Adrienne Maree Brown on Art and Activism

Artist to Artist: adrienne maree brown

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In a vibrant and heartening conversation, adrienne maree brown joins a panel at the Holland Festival to discuss the potent intersections of art and activism. Sharing personal narratives and inspirations, the dialogue traverses through emergent strategy, the essence of community, and honoring ancestors. The session emphasizes the transformative power of art as a tool for political and personal change, nurtured by a sense of collective belonging and spiritual growth. adrienne highlights the need for honesty and vulnerability in art, inviting others to lean into discomfort for growth and connection.

Highlights

adrienne maree brown emphasizes the critical role of vulnerability and honesty in artistic expression 🌈.
A heartfelt exploration of how art intersects with activism to inspire social change 🎨.
Panelists share personal stories and how these narratives inform their creative processes 🌿.
Discussion on leveraging ancestral wisdom in art to honor and connect the past with the present ✨.
The event emphasizes the power of collective experiences and community in artistic endeavors 🤝.

Key Takeaways

Embrace vulnerability in art creation to connect deeply with yourself and others ❤️.
Leverage ancestral wisdom in contemporary artistic practices for deeper authenticity 🌍.
Engage with activism through art to foster meaningful social change 🔥.
Feelings of discomfort often indicate potential areas for personal growth 🌱.
Creating in community enriches both personal and shared experiences 🌟.

Overview

The panel at the Holland Festival, featuring adrienne maree brown, opened up a dynamic dialogue about how art functions as both a personal and political tool. Her concept of emergent strategy underscores the power of small interactions leading to significant societal shifts, urging artists to nurture their vulnerabilities while fostering change.

Panelists from diverse artistic backgrounds shared their personal journeys and inspirations, highlighting the profound connection between personal identity, community, and art. adrienne’s dialogue with the audience underscored the importance of collectivism and the power of shared experiences to catalyze change.

Audience members were invited to reflect on how they can translate their vulnerabilities into strengths, draw upon ancestral wisdom, and actively participate in creating a more equitable society through art. The session was a call to action for artists to expand their practices beyond individual endeavors and immerse themselves in community-centric collaborations.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter begins with an introduction, welcoming the audience to an event featuring artist Adrian Marie Brown. The narrator expresses excitement and admiration for Brown, indicating they are sitting next to each other. The narrator also reveals to Brown their status as a fan, a fact previously undisclosed.
00:30 - 01:00: Welcome by Moderator Isabel Sheridan The chapter titled 'Welcome by Moderator Isabel Sheridan' begins with Isabel Sheridan extending a warm welcome to the audience. She briefly introduces herself as the moderator for the evening. Isabel outlines the session's main topic, which is the exploration of what occurs at the intersection of art and activism, hinting that the discussion will cover a broader spectrum ('much more'). She also introduces the panelists participating in the conversation, including Adrian Marie Brown (writer and social commentator), Helen Castell (theater maker), and Gavin Fiano.
01:00 - 01:30: Introduction of Panelists and Purpose of the Event The chapter introduces the panelists and outlines the purpose of the event. It mentions visual artist and designer Budil Uego, who warmly welcomes attendees. The panelists have written reflections on Adrian's work called 'Emergent Strategy.' Although the event has not yet moved into discussions, the welcoming of attendees and acknowledgment of Adrian's work set the tone for the gathering.
01:30 - 02:30: Audience Engagement and Shared Experiences The chapter titled 'Audience Engagement and Shared Experiences' delves into the concept of audience inclusion in discussions and events. It begins with an acknowledgment that the setup for the evening was imagined differently to allow for more interaction and closeness between the audience and the speakers. However, the setup could not be changed due to an unusual scheduling of a funeral the following day, highlighting that such events are not typically part of the core programming schedule. The mention of the funeral serves as a brief diversion, sparking curiosity about its unusual nature in the context of the organization's regular functions.
02:30 - 04:00: Adrianne Maree Brown on Beyonce's Concert and Emergent Strategy In this chapter, the speaker addresses the structure and expectations of a conversation following a significant event, possibly a funeral. They encourage active participation in the discussion, suggesting that attendees feel free to speak openly without strict protocols like raising hands. There is an emphasis on creating an inclusive environment by offering alternatives like using a microphone to facilitate contributions. The context leads into a discussion about 'emerging,' hinting at a broader thematic exploration, perhaps linking to emergent strategy and communal engagement, similar to the essence of Adrianne Maree Brown's work.
04:00 - 05:30: Discussion on Emergent Strategy, Healing, and Collective Action This chapter begins with the speaker engaging with the audience to gauge their familiarity with the concept of 'pleasure activism' and the work of Adrienne Maree Brown. The speaker appreciates the audience, particularly those who have read and are fans of Brown's work. They mention the importance of being a 'pleasure activist' and its implications on personal and collective healing strategies. Additionally, the chapter touches upon community actions and collective healing as important facets for realizing emergent strategies that focus on social change and emotional well-being. The engagement appears to be part of a wider discussion or series, likely including a book club dedicated to exploring these themes in depth.
05:30 - 07:30: Artistic Expressions and Ancestral Connections The chapter titled 'Artistic Expressions and Ancestral Connections' revolves around a session of activism focused on connection and introspection. Despite the weather being 30 degrees outside, participants gathered indoors to engage with each other meaningfully. One of the ways to foster connection was by asking participants what made them feel good that day, which led to many nice answers and helped break the ice among them. The session emphasized understanding and connecting with one another.
07:30 - 09:30: Reading and Reflections by Panelist Badillo Panelist Badillo begins by inviting audience participation, encouraging anyone who wishes to share to raise their hand. They humorously mention their inexperience with microphones as they receive one, marking it as a 'microphone cherry popping' moment. They continue by sharing an anecdote from a ferry boat ride with three others, setting a reflective and narrative tone for the chapter.
09:30 - 12:00: Manganyama's Reflection on Ancestry and Identity In this chapter titled 'Manganyama's Reflection on Ancestry and Identity', the interaction starts with a group of individuals rushing and having an engaging discussion. One of them inquires about each other's destinations, leading to a storytelling session where everyone shared their reasons for being there. The narrator mentioned coming to this particular location and described the experience as really nice, resulting in everyone getting Goosebumps as they shared their stories. Eventually, they all say goodbye and go their separate ways, but the conversation continued throughout the ferry ride. The narrator appreciated the little interaction and opened the floor for others to share positive experiences. Meanwhile, another participant was focused on moderating the discussion, indicating a sense of responsibility.
12:00 - 15:00: Reflections on Ancestral Healing and Personal Stories In this chapter titled 'Reflections on Ancestral Healing and Personal Stories,' the speaker shares an experience working in children's psychiatry. They took one of their young clients, who is nearly 14 years old, on a mindful walk. Initially, the client felt awkward, but by the end, he found it relaxing. The experience was positive and fulfilling for both the speaker and the client. The speaker expresses gratitude to those present, highlighting the importance of sharing and connecting through such experiences.
15:00 - 18:00: Role of Art in Healing and Emergent Strategy The chapter explores the role of art in healing and strategies that emerge from artistic engagement. It highlights a session or discussion that includes a call for positive stories and personal sharing, emphasizing the importance of expressing good experiences and feelings. The excerpt ends on a celebratory note, marking a participant's birthday with a shared moment of happiness.
18:00 - 20:00: Questions from the Audience The chapter opens with a lively birthday celebration, complete with music and applause, setting up a positive and joyful atmosphere. The central question posed to the audience is about what made them feel good today, highlighting a theme of reflection and sharing moments of happiness.
20:00 - 21:20: Gavin Fiano's Performance Addressing Sexual Trauma The chapter recounts an unexpectedly joyful day experienced by Gavin Fiano. Surprised by friends or loved ones, Gavin feels overwhelmed with happiness, gratitude, and love. The surprise involves a gathering filled with affection, food, wine, flowers, and hats. Gavin describes it as possibly the best day ever, expressing astonishment and pleasure at the peak of these moments.
21:20 - 22:00: Closing Remarks and Reflections on the Event The chapter titled 'Closing Remarks and Reflections on the Event' captures the vivacious energy and vibrant mood that marked the end of an event. There is laughter and a positive atmosphere indicating a successful gathering. The speaker expresses feeling satisfied and highlights the mood as right for ending the night on a high note. Adrian Marie is mentioned, recognized for her multifaceted roles as a writer, social commentator, pleasure activist, community organizer, artist, and meme queen, adding to the event's richness and culmination.

Artist to Artist: adrienne maree brown Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 good evening and welcome to this artist with Adrian Marie Brown who is sitting next to me I still can't believe that it's actually sitting next to me I didn't tell you yet how much of a fan girl I am you didn't tell me at all well surprise surprise I think it's me and the other fan people
00:30 - 01:00 here in the in the audience a warm welcome to you guys my name is Isabel Sheridan I'm your moderator tonight and tonight we'll talk about what happens at the intersection of Art and activism and also much much more I think I think we can fill in that with much much more um and it won't just be the two of us with us here engaging in conversation with Adrian Marie Brown our writer and social commentator Helen Castell a theater maker Gavin fiano and this
01:00 - 01:30 visual artist and designer budil uego a warm welcome to all of you um they all wrote a reflection on Adrian's wonderful work it's called emergent strategy for those who haven't read it [Laughter] that's so great that's so great um but well before we get a chance to talk to each other I would also really want to welcome you guys because you're
01:30 - 02:00 you're here as an audience but also feel welcome to be a part of this conversation I kind of to be honest I kind of imagined a little different setup uh for this evening where we could actually engage more with each other and have you close with us but unfortunately tomorrow there is a very early early um funeral we normally don't have funerals but this is an occasion that we just yeah um wait what do you mean you normally don't have funerals well this is Mother well it's not part of a core programming
02:00 - 02:30 but due to a very special or a funeral as a part of the program okay yeah I understand so we were tied to this position but please if you want to contribute to this conversation then I would just suggest uh talking standing up maybe you don't even have to raise your hand just try and uh yeah try to come with us I can also come to you with a mic if you are more comfortable talking into your microphone um but let's first get to know each other a little bit um I was wondering I read emerging
02:30 - 03:00 strategy who else did this is not school but I just want to know what kind of audience we have these are fans Adrian thank you for reading y'all who read pleasure activism who considers themselves a pleasure activist trying interesting um I actually hosted well I had the honor of hosting a book club on Pleasure
03:00 - 03:30 activism thank you which was such a wonderful experience it was 30 degrees outside but we were here inside uh while talking to each other connecting beautiful and the first question that I asked was what made you feel good today just to get to know each other you know and it gave me so many really nice answers so just to get to know you guys I would like to ask you the same thing what made you feel good today and they'll be shy I'll just be walking
03:30 - 04:00 around until somebody raises their hand and be like I want to share over there can we pass this microphone I hi welcome I've never had a microphone in my hands we're popping the microphone cherry um a really nice little story that I got on the ferry boat from North and was with the last three people
04:00 - 04:30 rushing and one of them turned around and said to the other two where are you going and we all told those stories and I said I was coming here and it was really nice and then we all have Goosebumps we all uh say goodbye at the end and win our own ways but we talked the whole fairy ride that's wonderful I love the little interaction who else feels like sharing something good running over there man I have a job to do as a moderator
04:30 - 05:00 coming all the way tell me yeah I work in children's Psychiatry and I took one of my clients for a mindful walk today uh and he's almost 14 and I could tell he found it a little bit awkward in the beginning and then at the end he was like that was actually really relaxing and that made me feel really good so he enjoyed it so it's uh yeah I really enjoyed it as well thank you for sharing that and thank you people who are also here already
05:00 - 05:30 like what did I miss what did I miss no you're very welcome um so maybe we have time for one less story who wants to share something good about today and how they felt don't we shy okay his birthday is it if this is your birthday this is a good birthday happy birthday to you happy birthday to you
05:30 - 06:00 happy birthday happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday [Music] [Applause] well if that's that isn't a great startup and evening birthday then I don't know what is the question is what made you feel good today apart from the obvious moment that just happened
06:00 - 06:30 so much to tell I don't know where to start I had the best day ever all of these people surprised me and tricked me to coming here and it is the best surprise ever cruise I got so much love and cuddles and food and wine and flowers and this hats Best Day Ever wow oh my God okay we peaked that is beautiful okay
06:30 - 07:00 [Laughter] I think that this is exactly the energy we need to start off our night I'm good I feel fully satisfied yeah I get that um okay that is a great hat that is a great hat okay Adrian I've already kind of introduced you but please let me say that Adrian Marie is a writer she's a social commentator she's a pleasure activist she's a community organizer artist meme Queen Auntie Doula
07:00 - 07:30 and Beyonce's biggest fan [Applause] Adrian um can I ask them how many of you received the blessing of Beyonce oh my God y'all isn't she perfect in every way I'm still drooling yeah I was a free when did you go well Saturday we went to Beyonce and I have to say we had to organize it with the Holland Fest because when we saw when I
07:30 - 08:00 saw it when she released the dates and it was like she was going to be here and I knew that we were booked on the 18th and I was like okay so I went ahead and bought the tickets right away and then the organizers joking was like I don't know if this is going to work and I was like it is we'll figure it out we can rehearse it from 9 A.M we'll be fine and we worked it out in almost almost everyone in the show actually went to see her on Saturday night in some way yeah that's beautiful what was your favorite moment about the show oh God I think of the
08:00 - 08:30 truth um yeah I mean for me it's like one continuous favorite experience but I will say I'll say my favorite piece of the set design was she had a portal and it's a picture of her legs coming up and out on either side and you just keep going deeper and deeper into the portal and I was like make it plain [Laughter] you were the mother we all know what's happening oh and Clarice was there oh there's Clarice grazing us with our her presence yeah you're very welcome and also I just the
08:30 - 09:00 sound of her voice the quality of the voice in that Stadium was sickening to me yeah yeah I'm like how do you do that anyway I mean she's perfect to me so well I think half of the audience knows now after seeing her life I'm very jealous thank you um but Adrian um so I asked asked a question to the audience asking him what gave them Joy um and I was wondering what gave you Joy today
09:00 - 09:30 uh well it's a lot of things okay do you want to be honest honest let's go so last night was one of the best nights of my life like ever ever ever what we got to put together was so incredible and after that I'm like how do I relax and release energy so today I took a space cake I had sex all day I watched Battlestar Galactica and I did not leave my bedroom until it was time to come here foreign
09:30 - 10:00 I love that for you I'm really trying to practice what I preach you know yes exactly yeah exactly it sounds like a perfect way to start off this evening of talking to all of your fans no so and I highly recommend it for a Monday yeah yeah um I'll take my next Monday off okay same thing yeah I'm gonna hold you to it I'm gonna be like I'll tell you I'll tell you about it yeah okay good
10:00 - 10:30 yeah so let's get back to that performance um to feel a thing a ritual for emergence yes it happens yesterday it happened can you tell who wait who was there again yeah that's a lot of people thank you so much but maybe for the people who weren't there who weren't there can't you like shout something like what happened there um yeah I can I think I can so I mean I am curious to hear what happened for other people obviously but for me you
10:30 - 11:00 know a few years I've always written songs but always like kind of privately and then a few years ago I started sharing them and I got connected to other people around them and this ritual has emerged and each time I understand something new about it like I keep following it and people keep coming into it and weaving into it so last night I think what happened I came in and for me the practice was to meditate to call my ancestors into the space
11:00 - 11:30 and they literally came up like I was meditating as everyone was entering the space and all my ancestors came one by one some that I recognized and some that I had not met before and they just came and were like I'm here and so after that I'm not quite sure exactly what happened but everyone had told me don't expect a response from the audience the Dutch don't get down like this gospel thing you're doing so thank
11:30 - 12:00 you you're just gonna sing to them and they're just gonna watch you and it's gonna be beautiful and so that's what I was expecting and then like I think the first or second song everyone's off their feet dancing jumping around and I was like okay let's have a ritual so we had a ritual we had these all these local folks who wove in because of Clarisse so Clarisse reached out to me and was like I'm a part of this and so we wove and and figured out you know we've never met before but we figured
12:00 - 12:30 out how to collaborate with each other so she gave a testimony about the conditions here and we had Nana afua a winty priestess who came and gave a prayer and blessing of protection for all of us we had Ernestine come and bless us with a poem and in the middle it was song after song that is moving us through different um stages of emotion and asking ourselves what is it we believe how does that move us into action how do we actually drop into feeling and then for me personally I struggle a lot with
12:30 - 13:00 wanting to be numb in the face of the hopelessness and despair of the current condition it's just called numb I wrote it I was drunk I was high and I was like I can still feel too much and my heart is broken I can still feel the sharp edges of it and I need to get further away from the feeling and so I sang the song and you can hear it like in the original voice note I record everything into like voice memos on my phone you can hear it like it's like a mess
13:00 - 13:30 wonderful because if you're honest if you really create when you're hurting the most and if someone's willing to meet you like Troy is like I'll listen to that and I can pull out something that is ugly and beautiful um but then we were like come with us and everyone came with us and we made it through the numbness and we remembered how to feel something and by the end it just kept I kept being like that's the highest we'll go and then the next song
13:30 - 14:00 everyone would be elevated more so you describe the energy in that room it felt like we were one body like it felt like we got to be one body um everyone moving in different ways but moving together does that feel right yeah that's the items yeah and it was like um I mean dancing I saw a lot of freedom and I would say that a lot of people look like they were moving in ways they may have never moved before
14:00 - 14:30 including me I was singing in ways I've never sung before I was like [ __ ] I was I was like really like I mean we'll see what it sounds like afterwards but it felt like The Little Mermaid I was like okay you know she's so wonderful yeah but it was beaut I was I don't know does that feel accurate Clarice it was wonderful is that also um because I feel like the word the concept emergence translates really difficulty
14:30 - 15:00 to uh to Dutch yeah um is that also like what you just said about this being one experience one organism is that what she also mean with the concept of emergence so the definition of emergence I use is the way complex systems and patterns Arise at a relatively simple interaction so I talk about one bird flaps its wings a bird flying but if 500 do it together at the right distance they stay alive when a predator is trying to eat them
15:00 - 15:30 and they make this beautiful shape and humans do this everything does this but for me emergence can be good or bad right like it's not it's actually a neutral concept because it's how everything comes to exist including mosquitoes and rats like everything I think you don't want yeah so the strategy part of it is what matters it's like how do we acknowledge that the world develops in this way this is actually the truth of what is complex pattern yes and all the complex patterns come out of this simple small interactions can we humble ourselves to
15:30 - 16:00 rigorously practice the simple small things over and over again if we want to create new complex systems and patterns and so like if we're in a very complex [ __ ] up climate catastrophe and the simple moves we have to take are for instance not flying eating vegan why do we struggle so hard to make the simple move that would create a new complex pattern of food systems and weather systems and everything else and I'm as not a non-vegan person who flew here
16:00 - 16:30 right in the contradiction of that right yeah is I'm like asking myself all the time what are the right small adjustments to make because each generation is making the small adjustment adjustments that create the society um so that's what I'm asking people on board you do and you don't like in any place I mean this is the beauty of social justice work you know I've done social justice organizing for 25 years
16:30 - 17:00 facilitation and I've always been very prone to the direct action side of it because I'm always really moved by how you know people be like thousands of people can't do this but like five people will go shut down the BART station in San Francisco and all of a sudden we're having a conversation about black lives matter on the national news I love that kind of thing where like we a small group of people can get your attention but then masses of people have to open their hearts right it's like oh you got my attention am I willing to consider myself part of the problem and
17:00 - 17:30 the solution right and I have you know my sister is here tonight and we have these beautiful parents who are you know really open-hearted but I I know I've watched them be frustrated with the situation but like not take action and I always talk to him about that right I'm like well you're upset about this you're throwing something at the TV what's you gonna do about it right what are they say and well my mom is actually incredible at this she's like I am doing something I'm negotiating with my family who's my mother's white and she comes
17:30 - 18:00 from a family that has racism transphobia homophobia fat phobia like the whole package yeah and so she's like my work is staying in a good relationship with them and helping to bring them along such that this year after a 10-year break from being able to see my grandmother I'm able to reconnect with her this year because of my mom doing her small constant relational organizing right so I'm like those moves really matter
18:00 - 18:30 um and so when I go out in the world this is actually I've had to humble myself because I used to only be like if you're not a hardcore activist you know rappelling off the side of a building with a banner or like you know doing the hardcore actions and like throwing them all a tough cocktail or whatever what are you doing you know and for a long time that's how I came home to I think family dinner right so fun it was so fun but now I'm like you know yesterday was Father's Day and I was able to have like the most authentic
18:30 - 19:00 gratitude towards my father because I'm like oh from an emergent strategy lens I can see how much you have transformed in your lifetime by loving me just by loving me just by loving our your queer children right so there's things like this that I I think I keep trying to think about like okay the future I still have a very big vision of the future that I want but I have to have faith in all the small moves it takes to get there and everybody has their own role to play Within that system and
19:00 - 19:30 unfortunately I'm not in charge so I really I really would I mean if it was set up some other way whereas like Virgos could just come up with a solution that everyone had to try I actually wrote this a short story about this in one of my books fables and spells it's called the virgoan and there's actually an alien species that only connects with Virgos and is like we know what the right way to do everything is but they actually drive the Virgos mad because they're like
19:30 - 20:00 that's not a relevant thing in the human world that's wonderful is there also an alien species that connects to Leos or I'm sure there is I think I'm hoping that people will fan fiction their own astrology into it because I feel like so that's the invitation the invitation stands yeah because I'm like I know Virgo's most intimately I could probably do one on sagittarians I could probably do one on Pisces [ __ ] I could do this this I think we're waiting for the next book well books I think you need a lot of
20:00 - 20:30 volumes for this yeah I need I need to write more books yeah definitely um thank you so much um I think it's now time to introduce our uh our other panelists they're already sitting here on the front row and they're ready to go I think can I have a warm Applause [Applause] [Applause] [Music] oh my God
20:30 - 21:00 please join us we're here uh well so you guys get settled I'm also going to properly introduce you because I already have it written down um theater maker and actor Jeff and Fiona's work radiates social urgency through his Grassroots initiatives he addresses themes that affect the black community the human rights Community the queer community and the vulnerable youth period period bam mic drop you're here great that you're here is a social commentator activist and
21:00 - 21:30 writer she writes socially critical prose and essays focusing on topics like race identity feminism and of course Beyonce let's be honest um okay and she's currently working on her debut Knuffle that hopefully she will share a little bit about in a bit and then we have both um she's a visual artist fashion designer who explores the intersection of clothing and cultural contexts her
21:30 - 22:00 work goes beyond fashion design incorporating textiles music and dance into immersive installations welcome guys I'm not going to ask you what your favorite moment was last week because I all know that I know that you all went to Beyonce so this is an easy one exactly um but uh going back to yesterday's performance for deal you guys were there uh how is that for you it was great and also way more than I
22:00 - 22:30 expected because I think on the website I saw that it was like one half hour right and I thought maybe rehearsal was yeah I don't know what happened no and I uh really did not expect it that we were allowed to have such a big role into it um and that was really special uh I thought it would be more watching or hearing learning but it was great and I told you guys
22:30 - 23:00 before I normally never really sing but first it was three hours Beyonce and then three hours Adrian Marie so I was very happy I think I have to do it more yeah that was up for you um it really took me back I was talking about this to Clarissa as well it took it took us if I may speak for us too but it took it took me back to um growing up in church
23:00 - 23:30 in um and and but in a in a queer emergent way yes yeah so taking you back to a space that has that like in that space you could feel Spirit but you weren't allowed in in a way to tap into the the eroticness of that Spirit the queerness of that Spirits the Blackness of that Spirit um and then ending up being rejected so in a way it's very much reminded me of
23:30 - 24:00 the the church girl song uh exactly yeah yeah yeah but then a better way even yeah it it it's it surpassed the the physical to me yeah definitely and Gavin fiano I was wondering because you couldn't make it anniversity yesterday because you had to go to Beyonce you went twice I I was like everyone who came I was like so you could have gone to Beyonce and you came here cool but like I I totally understand I already
24:00 - 24:30 booked my ticket I understand things in life that I'm obsessed about and uh that's Mariah Carey The Little Mermaid and Beyonce I was seven years old again like yes I really want tentacles now yes yes
24:30 - 25:00 [Laughter] I love that for you you had a great excuse um guys you're here welcome um I was wondering maybe we could start by just introducing your work a little bit to the audience because I think we all want to know um maybe we can start with you munganyama because you wrote this wonderful book on Beyonce but you write so much more um what are some of the current themes you're into um
25:00 - 25:30 first let me say about this book I'm very honored to have been able to work with a group of amazing black feminists from the Netherlands yeah um behind the scenes we had to actually push for this book to be blackity black like black women because the um behind the scenes we were getting questions about how diverse it would be if it would only be black like how diverse the the sort of the way of looking at this was gonna be
25:30 - 26:00 um so and um so well I think what we did collectively with this book is um um I mean Clarice is in this book Ernestine is in this book there's a lot of amazing people in this book Clarissa is everywhere anyway and this is my life but um stands for the the Republic of Beyonce Run by these three rules
26:00 - 26:30 um and and we're we're really working with with um honoring through critique to through radical critique um what does that mean it means um I think that when it comes to black women and Blackness there's this there's this this this idea that we cannot like stand in community together and think critically about um our positions in the world and how we
26:30 - 27:00 uh how we take up space in the in in these emerging strategies right so I think that honoring through critique uh in in a very loving way is something that we did through this book um and in general I think what what I the role that I try to play that attempt to play in my community is to um to to organize these womanist interventions to
27:00 - 27:30 um to really think about what it means to um to live a good black life um yeah and what what that looks like um what have you found so far a lot of things a lot of things and but
27:30 - 28:00 I've it's not about what I found it's about what I felt mostly and how my community has helped me feel through um through the the through this existence to get to a place where um
28:00 - 28:30 yeah where you can really sit in that body and and really yeah really feel it feel the body yeah yeah and honor it yeah thank you that is that is a beautiful thank you for sharing that wait how do you feel right now
28:30 - 29:00 I feel um in Dutch I would say I feel I feel too stemming
29:00 - 29:30 permission yes and in Dutch it means like it it it reads differently for me and that we could two stemming it's like it's permission but it's also like giving in it's also adding to the multiplicity of voices I I feel very comfortable standing next to the light [Music]
29:30 - 30:00 these conversations and this question is uncomfortable in that way because it is it asks of me to stand in the light but I feel very comfortable standing next to the light but I feel that I feel that permission of also standing in the light and inside the light and and that actually started yesterday yeah yeah you know I was thinking about this when you were talking about the role of I I think we share this because when you talk about the role of of honoring through
30:00 - 30:30 critique or anything with the engagement of the work for most of my life I've been a facilitator so I'm always like next to the light I'm like everyone here is the most amazing person they're the most amazing organizer and my job is to almost become a part of the wall the container and to make sure that they know how excellent they are and that when we're done all they feel is their own excellence and not me right not a Reliance on me just like we're [ __ ] great and now like the world change or whatever
30:30 - 31:00 and now this process of becoming an artist or bringing the art part of me forward literally the director of the piece last night the whole time is just like can you slow down take a deep breath stand in the light like people came to listen to something that you want to say and I'm like but I don't know what to say she's like but you will just slow down and take a deep breath and feel it in the moment I was like that no I gotta like write a poem I
31:00 - 31:30 gotta do something that's like create work and also put it back to them and she's like you can put it back to them all you want to you're going to be in the light when the moment comes but then I'm laughing now because you were out of my vision and then you came up and put yourself directly in front of me and it was such a huge part of my experience last night to look out and see you in the light so I'm like I love this I can feel you right now a lot yeah or full circle now sitting here
31:30 - 32:00 again after that um I also wanted to go to you um Gavin piano I think we have a a small clip from your latest work oh yeah from blessed those natural legs work from blood sense um shall we go watch her can we dim the lights it's also interesting how the body works let me turn it up see my body senses things that my mind
32:00 - 32:30 simply cannot conceive it's like my body has stored events from the past which results in emotional roller coasters let's call these roller coasters moments sometimes my mind is a slow one to follow but more often my mind is the
32:30 - 33:00 instigator I'm sure that it can live on without the body which brings me to The Duality of Mind and Body two totally different planes we two totally different approaches and a mind a body one and how do 11 year olds handle these two
33:00 - 33:30 oops [Applause] this was such a short a short piece but maybe you can tell us a little bit about what's what we just saw here yeah this is uh princess bangura an amazing performer I studied with at the theater Academy in Maastricht she's from Sierra Leone I'm from Suriname my
33:30 - 34:00 parents are and when I was studying there she was already dope she had a great energy but we never found the opportunity to work together and now that I we vote graduated I wanted to tell a story about overcoming sexual trauma through ancestral guidance and I thought who's gonna tell this story and Princess was the right one to do so um so we mingled the religion from Sierra Leone with the surinami's religion it was so interesting just to
34:00 - 34:30 exchange all these African roots and there were so many similarities but also beautiful differences like what like um for instance the suriname's religion um is really instigated through wind the wind and also in the Sierra leonean religion they say look up to the sky because that's where the power is so that's how we started to connect the dots high in
34:30 - 35:00 the wind exactly and we just also wanted to make the work the story blackly black we're in the Netherlands the Dutch theater sector unfortunately is still predominantly very wide so here we are the black kids and what are we gonna tell we also love Shakespeare and Ibsen but we also love our own stories and our own fruits truths um and that's welcome equally exactly better exactly so it was just homecoming
35:00 - 35:30 and just it felt so warm to claim that space with her and to tell this story and I was crying during rehearsals because she was improvising and it was so spiritual and I I told her try to also dance through the fingertip through your fingertips and the the energy that was transcending at that moment yeah I just cannot explain it but she was crying I was crying and then we were like okay we're on the right track
35:30 - 36:00 ing it's also in English in school we were always taught like everything has to be in Dutch bilingual right so finally we got the chance to create our own art so also being able to make the choice for our own language is also you know Empower ownership of our art agency empowerment so um yeah I really want you all to see
36:00 - 36:30 the whole piece in September okay so I have to come back and say yeah yeah write it down theater Festival blood scent yeah um yeah I saw it because I saw the registration and it's it's seriously incredible and it moves me a lot thank you thank you um last but not least the deal um you're a fashion designer and I put I got some pictures of the work you did
36:30 - 37:00 um really beautiful work and I was wondering as a fashion designer what stories are you trying to convey with the designs that you make what are you currently thinking about uh I think first of all I I would say I'm an artist more or I'm just an artist um and um what concepts was the question or what
37:00 - 37:30 what kinds of stories are you interested in at the moment I think for me it's always the story that I'm interested in is myself um and I think that person is with more people but or that's what I hope but in it has to start with myself and um I tried to find connections within the art of dressing up I'm looking a session as an art form and the
37:30 - 38:00 cultural surroundings around dressing up um and I find try to find connections and see how can diverse Styles or differences uh uplift one another and I think the biggest interest within that is finding ways how I can show all these different parts of myself instead of choosing one or like
38:00 - 38:30 the other and trying to find a way how they can be layered over each other or maybe how I can show like neglected parts and give light on them the full self becomes visible yeah and I think that's just [Music] um I think when you are black or when you're a woman people have all these ideas about you and it just gets hard to see through all
38:30 - 39:00 that and to figure out what is it what it actually is and what you miss and to be honest to the self also and I think that was also really a part I studied fashion four four years ago now but in Art Academy um and there most of the teachers were also white or actually of them
39:00 - 39:30 I was the only student with all of the teachers yeah it all the teachers most definitely I think we're in Netherlands yeah and for three three students uh who were black um and then you have to you have to talk about your Concepts but then people don't really get it and then but they are sort of or or they don't like the fact that they don't get it or they want to talk about it with you but it doesn't
39:30 - 40:00 really helps yourself because you get so frustrated if you think like how can you not get this and then I came home sometimes in my water my station I was like okay I explained this like five times now how can I do it better because still they want to put me on the other on another path or and that it means in the context of the other yeah and then your whole concept changes in someone else's misunderstanding um and then I switched schools and then
40:00 - 40:30 and then you solved the problem yeah well then that's the problem okay yeah if I want to talk about my ideas then I do that with people outside of outside of the academy right you are when it's just about technique I do it here yeah um yeah we actually before we go to our first reflection which will be read by you um we are going to watch a little teaser of your work which relates to the thing you're going to read yeah it's a it's a
40:30 - 41:00 teaser of a video I made it's a video installation uh and the teaser is I think 30 seconds or something but the video is way longer but yeah we will see a teaser and after you will see some I think when I start talking you will see some images research pictures how I uh yeah foreign
41:00 - 41:30 [Music] foreign [Applause] these wonderful people have all read your book and took they took a little piece from it
41:30 - 42:00 that they felt they could really relate to okay and they wrote something about it oh my goodness I know you knew this was gonna happen oh it would be hard if they if this was also a surprise for them you know I'm so excited and I would first like to ask but you will to read out hers you can choose if you want to do that here or behind the cathedral wherever you are most comfortable I quite like it here yep yeah okay
42:00 - 42:30 um so I started with a quote of Adrian and after there will be another quote but you will hear that I'm living a life I don't regret a life that will resonate with my ancestors and with as many generations forward as I can imagine I am intending to this crisis of my lifetime with my best self I am of my communities that are doing our Collective best to honor our ancestors and all humans to come
42:30 - 43:00 first of all thank you so much for the work that you do the radical imagination connected with the way I intend to work in my practice and gave me a lot of Hope and strength thank you thank you um my father is from from Burkina Faso my mother from the Netherlands in Burkina Faso people everywhere reminded me over and over again that a person is not alone but overly connected
43:00 - 43:30 all the pieces of a person's history are Akin and make you who you are not one or the other not Dutch Burkina Bay Street culture out Couture nor gender but identity the self is one big connected web in which all these threats together are what makes it a whole and above all what makes it unique complex and appealing this idea about identity is the core of my work when someone introduced me Burkina fasoom they never just gave my name it goes in a way where all my connections were
43:30 - 44:00 explained hello good day this is the daughter of the Auntie of the student from this is also what my what my father asked me when he asked me how I am how is it with a little sister of Rita referring to me this is how I got my daily affirmation instead of way more and maybe Western Way of introducing someone by just saying this is another quote of Adrian which resonated
44:00 - 44:30 for me we are never just individual bodies individual traumas our our lives and the way ways we survive are interconnected I often have the feeling that people get confused about identity and ask you to choose part of yourself but for me leads to an incomplete and maybe even a feeling of dishonest to the self in my work I try to find ways to nurture and honor every part of yourself how can
44:30 - 45:00 we stand in line with who went before us how to portray an imagination where all these parts are layered and see-through I think the trying to portray all these parts of the self or giving light on forgotten or neglected parts of the self as for radical imagination taking up space by presenting an alternative where you show that you are overly connected in my latest research
45:00 - 45:30 I tried doing that by by embodying African wooden art in these pieces of our heritage you see how our ancestors used to present bodies through sculptures what can I what can we learn from the way that these bodies pose our research about posing bearing and precision positioning yourself Longing To who went before us longing to express togetherness through material heirlooms I try to capture the human
45:30 - 46:00 intimacy of West African wooden art presenting the ability to express the generational Connection by embodying I propose to give them space in the present how can I enrich representation of people by Framing them wearing them or enlarging them my work is informed by the connections I find within the art of dressing up after truly examining different cultural aspects within Black Culture that at first
46:00 - 46:30 glance seemed to be far apart how can a connection between diverse cells enrich and uplift each other the first time I created the life installation I felt a weight falling off of me or for Saddam the question or disagrees about my IDs or concepts weren't valid anymore we brought the insulation to life and therefore it was part of reality and we shared a new lived experience for me this felt as a form of radical imagination if I understood you
46:30 - 47:00 absolutely [Applause] [Music] thank you for that Badillo thank you I love that line how can we stand in line with those who went before us yeah I think also with this research now um my father is born in Burkina Faso and he's a collector of West African wooden Arts since
47:00 - 47:30 since forever and it was also one of the reasons that he came to the Netherlands and there's so much can you slow that down how would his Fascination in West African would not be why he came to the Netherlands so to sell it yeah okay I'm like do they have a lot here do we need to take it back [Laughter] [Music] yeah he came he was collecting there a
47:30 - 48:00 lot uh then he came here and he tried to sell uh two reasons he never sold one you can't really sell these pieces uh if they are straight from the country so they have if when they are for a longer time in Europe they are they their value yeah exactly because they say when it's there then maybe it's not old enough or blah blah blah so when it's in for a longer time in
48:00 - 48:30 hands of of uh White collectors that price goes up but another reason is that I think my father is not really a businessman but I think uh and also I don't think these pieces are part of business for him but they are yeah very very spiritually yeah and you can't really walk in his house it's filled up I think it's one of the reasons why he's not or he says he's not so homesick um he's taking care of them all the time
48:30 - 49:00 and it used to be something which was way more uh present within communities yeah and also uh uh in Burkina Faso itself most people uh see this or Haram or Haydens I don't know how do you say that like forbidden yeah people connected on to uh nature beliefs and I think that's also a colonial ID that we think it's not okay
49:00 - 49:30 anymore um so it's a bit and all the other beautiful pieces most of them are stolen are here in in Paris or in Amsterdam and I was thinking about ancestors and uh I was thinking about the feeling that he had have they have to figure it out or yourself enough of course it's not like that like people went before us and yeah what can I see from that and then when it when I was
49:30 - 50:00 small kids sometimes in My Father's House these pieces were some of them were almost my height yes and then when you walk by you look too many eyes and then uh I had with a few of them was like okay just get a special relationship yeah yeah it's household together it's really beautiful and I miss that feeling yeah and also the way um the ability I had tend to look at
50:00 - 50:30 them and to be more in contact with them so then I started three 3D printing them and making big models we just saw in the thing yeah there's something in what you're saying right now that is like really resonating because I feel like something I've been figuring out very slowly is you know my parents I've also mixed race come from a black and white family and I think originally my parents were like racism is going to be going away
50:30 - 51:00 great idea yeah we're good and then it took a while for me to get old enough to recognize like we're really at the very beginning of the Reclamation of our humanity and and white folks are very at the very beginning still of understanding the impact of their ancestors and their current impact and I think it's humbling for everyone in the mix to actually realize we're just not very far along in the
51:00 - 51:30 Reclamation and rebalancing and re-organizing process because so many artists I find it's like we set out to do something else and then something ancestral pulls us back to like wait we have to go back and remember like sitting in the circle yesterday A lot of people came up we're like oh in Senegal we sit around the tree and we do this oh here in certain um you know the winty princess she's like this is what we do girl like we sit around we just sit around a circle and we pray it's great
51:30 - 52:00 yeah and uh I was like yeah everyone's like it's no big like but for me as someone who was like intentionally displaced you know from whatever that lineage was that my father would carry all the way down to his father we don't know who his father is so it's cut off for someone like me to be like I can feel that I'm supposed to be in a circle with people doing this ritual and I don't know how to do it but I'm going to figure it out and like for you you're like oh I grew up around this but I can
52:00 - 52:30 feel that there's something else that's supposed to happen with it now yeah right um and it's like I just feel like there's someone like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yes the body remembers yeah that's really yeah and I was also wondering um looking at our other panelists what what do what does the idea of ancestors mean to you how do you relate to that personally not all at once um first of all let me say that when I
52:30 - 53:00 first encountered budil's work it was the first time for me seeing the West African booboo in a I'm I'm like tearing up because of it in a um [Music] artistic context on purpose and let me just erase artistic context and just say on purpose on purpose
53:00 - 53:30 um and that really moved something inside of me and I just I just know that um it was during Fashion Week and you had these see-through boo-boos it was like out of this world see through boo-boos I want that dancers in see-through boo-boos yes I want it and then and then and then she had like a um uh like a film projected on the C3
53:30 - 54:00 boo-boos like I want this whole experience how do you what what to move here [Music] I'd love to have you know like there's so much stuff to do yeah so as as um someone who relates to that that specific region um that was super special so when I speak of ancestry
54:00 - 54:30 um I would say I I I really enjoy when it's on purpose um intentional yeah and way like that when I'm cold when I'm called to it I was called to her work as well and I just know behind the scenes a lot of like people grew up in and around boo-boos literally um we're so excited to engage with your work yeah it was beautiful
54:30 - 55:00 yeah it's so nice when you uh also also during our Squad so often I was thinking like what can I make so people can find me people like me can find you and I do I need a sign or what can we do find each other that's the same way I write that's the same way it's this I think that a lot of it is all like trying to put up a sign where you're like can someone come find me
55:00 - 55:30 like if you're a black hairy and Imagination for you this is for you and then and then when you converge it's like intimate it's like oh we already like it's so weird to me I'm like oh we're just meeting yeah yeah you know but we've been calling out to each other a lot of us and I was wondering you know like talking about Ms ancestors how does how do you feel about that how does that release your work growing up
55:30 - 56:00 um I was always already connected with uh my ancestors and I would love for you to come live in the Netherlands because then I can because then I can invite you to a suriname's birthday party it's amazing um three weeks ago I was invited again for my friend's 30th birthday party and he is Serena memes but he also has um um uh Heritage yes indigenous Heritage
56:00 - 56:30 indigenous to where um well in Suriname you have like in Suriname you had like you know the original people original people exactly so you have this interesting mixture of different cultures and traditions and religions as well yeah and then uh yeah I don't know for the people who have been to a tsunamis but birthday party but it's in a room a big room with lots of food lots of music different outfits and then there will also be a certain part of the evening
56:30 - 57:00 where there's room and time for spirituality and then you know the Priestess comes in the the winter the birthday yes vinti pray starts um there's holy smoke um the the the live musicians they lead the the birthday person into this different spectrum and then the family members mostly um the the sister or the mom or they also get on that level and
57:00 - 57:30 that's how I grew up every birthday party right so and when you're young you're like okay like I'm ready for my birthday party give me the holy smoke and when you're when you're when you're growing then you start to understand you're you're clicking like okay that's what happened to my sister that evening and then you start doing your research right um how was your own birthday party what did you experience there um well the last time that we've done it it was my fifth birthday party
57:30 - 58:00 yeah and that was amazing it's very very very young but I can vividly remember my sister's birthday party and she also has that same Heritage and I was just in awe but then there comes a certain moment in your life where you kind of lose the connection um and my last name is fabri I hardly use it because it's still connected to the Colonial history so it's bittersweet for me and then a few years ago I started doing research because I wanted to know uh more about my ancestors
58:00 - 58:30 because my family tree started at 1917 that's nothing right so then I did a research and now it starts at 1806 six wow which gave me a lot of power and I also learned that um the last Uprising during slavery on a plantation was the plantation where my ancestors were so I was like the activism it didn't start with my uncles in the
58:30 - 59:00 70s but it already started back then and that gave me so much power yeah to start my own healing yeah to overcome my own trauma yeah I started my everyday with with a meditation that's my ritual I'm a super thankful person and I'm still learning and I'm still you know getting to know myself and getting to know my ancestors but yeah just knowing who they are who they were gave me so much power they really feel like they're behind you exactly and then the last thing that I
59:00 - 59:30 want to share is uh from my grandma um they um were working on a wood Plantation they had to take wood from the jungle because the white folks could not go into the jungle because they would die right so so they treated that family line from my grandma better because you know or else they wouldn't go so they would actually give them a small fee and with that fee they could actually save money and then I discovered that they
59:30 - 60:00 already bought themselves free already in 1843 so 30 years prior to you know so that gave me so much strength because it's always the same Narrative of that they were victims and that they did not do someone else had to liberate them exactly but they took ownership they liberated themselves their whole line their whole future and they they were poor afterwards but it was worth it right what would you do better than any other conditions how far would you go to
60:00 - 60:30 claim your own Freedom that's so powerful and when I found that information I just started crying I didn't expect to cry because toxic masculinity but uh yeah it gave me so much power and there's more research to do I mean yeah it doesn't start at 1806 exactly yeah so um yeah do the research if you can I love that I really love hearing that and you know I think there's also something around these stories that get hidden in
60:30 - 61:00 the folds and people I think for a long time there's been a sense of like there's just no way to know it's like no actually we've been secretly documenting ourselves or finding ways you know there's ways you can find this stuff we just found out where there's this writer named Imani Perry who's an incredible scholar activist in the US and who I've looked up to for years and we'd met and everything we both did ancestry.com and we found out there were cousins third cousins and we're both Virgos we both
61:00 - 61:30 had 11 books out at the same time when we found out that we were cousins and we both have a thyroid condition and we both there was just like all these things we were like okay so what was going on with that common ancestor that led to this yeah thing right I was like to me it feels like something was in that person or those people in that moment of splitting when her folks went to Alabama and and some of our students stayed in the Carolinas and I now you know I'm
61:30 - 62:00 like if there's not enough research there's also like I'm I'm thinking of the work of Sadie Hardman that's like how can I remember the stories through me if I can't find it written down somewhere yeah yeah and try to write from that place like I don't know if you know Lucille Clifton's work no so Lucille Clifton was a black feminist poet uh writing a lot around the like 1980s and she did these poems that she called Partnerships with her enslaved ancestors because she would start waking up at like four or five o'clock in the morning with these poems
62:00 - 62:30 and these stories in her head that she's like I don't know where this comes from I didn't experience this but it was the Poetry of enslaved women and they're incredible poems but she's like it wasn't until she had let them she was like oh I have to surrender and let them come through because this is my research this is how I'm remembering yeah part of the story that I'm it's mine to tell exactly it's my time within that they're in right and I'm like I love that idea that like I really try to create from a place
62:30 - 63:00 of like I'm not trying to make something new um everything is here but I'm trying to reconstitute the material instead of this compelling for me to want to stay alive right because the thing I'm always dancing with is you know humans suck it's like why are we so sick toxic why are we so harmful why are we like when we're really not the vessels for the Earth yeah I'm like if we're not good for the earth I would choose the Earth and
63:00 - 63:30 so then trying to come back from that place and be like okay but what would make humans compelling pleasure being Birds aliens you know so collectiveness yeah yeah and then remembering the cycle turns me on the idea that I'm like oh someone in my legacy knew how to make this ritual with songs and they're showing me how they're doing it again they're they're with me or there they knew how to create these these looks they knew how to build these sculptures they knew how to even to critique right
63:30 - 64:00 they knew like I always loved thinking about that too that our our enslaved ancestors our ancestors who were disempowered they had very sharp critiques of what was happening they knew exactly what was going on and they knew how to put on a face that was like whatever you want to think about me I'm I'm dumb or I'm getting through the work or whatever but you know that still happens with the workers and then they turn like this [ __ ] has no money you know and I'm just like yeah we always have a sharp critique class doesn't inform having a sharp critique
64:00 - 64:30 class informs whether your critique is heard you know definitely and definitely I just love that idea that I'm like our ancestors were always having a lot of opinions and now we're just being exists already within us yeah um having said that um I think I would like to invite you to share some of your thoughts take it to the podium do you want to read that yeah
64:30 - 65:00 [Applause] okay um Isabel sorry I'm Gonna Break The Rules a little bit is it still breaking the rules if I tell you beforehand I don't know um I'm very very much surprised the language of our people is a language of four songs
65:00 - 65:30 you might have heard of one of them Ubuntu it's actually pronounced as if you break that down it says that the moon who stands for the beings the chinu stands for the things
65:30 - 66:00 the hanu is this space and the kunu is a possibility all creations or Essences in all forms and all that is falls under these tongues which speak to the spirit world and you can recognize the spirit world
66:00 - 66:30 of a tongue by the sound that fills your mouth with warm air and your ears with Melodies when you speak of it it's the the stem the stem it's the stem on the bud that grows off your tongue as your lips unfold
66:30 - 67:00 stands for all which was created it includes the living as well as the Dead the ancestors and the emuka The Messengers The mediators and the fixes
67:00 - 67:30 the sorcerers and the [ __ ] hmm all help the models organize their cute but fleeting dimension and the highest messenger imana is both air and flesh and is everywhere in hanu
67:30 - 68:00 foreign will not learn about all four tongues in its first few years of life especially not about the kunu the possibility the morals say that existing in a way that does not exist is difficult for a child to comprehend
68:00 - 68:30 so this kunu this possibility that stands for hope this kunu this possibility that stands for hope is something you cannot view or hold they tell the child but the child knows it can express and experience it almost like a spell
68:30 - 69:00 this kunu this hope comes from all things and sold by enchantment trees instruments animals bases pleasure all that is Jews and all that is water
69:00 - 69:30 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so when I think of black joy in conversation with emergence I think of this word for emerging as more than one
69:30 - 70:00 Multiplicity is an indication of quantity but it is more than that it means both quantity and destination like a deep world that you can sit in foreign I was talking to a friend when we were displaced and
70:00 - 70:30 um she said how are you I said I am well and she said I'm well too and I said I want us to be in the world too yes on the edge of Lake chivu children like me are born in a state of uggishi we are curious rebellious and because we are born at the water's edge we see
70:30 - 71:00 everything in life as fluid [Music] the mythology around this Lake considers that a witch kidnapped into the region by the Royal Court gave birth to that Lake by orgasm allegedly so now thousands of years of volcanic orgasmic
71:00 - 71:30 activity have caused an accumulation of hmm carbon dioxide in the depths of kivu making our birth water explosive
71:30 - 72:00 and so from the deep fresh water of that Lake from the deep fresh water of that Lake clouds of gas can suffocate livestock and people I came to understand how expensive the world is in that water my understanding was its own birth
72:00 - 72:30 my understanding was its own birth in three acts first screaming like amniotic fluid then screeching like holy water and later crying like the swell we crossed into Europe to start a new life in the abroad first screaming like amniotic fluid then screeching like holy water and later crying like the swell we crossed into the abroad
72:30 - 73:00 foreign I found myself hiding hiding under tables hiding standing next to the light hiding under tables standing next to the
73:00 - 73:30 light under these tables I drew portraits of grown-ups who visited our living room to discuss grown-up things with each other sticky things that I overheard but could not begin to understand under those tables I tried instead to capture the faces of grown-ups as side portraits
73:30 - 74:00 looking at an auntie or uncle in profile men not seeing them for all that they really were which made their horror stories less real too except for their eyes because the eyes always speak even from the side when I would crawl out from under the table and they would remember I was in the room I would see their full
74:00 - 74:30 Expressions again startled at my drawings I found ubinshi in clothes I wore my brothers and they were mined there were no boy clothes or girl clothes none of it made me feel like I was doing something wrong until Mouse began to grow on my 11 year old chest I
74:30 - 75:00 was given a pair of Hello Kitty pajamas from my favorite uncle excitedly walked into the Garden in my new pajamas and felt my nipples poking through the top of the pajamas I noticed the startled faces of my parents and that of my uncle who looked to the ground with his face folded finally and ultimately
75:00 - 75:30 I found uginshi in words words to embrace myself with to say all that has been left unsaid or left behind at the waters I write of homes to wrap my tongue around words to multiply myself where to begin she's not only a quantity but a destination a deep well that you can sit in
75:30 - 76:00 as a child I believed in ubinshi this magic in an embridled way I saw magic in all things I had no explanation Nation for magic
76:00 - 76:30 was why I could fly in my dreams why a wound heard less when my favorite auntie kissed it why a chicken kept running when its head was cut for Slaughter why birds found their way home at the beginning of Spring while my parents escaped death through the eye of a needle in Wartime but I was called to Womanhood
76:30 - 77:00 early words like luck for family and sin for my body came and took the place of magic thinking became a false belief imagining Freedom a thing of superstition
77:00 - 77:30 over the years I've learned that the way people Envision the future is often influenced by the limitations people know from their past [Music]
77:30 - 78:00 trauma is not an identity yet it is sometimes difficult to look beyond the comfort of Habitual pain we sometimes carry the weight of trauma for so long that we don't know who we are outside of suffering
78:00 - 78:30 are dignified emergent lives start at the borders of trauma and as resistance workers we have to be able to Envision The Day After the Revolution before we know what the
78:30 - 79:00 revolution is actually working towards the revolution in itself cannot be the goal future thinking is the audacity to dream and what makes this mindset a challenge is what it demands of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves to be post-revolutionary and self-evidently free which then poses the next question who do we want to be when we finally get to Freedom
79:00 - 79:30 [Applause]
79:30 - 80:00 you can break my rules anytime [Music] [Laughter] [ __ ] great this was this was beautiful thank you so much for sharing that thank you it's really wonderful thank you Amazon I it's not often that I as a moderator like I'm actually speechless
80:00 - 80:30 I don't also um yeah it is this is really touched me thank you [Music] um you know y'all take a breath with it I think that's a good idea maybe if you all want to also hold hands with someone nearby and we just received such a blessing
80:30 - 81:00 that sometimes one person can speak and invite everyone's lineage into the room and everyone's memories and everyone's wisdom I feel like you just offered us this let's take a deep breath in to receive it and exhale our gratitude
81:00 - 81:30 a deep breath in or the space thank you so much thank you thank you so much um I also don't know what a follow-up question is after this
81:30 - 82:00 um sorry I forgot how to moderate um but this is fine this happens [Laughter] I think this is wonderful um to anybody who would like to reply to what you just heard Adrian I mean you know I have to tell you something which is I have a one of my niblings the children of my sister is 13 and she's a novelist and a poet
82:00 - 82:30 and a ferocious rebellious fighter and somehow you have her face her spirit her energy like I'm looking at you and it's her I see and it makes me like listening to everything you were saying about what the child receives and what the child knows and what the child receives and the fluidity um this is actually the place most of my hope does come from now is the possibility in these children
82:30 - 83:00 even as I'm rageful and disappointed with where we are they're like [ __ ] I'm queer I'm free I'm fluid I'm uncontainable I'm bringing my rage into your face I'm I know what I'm talking about and I felt that in your body the combination of knowing what you were talking about while your whole body is shaking with the power of what is coming through you and the dignity that you gave
83:00 - 83:30 yourself to just be like wait I need another moment to breathe and feel it it's just so powerful it was so powerful and it's so healing for me to Witness thank you really thank you um you also talk about like in in the
83:30 - 84:00 picture just wrote you talk about these limitations drama that give us these limitations and how how can we move Beyond these there's a question you post yeah I was wondering also looking at the other speakers is this something you recognize the limitations of drama of labels of whatever foreign
84:00 - 84:30 affect your life so important for for it's a personal experience of course the intensity is different for each and every one of us and then if you have this this uh four-part language um it also you know ancestral healing that can help you through it and my wish
84:30 - 85:00 is for for people not to go through that by themselves but really you know sharing their truth yeah with others and finding the empowerment there it it takes a child to to it takes a village to raise a child and also you know to overcome trauma you don't have to do it by yourself there are people next to you that's yeah yeah I think also I had that yesterday
85:00 - 85:30 a few times and I had it now again a few times that all of a sudden I was not really hearing what was said and you have these few memories coming up and they did not really liked it also yesterday I did not really liked it yeah um and I have sometimes in work or when you do stuff I have that lady more and more that I sometimes get bit quite fast frustrated or angry with with
85:30 - 86:00 people where I'd have to do something they have this feeling like you already have enough of me or that you want to leave me alone this kind of feeling and then yesterday and today also again at this moment this is discomfort but also being like okay it's there I cannot yeah there's a there's a lot yeah yeah
86:00 - 86:30 it's there but you can't Escape no no but the funny thing sometimes you don't even feel like you're escaping something you're just frustrated I said to my sister last time I think maybe maybe I do have to have to talk with someone again because yeah I'm getting so angry so fast and I don't know why but yeah and then if these little things okay it's bubbling up yeah I mean I
86:30 - 87:00 you know every time I'm making my work right now I keep having this experience where I'm like I think I know myself um and then a flashback will come up or something will happen and I'm like oh yeah first of all that happened yeah and how did I survive that happening and how oh someone very young my seventh
87:00 - 87:30 you know my seven-year-old self I had it one time where a seven-year-old version of me stepped forward and it was like a whole fog behind her and she was like I made you this I made you this and everything's in there you don't have to worry about it it's in there yeah and I was like but I want to know what's in there and she goes in and she comes back out with a two-year-old me who and I was like okay I don't want to know I don't think I can know yet I don't
87:30 - 88:00 think I can handle it but then what I do know is that all of that was my brilliant self and the discomfort is being with all of that right that I'm like I don't want to know that my two-year-old self had to be brilliant yeah in that way yeah I don't want to know that my seven-year-old self had to be brilliant in that way yeah I don't want my ancestors to have to have been brilliant in that way it's very uncomfortable but there's the other side of it which is if if that hadn't happened I would
88:00 - 88:30 not be here and so yeah some part of the Reclamation again is like even that discomfort yeah or like the snippy you know like I got so angry at my collaborators at one point yeah you know that I broke I was like it's just too much you're asking me to feel everything in front of all these people I don't [ __ ] know these people why you know I was like I'm not going to I'm not on display I'm not emotions on display yeah and they're like you're not emotions on display you're yourself in a ritual and the ritual demands you to be
88:30 - 89:00 yourself which emotions are going to come yeah and if you don't want them to come that's fine but that will be the limitation of the ritual yeah wherever you're not willing to go no one else will go yeah I was like well God so we went there um yeah for those who miss it I'm sorry [Laughter] um we are we still have Gavin fiano oh
89:00 - 89:30 yes to listen to and um we have a there's a lot going on um we will first um Gavin fiano is going to close tonight so we're first gonna go um to um questions before before we do that I would uh there was one question at the end that you post who do we want to be when we finally get to Freedom um and I thought maybe we could all uh give a words that encapsulates what we want that future to look like
89:30 - 90:00 just as a promise for the future Maybe [Music] sorry I'm not I didn't didn't hurt [Laughter] um there's a there's a lot of feelings to that there's a lot of things that happen I do not blame you I also just okay we're not going against it but um who do we want to be when we finally get
90:00 - 90:30 to freedom and I thought it would be nice to maybe all share a word that kind of encapsulates how we think that freedom that future should look look like yeah I'll give you moments and whenever somebody's ready I would say for me Freedom would feel like belonging I would know that I as I am belong
90:30 - 91:00 the first word that came to mind was to be a butterfly I'm just gonna share it that is beautiful it's cool because right now the plant leaves behind you for me I'm like [ __ ] I see you yes this might be super like uh of like an obvious uh answer but the first and only
91:00 - 91:30 word in my head popping up is consistently black yeah and but I feel that in that being black on purpose yes to me it feels like something that even when I get to Freedom I still want I still will choose to wake up black because of all
91:30 - 92:00 I'm not gonna be tricked into thinking that that trauma is intrinsically linked to being black that's right um I just love the Dignity of being black um yeah and the last word for you but you um I think maybe for me
92:00 - 92:30 if you have to less manifesting or less um I think also for me hmm I think you also get really good at that when also when you're mixed if all these differently in your room and you're black and you get so good in in adapting to
92:30 - 93:00 all these little things and and it tricks your own mind um I think hmm put freed do not have to do not tricking not doing those things it just did it for you but I don't know how to existed maybe yes we exist without the burden of having and you know it's not like you think about it all the time but it just happens all the time it's reality yeah
93:00 - 93:30 yeah being less good and that's or not having to do that something like that makes me nauseous yeah I like that I'm like oh my God I want that so much it makes me uncomfortable yeah yeah okay so what we are going to do audience is that um I'm sure there are people with questions and we can do a few and then afterwards uh we will close with Kevin fiano's performance um I do want to say about that performance as a butterfly as a butterfly it's not a performer it better
93:30 - 94:00 be okay how do you got a couple minutes to make it into it that was the butterfly yes it is special special moments um I do want to say um it is a really beautiful and personal piece but it also deals with uh with sexual trauma so I just wanted to give you that as an audience that if there are people in the room that might not feel uh comfortable with that which is completely understandable and super valid then maybe
94:00 - 94:30 um I would also give you one to give you the space to uh to already leave the room um let's first go to questions whilst you make up your mind is there anybody with a question oh like off the room okay um I think we should haven't seen you guys try to do three is there anybody with a burning question I will go first go to you yeah wow I know I'm like there's so many people here right
94:30 - 95:00 um firstly just want to say thank you to all of you it's so nice to hear um black artists in the room together engaging so vigorously with their own work and each other's work um it's been really like heartwarming to hear this conversation so thank you to all of you um my question is in two parts this one question but two parts I want to be clear um my first question is um I'm curious about the work that you all produce this question for all of you
95:00 - 95:30 I've been returning to this quote from Octavia Butler like it scares me to death sometimes um always feeling um drawn to doing something that scares me I don't know what to do I don't know how to do and I think about a lot how do you guys sit in the fear of creating work that you don't even know where it's coming from like what it even is like how do you lean into that um and Adrian I was fortunate enough to be an initiating to feel a thing yesterday and I still don't have the
95:30 - 96:00 language for what I experience and I don't think I will and I think that's a good thing actually and I'm happy about that I'm just curious for you like because you talked about how you sort of receive songs and like it speaks to you like I think it's similar to me and something is speaking to me now and it feels it started off as like a hum but now it's like a whisper like how do you nurture at the beginnings of it so it becomes like a rule that you you properly hear it thank you thank you for that
96:00 - 96:30 maybe start with Adrian sorry um yeah I mean I I will say this you know there's this beautiful Audrey Lord quote that's like I'll paraphrase it's basically like you're going to be afraid anyway so speak and I think when it comes to this work from for me to feel a thing um like I've written so many words down and I try to be very personal and
96:30 - 97:00 present in everything I make but this feels like the most personal thing I've ever done in my life in part because every part of it is really scary to me like saying to a room full of people come listen to these songs I recorded on my voice memo I mean every single person that was a part of this piece is the expert at what they do right each singer is one of the best singers on earth and the band is like the best band
97:00 - 97:30 and the director is like an award-winning director everyone is like the best and I'm over here like I was a theater kid and uh I haven't done this for 25 years I don't know what my voice is going to sound like but you know will you do this I just want to like it has been so terrifying every single step of it has been so terrifying and especially the singing like literally every time we're gonna do it I'm like I get cottonmouth I forget how to breathe I'm like I can't sing like
97:30 - 98:00 these people sing I don't know what to do and but the thing you just asked like how do you make something into a roar what I find is that if I just tell someone else like even one other person that's how this started I got locked out I was being a doula for one of my friends and she had to take for Danny out of my dear friends and she's taking her little baby to the doctor's appointment so they I took them out I'm in my pajamas I take them out put the
98:00 - 98:30 baby in the car close the car go back to go in the house and I'm locked out in my pajamas no phone nothing and it's like [ __ ] now they're going to be two hours at least so I'm sitting on the porch and I sang the whole time I'm just sitting on the porch like singing in a whole situation is happening inside my head I just told someone that that happened one person and she was like you know you should talk to someone about this like it's like my therapist she's like no like a creator but I kept telling one person and what I have found is oh you only need like one
98:30 - 99:00 other person to believe in your potential and that is like just a little Ray of sunlight on it and then people will remember that so over the years people kept asking like what happened with the music that you were don't you make music and like anyone I tell like oh I don't think they're like you sing all the time like what are you talking about but my identity for myself is I can't do that and I don't do that so last night that's when I say it was like one of the best nights of my life I was on that microphone like I was a singer and I was
99:00 - 99:30 singing my heart out and I literally have no idea what it sounded like but I know that I was having the [ __ ] time of my [ __ ] life and so it doesn't matter right and the winty Priestess that's what she said to me too she was like I don't know about singing in front of all these people and then she's like Anyway here's my song and she just like you know and I was just like right like even she even everyone is like I don't even all the singers when I would talk to them they're like girl I'm the same way I don't know if what's going to come out but you you do it anyway so I think there has to be like the desire has to
99:30 - 100:00 be just a little bit bigger than the fear the fear is going to still be there but if you find the thing that's like I desire this so much and I really have lost so many people in this last period of my life like I'm always with my ghosts everything my novellas are all written with characters they're all ghosts everyone is someone that has died that I love and I'm trying to continue their life somehow and but that also instigates me because I'm like I don't know how much time I actually have left my body is deteriorating faster than I
100:00 - 100:30 want to acknowledge and the world is a toxic environment to live in and I feel everything so I always have this sense of urgency even if I have a hundred years it's not going to be enough time for everything I want to make and create and do so I better get to work making it and doing it and the fear I'm like I can give my life to the fear and spend my whole life never letting anyone see the things I want to make or I can give my life to the things I want to make the desire and the fear will just come along with me and it's there you know and the
100:30 - 101:00 fear is also aliveness right like I'm not scared to do something if I don't give a [ __ ] about it you know I'm like oh yeah [ __ ] I'll show up in like I don't even do anything I don't care about so I don't know what it is but I don't have you know like I literally I quit any job that I'm I'm this person I'm just like I'm not gonna waste my life I'm not I'm not going to waste it and when I do this kind of work I'm like this is living like this is living even if the question I'm asking is like am I
101:00 - 101:30 alive the answer is yes you know and I think that that's the only thing to spend our lives on amen but you asked a question that you wanted to hear the other artist answer also I'm sorry I went on so long um I guess it's sort of following on from what you said about sort of when you're creating newness work that
101:30 - 102:00 doesn't exist new worlds like how do you feel into the fear of that kind of like unknown of that and still birth it um anyway and what's what's that conversation look like for yourself with yourself foreign it's a drive it's an interesting conversation um it's almost something like optimistic fear or fearful pleasure
102:00 - 102:30 it's something I don't know for me I always know that feeling will come because if it's not there and everything just flows like just flowing it's it's it's it's it's it almost feels like I'm not being genuine it needs to excite me it needs to be something that comes from my core it's an urgency if I don't create it that way if I don't write that story a part of my core will die so that's that's yeah a
102:30 - 103:00 certain feeling that I always have to find yeah I also wanted to say that if you if you do put it out for me at least uh any pieces are so so personal for me it also makes my existence safer or more rooted so we are sort of smart but all these
103:00 - 103:30 things are also in your head and it's getting something too much and when you put it out it makes your own existence also uh I think more groundnut or bro yeah so once that's happening maybe it's also getting less scary but it's also it's so super smooth yeah yeah we have another question here
103:30 - 104:00 hi it's a bit scary to take the mic because I'm a bit on the verge of crying ever since yesterday every second of the day today because of you Adrian have you left yourself cry today have you let yourself cry yet yes I definitely did I definitely did I'm just I'm I need to be able to talk right now and I'm sorry this is not going to be short and sweet but I just need to take a moment to thank you with the presence of other
104:00 - 104:30 people because what you gave to me yesterday was so fundamental hmm I was with Clarisse a few weeks ago [Music] why you ever she's more than a friend and then a lover I still don't have any name for it but we'll maybe get there um and so and Maurice okay business person I can be vulnerable with and I
104:30 - 105:00 screamed out to her I'm so tired of this endless grief labor yeah and yesterday I was on the dumb square with 4 000 people on stage because I'm a human rights activist for Refugee Rights I was a displaced child is a sister of mine that I talk about this a lot and I'm the founder of refugee Millennials Millennials like myself who have a refugee background and want to reclaim their power
105:00 - 105:30 I'm also an Afghan woman um well also often when you're from Afghanistan you suffer abuse and I Witness a country that I'm from with oppressed women that are having the worst conditions towards women in the world and I have this background in a country that cusses out refugees on The Daily
105:30 - 106:00 so imagine the grief labor we have to go through on the daily with your existence here that goes beyond imposter syndrome and so I saw you yesterday with a light on you and I was wearing a fierce outfit because I was like let's do gospel with high heels and everything and I was like I'm going to take these heels off so I took them off and I was like I'm going to sit across Adrian and I said across to you and
106:00 - 106:30 at a certain point near the end you asked what do you need for your healing process and I heard my body is mine and for the longest time I feel I felt like my body is not mine because it's been claimed by so many power people in power especially with the background that I have and I want to break that chain yes and you said once I think um when a
106:30 - 107:00 black woman orgasms the world shakes I did say that something like that and I thought whatever that's so inspiring when Afghan women orgasm yes I think similar thing happens yes come on now thank you thank you because now I can dream of a day after the revolution of what you just gave to me but I know you were gonna have conversations about this
107:00 - 107:30 The Day After the Revolution to be able to dream of that and my question is my question is yes we need more of what happened yesterday everyone I spoke afterwards they were like we need to do this not every day or every week because it's intense but how do you want us to move forward with this you have disciples
107:30 - 108:00 we're ready we're 12. yeah answer we where where can we start yeah thank you thank you [Applause] um what is your name first of all can I thank you for your
108:00 - 108:30 testimony [Music] um you know I think what you just did is like what I want is for people to go everywhere and tell the truth um and make people be with the truth um and let our voices shake and like I'm all the time I'm trying to figure out how do I feel in real time like my my story my life I've been so good at not feeling in real time I
108:30 - 109:00 my my loved ones all know I think that it you know there's one of the songs on the show it takes days to open up the space to feel a thing like that's me it really takes me sometimes a month and I'll look back and I'm like I think I was angry about that you know so just on a human level like I hope that everyone who encounters my work this the invitation is like oh recognize whatever is yourself that we're
109:00 - 109:30 connected we're having these similar experiences and the the LIE is that they're separate or the LIE is that they have to be in competition with each other and it's like I I have to acknowledge that coming to this space you know I was like they're like you're gonna be in a room full of white Dutch people and and the way they the reverberation of that was as if their humanity and mind can't [Music] dance
109:30 - 110:00 but I come from a lineage of dancing across those separations I've come from a great love story so I know there's something else that's true Your Existence my existence is that right is like he is it was all a lie so that's one thing is like telling the truth in the face of the lie or any space where someone is asking you to lie and I think if the society falls apart because of that good I think that's good I think that this is
110:00 - 110:30 a time when like a lot of [ __ ] up systems actually need to fall apart and we need to tell the truth second thing is my vision for that piece for the to feel a thing ritual is that it actually we've we've been playing with it and developing it and we're making sheet music everything I'm like writing down like here's what I'm saying and not like a script but more like a a score like an instruction so that it's like okay here you welcome the people in and now we
110:30 - 111:00 sing this song and then here you tell the people what a ritual is and what is emergence and then we do the tuning and now you testify and then we do this song and then you you bring in your science fiction ancestor and then we do this song so that it's like ultimately it'll be something that people My Hope Is that people are like we did it in a church basement we did it in a field we did it in our school that we just did that people I'm like I think this is something that I believe
111:00 - 111:30 everyone needs something like this it doesn't have to be this one but some variation on a ritual and and it's rooted in when I was doing these emergent strategy immersions in 2019 before the pandemic my job my thought was I'm going to go around the world and get everyone together for these four day intense deep dives into emergent strategy and then covid was like no you're not you're gonna sit still and you're going to try not to die while a ton of people around you die
111:30 - 112:00 that's what you're gonna do and then you're gonna slowly come back into the world and No One's Gonna Stop dying but we're going to stop wearing masks I don't know right it's just such a time so that was like I have to figure out how to get this thing for day experience because what kept coming up in the four days was the grief ritual was all anybody really wanted everyone would come and we'd be like you can break into small groups everyone can do whatever you want to do and they would come back and be like we have a grief ritual we have a grief song we have a
112:00 - 112:30 grief this we have a grief that I was like [ __ ] that's that's what I say when I say we're at the beginning of this great turning of ourselves the weight of slavery the weight of capitalism the weight of colonization the weight of these things is has had us completely flattened as a species like we do not understand how flat we are until we begin to expand back into a part of ourselves and then all of a sudden it's like wait like last
112:30 - 113:00 night I was like I'm much more than I thought I was like if I open myself this way I'm unflattened like I I felt like us were filling the whole room and spirit was filling all of us and I felt I don't know I was like I didn't know that was in me but I think if we did this ritual all around the world and and I don't have to be there that's also something that matters to me I like to be at home I like to be I mean I really tell people this I'm like an introverted person who
113:00 - 113:30 likes to be at home high on my couch I love playing Nintendo switch I like to be a person so I'm like I'm not I you know people are like I'm your disciple you know I'm like but I'm not a priestess I'm not a I'm not a goddess I'm I mean I am a goddess but like amongst a group of friends who call ourselves a goddess you know like nothing but in isolation and that feels very important to me that I'm not creating a condition in which I have to be apart from people and they have to get something from me that they don't
113:30 - 114:00 have in themselves but I'm trying to constantly be like how do I feel something come through and be like here y'all here I found something that everyone can access and it wouldn't work without Clarisse and it wouldn't work without my sister and it wouldn't work without Holland Fest inviting me and saying hey here's some money do you want to develop this light tree in the middle of something you know like so I that iterative part that's the piece for me and I'm trying to get there as soon as I can like to
114:00 - 114:30 the everyone has it and Troy my collaborator and thank God for collaborators Choice like but we need to get it to the standard and I'm like it's fine people sing the songs it's fine it's great like literally we sat in a circle in Oregon like this practicing it and I was I was orgasmically satisfied I was like this is amazing they just sang these songs that came through my head I'm [ __ ] happy he was like but imagine if it was 30 people singing them imagine if it was 300 people singing them last night we had 500 people singing them and maybe in
114:30 - 115:00 St Louis we'll have a stadium of people singing them and noni she was like you're thinking too small what if a whole city would do this ritual together like then what would happen I don't know that I don't know but I want to say that that to me the goal is like I wish the whole world would pause for a year and do grief rituals and then see what happens wow yeah guys we are incredibly over time we
115:00 - 115:30 have like half I was like does time exist in here I have no idea what's happening well you it is it is I'm like is anyone hungry we will get through tomorrow unfortunately we're all invited to to stay here and also stay at the bar and talk to each other but I need his work of course that's what we're going okay now I was like but I need to make we're two hours into this conversation and finally we get to uh listen to a beautiful piece
115:30 - 116:00 um who's been double blessed by Beyonce and a kind reminder for everyone who would like to leave before Oh yes I think assistive time thank you for coming thank you for coming thank you for taking care of yourself yes um yeah we do oh I was I was I said before that Gavin fianos work is very personal and it's
116:00 - 116:30 about sexual trauma as well um she had a question for her okay um is it also okay if we do it after yeah okay cool [Laughter] okay all right why must my chest produce these little Sprouts of hair why must my armpits generate a sweet and
116:30 - 117:00 sour pool of sweat why must my muscles pop like this and my voice sounds so low oh hello penis I love the sudden I am grown why must I operate during the day when my soul awakes at night why must I be perfect these rules are all too tight why must I be flamboyant and free why must the world see me when
117:00 - 117:30 I love to hide I know I gotta change but some things must remain the same this energy I pray will pierce through every day and age ancestral Power and Light covered by the blood this is my time been so quiet for too long I embrace my growth ancestral Power and Light covered by the blood this is my time been so quiet for too long I embrace my growth I embrace my
117:30 - 118:00 growth I embrace my growth I am a small flower a small boy flower but I look like a big flower a big man flower and since I look like a big flower people tell me I need to be a big flower I need to let go of all my boyish ways my big brother he already a real big man flower I am nothing like my brother he is 11 years old there and some more hours when
118:00 - 118:30 people try to discriminate me I pretend to be a strong big flower only then I imitate my big brother that big man flower with his deep voice and convincing charm he is my example of what a big man flower is supposed to be but it was my big brother who yelled at me during an argument he said gav you're not a baby flower anymore you better head out and spread your wings and fly I said I try I try I try so hard to take a
118:30 - 119:00 leap into the sky but I have all these Millennial issues that I have to deal with so my rose petals are not ready yet they are still two meat still too small still too green still too mild but I do want to be ready I so so want to be ready as I mentioned before the age gap between my brother and I is 11 years so he's practically a boomer okay Boomer and like a boomer he diminished my answer he didn't understand what I am going through okay Boomer as he was
119:00 - 119:30 judging my life I started judging his life I'm a Libra so I like to create balance [ __ ] you Boomer I also like to destroy and [ __ ] everything up if that yet again will bring balance so while he was screaming I decided that he would no longer have access to me goodbye Boomer luckily my mom the real Boomer will always have access to me hey baby hi Mommy how was your day at school I liked it is that so uh-huh I wonder how much
119:30 - 120:00 you liked it I liked it a whole lot that much yeah a whole lot lot was the teacher nice to you yeah were the children nice to you yeah they made fun of your beautiful skin when they do that I just go away and I play with my friends Mommy will go to school and talk to the teacher about that are you excited for your birthday yes I am how old am I going to be
120:00 - 120:30 aren't you a smart boy yes aren't you a bright boy yes aren't you an intelligent boy yes didn't you learn how to count yes yes yes yes so count for me then how old are you now one two three four so how how old are you going to be in 14 days one two three four five good job baby five wow we're going to throw you a big party all your cousins cousins are going to be there am I going to get some
120:30 - 121:00 presents yes you will but only if you are a good boy am I a good boy mommy yes baby and because you're a good boy we got you a cake from your favorite Disney movie what's your favorite Disney movie The Little Mermaid yay thank you Mommy thank you thank you thank you so much is that the cake you wanted yeah yeah yeah for sure thank you welcome baby at five years old I was the happiest child because I hope to get a mermaid cake and you know what I got it I also
121:00 - 121:30 hoped and wished for something very very stupid at that age I wish to become a grown-up and you know what I got it look at me now a full-grown human being nobody told me how hard this would be nobody gave me heads up I saw my brother and sister enjoying life but nobody told me that underneath those Smiles they were carrying the burden of responsibility pressure a chronic lack of time sorrow and pain do you
121:30 - 122:00 experience the same why I want to know if you experience the same I need to know that I am not the only one who is happy but also exhausted at the same time I'm exhausted what the [ __ ] the truth truth is I'm tired I'm tired of being able to do so much and in the process of wanting more and more I also get more and more and more and I am so full and greedy for life but when is it enough when will it be enough I don't cry that often
122:00 - 122:30 look at all this testosterone I'm the kind of guy that will acknowledge being toxic move on and sleep just fine don't judge me don't judge me okay honesty is the first step to a healing process and I am so honest with y'all right now but I do cry sometimes and I bet you cry as well sometimes I don't know why you might cry sometimes but I cry for all the children who have been sexually abused I belong to the black community the
122:30 - 123:00 lgbtqia plus Community the Millennials the Millennials the hip-hop gospel and R B Community the I see spirituality in everything community and since 1999 I also belong to the sexual abuse community all that you touch you change all that you change changes you I was touched by a molester so I changed and because I changed I had to take reflective adaptive baby steps while
123:00 - 123:30 changing did my molester change who knows what I do know I saw how it changed my world my mind my heart my fantasy my family even parts of my soul even though I feel that my soul has been on this journey before all that you change changes you huh okay okay I was 11 years old when I was sexually abused it happened during recess I ran away with blood in my underwear I sat
123:30 - 124:00 down next to my classmates with blood in my underwear and after a while I confessed to my teacher there was blood in my underwear my mom and I visited the doctor so I lied about the blood in my underwear the conclusion of my mom was that I was growing the conclusion of my doctor was that it was not adding up it took me four years before I could let my sister know what happened it took me 19 years to call the police and asked how
124:00 - 124:30 pressing charges would work it took me 21 years before I could write about my story My Truth as I took my time I had the urge to adjust I could no longer stay quiet or else I would die I had to create an emergent strategy the only thing was that the first part of this was all by myself when I felt like I was healing not healed I decided to write a play about my truth I needed to claim agency
124:30 - 125:00 over that sexual trauma always walking around like you were the prey the victim I had to reflect take control over what happened and tell it my way the best way and as I started writing and casting actors and directing this play and touring with this play all of the sudden I had found the collective the only thing was the collective did not really know how autobio biographic display was the lead actress called display blood
125:00 - 125:30 sent a young woman Spiritual Awakening found through guidance of her ancestors she had to overcome sexual trauma in order to continue to live life I cried during this process I cried for 10 minutes with my family at the premiere and the large group of audience members cried in front of me after seeing this play they confessed to me that they had to been molested some of them wanted to bring their family members to the show because they were
125:30 - 126:00 not able to make their family feel what they felt some of them wanted to close the room that had been open again I never knew that this would be the effect I had to change I had to adjust or else I would die from the inside I had to answer a natural urge to come up with a strategy in order for a key part of my being to continue to exist the state of errat of silence is not a healthy state with this play I gave myself and all the other children who
126:00 - 126:30 did survive and all the children who died um a specific way to speak to cry to sing out into the universe I did intentionally create this play but it was not my intention to evoke these deeper emotions I wanted to change the narrative I wanted to change the Dutch style of theater place I wanted to change the faces you always see in the public space
126:30 - 127:00 the next step for me is to create theater plays that really instigate change so that a specific audience can go back home and live a better life it sounds big but I know I can do it just not alone but with the collective a very important part of emergent strategy our sorrow cars out the space for our joy our sorrow carves out the space for our joy our sorrow carves out the space
127:00 - 127:30 for our joy therefore I let my grown responsibility create the space for my youthful heart even when I am tired I want to get back up even when I feel like I am an ugly duckling I will find others who also feel like they are ugly ducklings even when we are not we are beautiful even when the status quo does not see that in this [ __ ] up World there is [ __ ] up Beauty and I choose to be alive I love life I want to live
127:30 - 128:00 so every evening I decide over and over and over that the next morning again I will live hey Mommy yes baby can I ask you a question sure what's on your mind remember my fifth birthday yes of course we had three different outfits for you 150 guests came you were running around and shaking your booty like there was no tomorrow of course I
128:00 - 128:30 remember what about it why did you buy me that mermaid cake why was I allowed to have that big mermaid cake why wouldn't we get you that Birdman cake that's what you wanted duh you were that Mermaid from the day you were born from the day you started singing before you could speak from the day you started performing on the tram on your bike in front of your classmates at church from
128:30 - 129:00 the day you told me you were going to Paris all by yourself as a teenager from those moments on your soul already spoke out unto all of us that no matter what would come on your path no matter how grown you would be you would always Embrace Joy you are Joy don't mind people questioning your energy your sexuality your mind your skin color you have always embraced joy and I am sure that no matter which body your soul will take as its new instrument even when you
129:00 - 129:30 become an animal a grumpy Grandpa even when you become a rigid stone a sperm cell or a stubborn small boy flower you will always Embrace Joy thank you Adrian Murray Brown for inspiring me [Applause]
129:30 - 130:00 [Music] [Applause] you feel like my sister laughs thank you for that Gavin fiano that was really beautiful thank you so much for sharing that with us tonight
130:00 - 130:30 if it's all right with a room I know that there's a question here but I would like to ask you ask it later I think this time to end the evening I thank you so so much for listening I want to talk my I want to thank my beautiful guests and of course thank you so much for being here for being in space with us thank you so much you guys are making me like snort cry
130:30 - 131:00 I um I just have to say I just really didn't expect all of this like whole experience um it feels like we've been in a cave for a long time kind of like away from each other and I can't believe I didn't know you all you know but you all feel like a part of me
131:00 - 131:30 and I I feel like a part of you like I feel more alive and more myself now because I know all of you and our work is weaving together I even feel I hope I can say this correctly that I'm always thinking about death and I just had one of my dear friends who died by Suicide um and and I have been wrestling with the fact that I can feel his peace
131:30 - 132:00 like this deep peace that he didn't have when he was alive as a black queer boy he didn't have someone who was like yes to the mermaid cake and yes to the Joy and it makes me feel like the Peace of my own death is possible when I come across this kind of art because I'm like the river is flowing and I've done my part to move one rock
132:00 - 132:30 out of the way and you're doing your parts to move the rocks out of the way so we find each other and like those who try to genocide us still try they [ __ ] failed because look at how we're flowing with each other so I am so grateful you give me a good life and a good death if you know what I mean and I just love you all and I hope we're a family forever now
132:30 - 133:00 you guys [Applause]