Black Women as/and the Living Archive
Washington Project for the Arts | May 2 - June 13, 2020
"Black Women as/and the Living Archive," was a multi-part project organized with Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) aimed at initiating a conversation about the modes in which Black women encode, preserve, and share memory through community. Central to Makonnen's inquiry was Children of NAN: Mothership, a recent work by artist Alisha Wormsley that functions as a metaphor for the survival and power of Black women in a dystopic future.
Over the course of six weeks, Makonnen brought together Wormsley and many of the cast and collaborators of Children of NAN: Mothership for a screening, a reading, two performances, and a discussion. The participants included artists Li Harris, Autumn Knight, and Jasmine Hearn. Additionally, Ola Ronke, creator of The Free Black Women's Library, contributed an annotated bibliography of five books, inspired by Wormsley's work.
Black Women as/and the Living Archive programs were organized around four themes: Space, Moving Image, Memory; Collective Memory; Pleasure Memory; and Mama Memory [& Care]. The afterlife of the project exists as a publication (linked here) that will serve as a repository for the conversations and intimate interactions between participants and the audience.
"Time is not linear, it stacks. Where we are right now...this isn't a fold, it's a glitch."
- Children of NAN: Mothership
PROGRAMS
A Double Feature Screening of Films by Alisha Wormsley and Lisa E. Harris // May 2nd 2020
WPA screened the following two works: Children of NAN: Mothership by Alisha Wormsley and Cry of the Third Eye: The Last Resort by Lisa E. Harris. Children of NAN: Mothership functions as a metaphor for the survival and power of Black women in a dystopic future.
Cry of the Third Eye: The Last Resort is the third and final act of Cry of the Third Eye, a three-act performed opera by artist Lisa E. Harris, who plays the role of NAN’s sister in Wormsley’s work. This final act by Harris considers gentrification, intergenerational legacy, loss, and the space of dreams. The completion of this meditational trilogy which spans a decade in the Historic Third Ward District of Houston, archives aspects of the artist's inner and outer environments as they change over time. Harris–the writer, director, composer, and performer–musically narrates and orchestrates the semi-silent film in this special, live presentation.
COLLECTIVE MEMORY: A reading by Ola Ronke creator of The Free Black Women's Library and a newly commissioned performance by Autumn Knight
Zoom performance by artist Autumn Knight called The Length. Knight describes the performance as "A moment to activate personal archives and consider their relationship to public record. An archive belonging to a demographic in a particular time and space, and recorded by the length of our histories and imaginations. A Black person will speak into a screen, and the return signal is potentially a void, a ship, a loudspeaker, dancing shoes, survival."
Ola Ronke, creator of The Free Black Women's Library, reading from award winning author N.K. Jemisin's short story "Cloud Dragon Skies" from the collection How Long Til Black Future Month. An excerpt from Jemison's story: "Long ago, our ancestors looked at the sky and saw gods. Their ancestors saw only stars. In the end, only the earth knew the truth." Ola selected this story in response to Alisha Wormsley's film Children of NAN: Mothership and how both the book and film celebrate the ancestral and futuristic nature of Black womanhood and Black creativity. Link to Vimeo here.
Pleasure Memory: Sound, Choreography, and Performance by Jasmine Hearn
In this virtual offering, Jasmine Hearn presents a performance that evokes pleasure memory specific to Black women and non-gender conforming folx through grief and joy. Through movement, sound, and storytelling they/she question/s how can she offer space and time so her body can fly. They recall previously made solo projects "if god left the lights on could we walk alone at night" from 2012 and "mama am I clean yet" from 2014. Folded into one, Hearn references both choreographic pieces using original text and song, storytelling, and improvisational dance. Hearn plays the role of TIME in Alisha B. Wormsley’s film Children of NAN: Mothership.
In the final event for Black Women as/and the Living Archive, I led an informal conversation amongst all participating artists in the project including Alisha B. Wormsley, Lisa E. Harris, Autumn Knight, Jasmine Hearn, Ola Ronke, and special guests Ingrid LaFleur and Jamila Raegen. They discussed motherhood, archiving, memory, and Afrofuturism.
Watch the recording from this event here: