain the social forum movement for justice, setbacks included; to add/pave/energize collective memories as paths towards less racism or poverty, less borders or gun violence, more gender and human rights.
YOU COMIN’ exists thanks to the Charleston Rhizome Collective, Alternate ROOTS and Gaulart & Maliclet French Cafe. Arianne King Comer, Pam Gibbs, Amy Cook, Jean- Marie Mauclet, Omari Fox, La’Sheia Oubré, Corey Hucks, Gwylene Gallimard were part of the SESF (Durham); Jean Marie, Arianne, Pam, Amy, Rebekah Stone, La’Sheia, Gwylene, Latonnya Wallace were part of the WSF (Nairobi, Kenya); Gwylene, Arianne, Pam, Jean-Marie, La’Sheia, Latonnya, Omari were part of the USSF (Atlanta). Latonnya, Arianne, Jean-Marie, Omari, Jeremy(?), Caroline Degolian, James Harris, La’Sheia, Gwylene, Pam were part of the USSF2010 (Detroit). And thank you Josh Staples for working on the patchwork site. www.youcomin.org
Nairobian Emmie Erondanga invited us to Korogocho. This is there that we scattered La’Sheia’s son ashes.
Detail from one of the canvases of the Charleston/Atlanta/Alaska Challenge. The hole in the hand may be the eye in a healing mask, or a passageway between the human and the animal world, among many other interpretations – in a shamanic context.
Detail of a screw-pressed pile of papers accumulated to become American and used in a performance with Omari Fox at one of the ROOTS annual meetings.
Going back to the past:
THE RUNNING DOG / Le Chien Qui Court (1980-83)
A one-and-a-half sound piece in two acts with one intermission. The sound circles around the audience.
Part ONE:
Mes Chéris
Jean-Sebastian Bach Jean Sebastian Bach (encore)
La rue – the street Dogs
A voir la longueur du chemin
There is such a long way to go
There is no coming back – Sans pieds
Cet instant Couvre-feu à cinq heures
From here to the wall Nous traversons le champ
Down to particulars So, we go mushroom hunting
Reviens vite mon amour Come back soon my love
My darlings Ecoute – Listen
On recommence – Encore
I am out Chiens
Crois-tu qu’il attend toujours? Do you think he is still expecting you?
You will carry a banner
Within the next hour I will be in heaven And now. To live again? My legs hurt
Curfew at 5pm D’ici au mur
We cross the field Passons aux détails
We go mushroom hunting
Quand Pénélope eut, encore un jour… After Penelope, for yet another day…
Sir – Monsieur – Il y a un détail – There is a detail – Qui manque – Missing…
INTERMISSION —->>>>>>>
PART TWO:
Wolfram Von Eichenbach – Parzifal – Thilo Jörger
Si nous avons tant de tête La transparence… Sans bras, sans tête, sans jambes Ulysse – Pour en finir avec l’espoir
If we have so much brains As a mirror… Armless, headless, legless
Nothing will do … He contemplates hiring a maid…
It looks like at this point: December 16 1981 Etat de siège en Pologne – State of siege in Poland
Nous ne pouvions nous taire – We had to talk
Nous allons passer au générique et nous verrons bien…
– Me – – Johan Sebastian Bach – On recommence – The cripple – How about Baby Jesus? – Henry Matisse – Le passage d’un mur –
Ulysse & Pénélope – The boats – In any case, let’s present the cast and then we shall see – Him – – Johan Sebastian Bach – Encore – Danke viel mahls –
Convalescent – The androgyne and its double – – Le nu Rose –
A wall, ten feet high – Ulysses & Penelope – – Les petits bateaux – But, let’s not forget about Poland. Mais, n’oublions pas la Pologne.