2021-2022 BLACK SPATIAL RELICS: NEW PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
The 2021-2022 Black Spatial Relics (BSR) New Performance Residency supports the development of eight new performance works that address and incorporate the public history of slavery and contemporary issues of justice. We are proud to announce that we have opened our program to artists in the Caribbean! 2021-2022 Black Spatial Relics artists in residence include Alexandra Espinoza (Philadelphia, PA), Arielle M John (Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago), LaRissa Rogers (Charlottesville, VA / Los Angeles, CA),Sonja Dumas (Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago), Candice D’Meza (Houston, TX), Awilda Sterling (San Juan, PR), nikolai mckenzie ben rema (Bronx, NY), and Monèt Marshall (Durham, NC). Diane Exavier and Carlos Sirah will be joining us as our 2021-2022 Dramaturgs in Residence.
2021-2022 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
Alexandra Espinoza (Philadelphia, PA)is the creator of “All My Mothers Dream in Spanish”. This play is a blending of Alexandra’s Afro-Venezuelan family history with the public history of El Negro Miguel el Rey, who reigned as the king of a sovereign nation established in the Venezuelan rainforest where Black and Indigenous maroons sought liberation during the1550s. Alexandra will be joined in this work with Movimiento AfroLatino de Seattle (MAS), whose mission is to uplift the "orgullo de negritud" that is at the heart of the Afro-Latinx experience. Their hope is to continue to build moments of collective celebration and healing into the play, and into MAS's public convenings for Black Latinx folx in order to recreate spiritual connections and practices that are our rightful tools for liberation.
Arielle M John (Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) is the creator of “Eco_Logic”. “Eco_Logic” is a one-woman, spoken word theatre piece, where one can map the way together and dance backwards to move forward. The working title ‘Eco_Logic’ (a finessing of ‘ecological') gazes deeply into the binaries of the feminine as illogical, irrational and not operating based on sound reason. All of which the main character (Mother Earth) has stood as a symbol for in the eyes of Trinbagonian society. She is partnering with The Sacred Spirit Sisterhood in Trinidad & Tobago who ushers in the cultivation of self-healing and transformation for women as well as the wider collective.
LaRissa Rogers (Charlottesville, VA / Los Angeles, CA) is the creator of “A Poetic of Living”. “A Poetic of Living” is a project that uses soil to articulate Black aliveness and resilience given how closely Black people are indexed to death. By posing alternative modes of temporality and existence, amnesia is explored through the ways it is built into our quotidian spaces and influences our concept of history, stories remembered, things preserved, maintained, unaltered, or allowed to remain still. Using a gesture of what it means to memorialize that is not linked to a Eurocentric framework of what it means to remain, such as a monument, a performance where Black folks’ bodies from the Charlottesville community will be cast out of Virginia soil. Celosia will then be grown on the soil bodies and the bodies buried back into the earth as ephemeral monuments, excavating the hidden histories that are whitewashed from the city's landscape. Larissa is partnering with the Arts Center in Orange, Virginia.
Sonja Dumas(Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) is the creator of “Bodies of Memory (Rumination 1”). This work considers the immersive and liminal influences of the Atlantic Ocean and how these intersect with the interiority of physical, neurobiological and psychological terror that African bodies would have faced in the Middle Passage moment. The aim is to interrogate how the Middle Passage might have informed contemporary movement habits of people of Trinidad and Tobago. Sonja is partnering with Medulla Art Gallery in the Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
Candice D’Meza (Houston, TX) is the creator of “WAIL”. “WAIL” is a digital film + ritual theater performance, conceived by Candice D’Meza that engages the broader Houston community in the co-creation of a grief ritual to honor the 95 Black persons who died at a Sugar Land, Texas convict leasing camp between 1877-1912 (known as the ‘Sugarland 95’). The performance itself is informed by the funerary traditions of Blacks in the Antebellum South, the Dagara of Burkina Faso, the Yoruba of Nigeria, thev Bakongo and Haitian Vodou. Candice is partnering with DiverseWorks in Houston, Texas.
Awilda Sterling(San Juan, PR) is the creator of “Soy la re-encarnación de un alma esclavizada/I am the Reincarnation of an Enslaved Soul”. This work is a fictionalized, mixed-media performance based on the history of the founding of the sector where Awilda lives and will perform. San Mateo de Cangrejos, as it is historically known, was the first dwelling of freed enslaved peoples in the 16th Century, The sector is currently under intense threat of gentrification. Awilda is partnering with Taller Comunidad la Goyco in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
nikolai mckenzie ben rema (Bronx, NY) is the creator of “saltire”. “saltire” is a storied retelling of ancestral stories through a queer Caribbean lens and re imagined from found documents, incorporating nikolai’s present day realities and hopes for the future. Saltire is a conjuring of spirits convening to support nikolai’s queer ass lived experience this lifetime in the shadow of an empire that left homophobia in its residue. nikolai is partnering with BAAD- Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Home of Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre & The Bronx Dance Coalition.
Monèt Marshall (Durham, NC) is working with Historic Stagville on a project that aims to transform Stagville from a site of history to a site of healing. The guiding question is, “What if the Black body, in both the individual and collective sense, is the most important site chronicling the history and legacy of slavery? How would we resource, support and protect Black play, Black joy, Black grief and Black rest?” Monèt , along with descendants of Stagville’s enslaved community, local artists and community members are designing programs that create space for healing on and with the land that harmed us. They are contracted to create a permanent reflection space at Horton Grove, a section of Stagville that houses original slave cabins. They will also create a temporary art installation to accompany it. They are working to create a sound portal/audio experience that can be used as a self-directed walking tour or listened to independently.
2021-2022 DRAMATURGS IN RESIDENCE
Diane Exavier is a writer, theatermaker, and educator whose work resides at the intersection of performance and poetry. A 2021 Jerome Foundation Finalist, Diane’s book-length lyric The Math of Saint Felix was recently published by The 3rd Thing. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Carlos Sirah grew up in the Mississippi Delta. Sirah is a writer, performer, and culture worker. Sirah creates formal structures rooted in Black expressions of possibility that take the shape of concert, lyric prose, procession, and theatre. Sirah's debut hybrid book, The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych, was published by The 3rd Thing in 2020.
This cohort of remarkable artists was selected by a panel of Black arts makers and leaders including Wit Lopéz (Philadelphia, PA), Brandon Sheats (Atlanta, GA) and Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow (New York, NY). Artists-in-Residence receive 2,500.00 in project support, dramaturgical support and presenting opportunities at the 2022 Black Spatial Relics Convening.2020 Black Spatial Relics: New Performance Residency Artists-in-Residence
The 2020 Black Spatial Relics (BSR) New Performance Residency supported the development of four new performance works that address and incorporate the public history of slavery and contemporary issues of justice. The 2020 Black Spatial Relics artists-in-residence are Ada Pinkston, Crystal Z. Campbell, Danielle Deadwyler and Misty Sol. This year we are welcoming our inaugural Dramaturg-In-Residence, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, who will support all of the artists-in-residence in their project development over the course of the residency. 2019 BLACK SPATIAL RELICS: NEW PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
2020 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
ADA PINKSTON (Baltimore, MD) is the creator of No Named Tongues. No Named Tongues is a mixed-media performance artwork that is the next iteration of LandMarked, a multiplatform art project that is about exploring the architectural objects that we call monuments. Pinkston will produce a new body of work that examines the ways that language and culture have shape-shifted into multiple forms in the Americas as a result of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. This performance and video work will consider what it means to create a hybrid dialect in the context of survival. She will use the Hampton National Historic site as a point of departure for this performance. Hand-painted textile, collaboratively produced with students from Baltimore County Public Schools will be an integral part of the site-specific set/installation design.
CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL (Tulsa, OK) is the creator of “SLICK”. “SLICK” is a series of live performances, workshops, and a publication with fictionalized and historical narratives around Tulsa’s former Black Wall Street Community (Greenwood), the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and the story of oil. Performance sites and gestures will be directly related to Tulsa’s history of continual displacement and land grabs, extraction, environmental racism, and food deserts. Three performances and workshops will consider sound, gesture, site, and collective memory, to shift our relationship to the way we see our city as well as how we can change our perceptions of history. In workshops and rehearsal, she will expand on suggestions made by Augusto Boal in Theater of the Oppressed, to further develop these performances which will engage the Black community and questions of social justice.
DANIELLE DEADWYLER (Atlanta, GA) is the creator of “Untitled”, or ”Rules for (Un)Sticking (False) Futures”. Deadwyler’s work will be a performance of movement, film, and sound. A hyper-space of reclamation, this work aligns Black past, present, and future, with its chosen mediums acting as the temporal characters to charge a wild, refined happening. This work explores race and gender, fusing imagery of practices of Black women’s labor (domestic, sexual, emotional) with archived imagery, from Civil War Era United States to contemporary womanhood and futures. Deadwyler will also reflect on her history and that of Atlanta, alongside contemporary concerns and activism happening there. The artist hopes to partner with her alma mater Spelman College to develop the work with its performance/theatre department.
MISTY SOL (Philadelphia, PA) is the creator of “Other Ways of Knowing…”. “Other Ways of Knowing” is an ancestral exploration through ritual, performance, and sensory history. Using a quote from Toni Morrison’s essay, ‘Rootedness: The Ancestors as Foundation”, Misty Sol will work with one hundred storytellers to tell five-minute stories and create a digital altar space as a response to it. In documenting this ancestral knowledge through care and conversation, this collection will identify, contextualize, and validate Black people’s world views as they occur in the past, present, and as empowerment and magic for the future. This will culminate in a meditative multisensory and multimedia digital performance.
2020 DRAMATURG-IN-RESIDENCE
OMI OSUN JONI L. JONES is an artist/scholar/facilitator who employs Black Feminist aesthetics in her performance work, her pedagogy, and her consulting. Her work is committed to exploring strategies for promoting healthy communities through personal Joy. She has performed at The New Black Fest (NYC), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and Links Hall (Chicago), and has served as a workplace facilitator with Thousand Currents (Oakland) and NoVo Foundation (NYC). Her dramaturgical work includes August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean and Shay Youngblood’s Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery—both under the direction of Daniel Alexander Jones, as well as Sharon Bridgforth’s con flama under the direction of Laurie Carlos. Her scholarship has appeared in The Drama Review, Obsidian, and Theatre Journal as well as solo/black/woman and Blacktino Queer Performance. Her most recent book is Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power for the Present Moment (Ohio State University Press). She is Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Dramaturg-In-Residence will support all of the 2020 Artists-In-Residence as they develop their work.
The artists-in-residence pay particular attention to land-based histories of both the slave trade and its legacies on the Eastern seaboard of the United States as well as histories of chattel slavery, fugitivity, and liberation. Black Spatial Relics artists lead performance projects that may traverse or engage dance, theatre, performance installation and/or ritual, spoken word, music/sound, visual arts and or any multidisciplinary constellation of the aforementioned.
The 2020 Black Spatial Relics artists in residence selection panel included Addae Afura Moon (Atlanta, Ga), jumatatu m. poe (Philadelphia, PA), muthi reed (Philadelphia, PA/New Orleans, LA) and JD Stokely (Providence, RI). Artists-in-Residence receive 2,500.00 in project support, dramaturgical support, a stipend to collaborate with a political praxis co-mentor of their choosing, and presenting opportunities at the Black Spatial Relics Convening. Please see our full press release here.
The 2019 Black Spatial Relics (BSR) New Performance Residency supported the development of two new performance works that address and incorporate the public history of slavery and contemporary issues of justice. The 2019 Black Spatial Relics artists-in-residence are Julie B. Johnson and muthi reed.
Julie B Johnson will use her award to support her project “Idle Crimes and Heavy Work.” “Idle Crimes and Heavy Work” is developed in conjunction with her participation as a co- director of The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project — a devised archives-to- performance collaboration exploring the history of incarceration and convict labor in Georgia. “Idle Crimes and Heavy Work,” is a choreographic exploration of the often overlooked experiences of black women within this history, embodying narratives of gendered and racial violence, and amplifying modes of resistance and restoration.
muthi reed will use their award to support their work HOUSE OF BLACK INFINITY // WILDIN. Working between Philadelphia and York, Alabama, muthi’s work is in partnership with Coleman Center for the Arts. HOUSE OF BLACK INFINITY // WILDIN is a community vision for intercultural trans regional society, gathering and contemplating topographic visions for twenty first century living. Organizing the Council, muthi will conduct archival research about local Black and Native life. From research, they are making work to share in community— part holler, porch sit, walk, ritual, libations, roll call, story performance, sing, prayer, drill. WILDIN is a conceptual audio and video performance work.
cargocollective.com/krewecoumbite
Download the full Press Release PDF.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Crystal Z. Campbell | crystalzcampbell.com
SLICK: A Person Who Advises or Shows the Way to Others is a feature-length experimental documentary video, series of live performances, and a publication centering Oklahoma and its history of black townships, oil, and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.offering players the opportunity to compete against the clock to solve puzzles using clues, hints, and strategy.
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow | https://secure.squarespace.com/checkout/donate
“Junkanooaacome” is a site-specific,interdisciplinary, and interactive project consisting of workshops, performances, and other media intended to decolonize and raise awareness of NYC’s historic spaces and monuments still bearing names of slave masters. Lyn-Kee-Chow aims to celebrate decolonization by making this Jamaican Junkanoo (a practice intended to confront slave-masters) relevant during other times of the year and not only during Christmas time as it’s traditionally practiced.
Viktor L Ewing-Givens | southernandroid.com
Mo’lasses This touring project iterates as visual exhibitions, lectures, public performance rituals, sound compositions, video installations and creativenon-fiction publications.
Monèt Noelle Marshall | monetnoellemarshall.com
Bring Me My Purse Did you know that the average net worth of a Black woman in America is $0 if she is college educated; $1100 if she is not. How did we get here? How did enslaved Black women create wealth through their physical and reproductive labor to now passing debt down through generations? How do Black women continue to be the societal “breadlosers” while feeding everyone else? How much do we owe Black women? When will we pay up?
This project will feature interviews, photography, and videography that will culminate in an installation that will house visual art, audio, performances, workshops and digital interventions.
Marisa Williamson | Rooms | marisawilliamson.com
Rooms is an interactive multimedia installation, performance, and speculative retelling of historical narratives inspired by the lives of three women, enslaved in colonial America. The project, developed by Marisa Williamson during her residency at SPACES in Cleveland, OH, is a variation on the pop culture “escape room” phenomenon offering players the opportunity to compete against the clock to solve puzzles using clues, hints, and strategy.
The artists-in-residence pay particular attention to land-based histories of both the slave trade and its legacies on the Eastern seaboard of the United States as well as histories of chattel slavery, fugitivity, and liberation. Black Spatial Relics artists lead performance projects that may traverse or engage dance, theatre, performance installation and/or ritual, spoken word, music/sound, visual arts and or any multidisciplinary constellation of the aforementioned.
In addition to development of their performance works between June 2019-November 2019, artists in residence convene in Philadelphia in mid-November 2019 for three days of workshops, convenings and artist talks. Artists are not expected to complete their performance works in this time frame, but some (however experimental) iteration of the performance work will be publicly shared between May – November 2019.
Black Spatial Relics was juried by a national panel of artists, activists and scholars including, Nicosia Shakes, Angela Davis Johnson, Carlos Sirah and Lela Aisha Jones. Black Spatial Relics is an independent project developed at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. BSR was founded is directed by Arielle Julia Brown. BSR is currently supported by individual donors and the 2019 Monument Lab Fellowship.
2016-2017 Black Spatial Relics: New Performance Residency Artists-in-Residence
The 2016-2017 Black Spatial Relics (BSR) New Performance Residency supported the development of two new performance works that address and incorporate the public history of slavery and contemporary issues of justice. The 2016-2017 Black Spatial Relics artists-in-residence are ChE Ware and Jaymes Jorsling.
ChE and Jaymes Jorsling convened at The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island October 18-20th 2016 for three days of workshops, meetings, and studio development. During the Brown University Commencement Week (May 21-27, 2017), these artists presented their respective works.
ChE will presented workshops and performances within their work in Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Practice through their project #DignityinProcess. Jaymes Jorsling worked with Rites and Reason Theatre to develop and present his play Trippin Over Roots.
ChE (pronoun- they) is a Queer Afro-Indigenous artivist working at the intersections of youth leadership development, cultural equity consulting, and socially engaged artmaking. ChE uses the power of embodied storytelling and multi-generational ancestral healing to build sustainable models of leadership. In 2010 ChE was the recipient of the University of California Irwin Award for artistic excellence, graduating with honors from UC Santa Cruz with a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Art. In 2014, ChE partnered with Destiny Arts Center and founded the Art Liberation Troupe, a Queer & Trans* youth-of-color performance group utilizing dance, street theatre, and political education trainings as tools for social change. Applying an arts-centered, culturally grounded lens for liberatory practice, ChE was the lead organizer and facilitator for Oakland’s 2015 Breaking the Silence Town Hall: Teen Salon, an extension of African American Policy Forum’s national #SayHerName campaign. As a director/ choreographer, ChE’s work is robust with gospel sounds and soulful movement that leave feet stomping and hands clapping—fusing Contemporary Modern, Afro-house, and Congolese dance with interactive ritual and installation. ChE has been an artist in residence with Spirit Garden Productions, Press Street Gallery, Dancing Grounds, Destiny Arts Q.E.A.R., and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts—where they debuted Black Modern dance as an integrative form of healing. Currently ChE is developing a framework for Afro-Indigenous activism piloted through #DignityInProcess, a multi-disciplinary platform responding to the Black Lives Matter movement through Wisdom Councils, Art Actions, and workshops investigating intersectional identity evolution. Learn more at ChE-Art.Life
Jaymes Jorsling is a playwright and actor. His writings have been workshopped with The Classical Theater Of Harlem, LAByrinth Theater Company, InnerAct Productions, Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, Access Theater and others. He is a multiple times finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference, and he received a literary fellowship to the O’Neill in 2010. He has won a UCross residency (in Wyoming) and a Lower Manhattan Community Council Fellowship. He’s been a finalist for the Lark Playwright’s week, and been nominated for their PONY award. He has advanced deep into the Sundance Screenplay Lab selection process with three different scripts. He was commissioned by NPR/WNYC/Greene Space to write a radio drama for their BLIND FEAR series. Currently he is writing a commissioned piece for Duke University. This winning play for the Brown Residency, Tripping Over Roots, is part of his trilogy: Promissory? Insufficent funds! The other plays are Out Of Bounds and Love-Love and this trilogy addresses where America is headed, unless fairness and freedom become as inalienable as they obliged to be. Jaymes interned and worked in ABC’s EyeWitness Newsroom, and worked the graveyard shift in Bellevue Hospital’s Emergency Room. As an actor he has performed on many New York and Regional Theater stages. His television credits include The Wire, Law & Order, The Affair (upcoming), and other episodic shows for ABC, CBS, and NBC. He was the featured actor in Randall Dottin’s Student Academy Award-winning short A-ALIKE, and his film LIFTED. At The City College of New York, he made the Dean’s List, won the E.Y. “Yip Harburg” Scholarship for Academic Excellence, graduated Magna Cum Laude, and still holds their record for the most main-stage productions by a student playwright.
Black Spatial Relics is presented by the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) in partnership with Rites and Reason Theatre. The Black Spatial Relics residency is made possible with generous program support from the 2017 Heimark Artist in Residency Program.
About the Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice
The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) at Brown University is a scholarly research center with a public humanities mission. Recognizing that racial and chattel slavery were central to the historical formation of the Americas and the modern world, the CSSJ creates a space for the interdisciplinary study of the historical forms of slavery while also examining how these legacies shape our contemporary world.
About Rites and Reason Theatre
The Department of Africana Studies' Rites and Reason Theatre is a research and developmental theatre dedicated to giving expression to the diverse cultures and traditions of continental and diasporic Africans and the vast Africana experience.