KIRYA: Hi, welcome and thank
you so much for tuning in,
I'm Kirya Traber Curator
in Residence with Hi-ARTS.
I am a light brown,
light brown skin
femme woman with big hoop
earrings on a yellowish top,
behind me is a pink chair
and there are some
plants on shelves on
the wall behind me.
Today we're lucky to have
interpretation, ASL interpretation
by Brandon Kazen-Maddox
and a little bit about Hi-ARTS.
Hi-ARTS is a leading organization
within the urban arts movement.
For 20 years Hi-ARTS has
consistently broken new ground
advancing urban art by empowering
artists to develop bold new works,
while creating a lasting and
positive impact on urban communities.
Our work is focused on serving
as an incubation, development
and production space for
new and innovative works,
facilitating educational
programs and opportunities
that increase access and
diversity in the arts,
and working through the arts
and across sectors
to address key issues
impacting our communities.
And so today we're really excited
to reveal in a way, SKY LAB,
which is our new virtual
residency program
for artists who are interested
in developing work
beyond the four walls of a traditional
studio or theater space.
As an incubation and innovation
space SKY LAB allows artists
with a community engaged
practice rooted in performance,
to take their ideas to the next stage
through a remote development process.
And we are introducing this
by way of having a really
privileged conversation
with our first,
our inaugural SKY LAB Artist
in Residence, Ebony Noelle Golden.
Ebony is an artist, scholar and cultural
strategist from Houston, Texas,
currently based in Harlem.
She devises site specific ceremonies,
live art installations,
creative collaborations
and arts experiments
that explore and radically
imagine viable strategies
for collective black liberation.
And if that weren't enough,
we are joined by
her friend and collaborator,
Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
Alexis is a queer
black troublemaker
and a black feminist
love evangelist
and an aspirational cousin
to sentient beings.
Her work in this lifetime
is to facilitate infinite
unstoppable ancestral love in practice.
Welcome Ebony and Alexis.
EBONY: Thank you.
It's really
a pleasure to be here.
ALEXIS: Yes, so grateful to be here.
KIRYA: And I'm, you know,
try not to fangirl too much
because I'm a follower
of both of your work.
Ebony in the performance space
and Alexis in the literary space.
So for those who don't know
you as your bio said,
have these great connections
to ancestral practice
and that shows up in the
world often as text
and then Ebony your work shows up most
often in the world as performance.
I'm curious about your connection and
relationship as artists in
different mediums,
your shared values and practices.
What's the story of your
collaborative relationship?
How did you come to work together
and how are you working together now?
EBONY: Alexis I want you to talk first.
ALEXIS: I would love to,
I would love to.
Our relationship is an ongoing miracle,
it is many years in the making
within this lifetime
and many lifetimes in the making.
And so what is it maybe 15 years ago?
EBONY: It was longer, you know,
I've been here 15 years, closer to 20.
ALEXIS: Wow, wow.
So like,
yeah, we grew up in this.
So, we met each other in
Durham, North Carolina
and I mean really, really
connected around poetry very
early in our friendship,
but what I'll say to me is
a defining experience
of our creative collaboration for me,
is getting to collaborate
in real time
as the co-chairs of an artistic
response committee,
that is part of ubuntu which
is a women of color survivor led
coalition to end gendered violence
that really rose up in Durham in
response to the Duke lacrosse rape case
and it was Kai Lumumba Barrow,
another one of our loved
ones favorite artist
who said I want an artistic
response to this violence.
And Ebony and I were the people who were
like we will, we will hold the space,
you know, we will hold the space
of this ongoing response.
And so what that meant
and the things that,
the things that it was our
impulse to do at that moment,
I think still shape our collaboration
to this very second.
Because what did we do?
We said,
okay, we wanna go back
to the poetry of Asha Bandele
and Ntozake Shange and Audre Lord
and we want to create performative
versions of those works
for people to be able to think
through what we're responding to,
which is the pervasive sexual violence
that exists in this society.
And we're still returning
to text.
Right.
We're still returning to
text from those from,
from our foremothers
to this very moment.
We, we knew that what we needed to do
had to be accessible to
all of our communities,
we knew that it had to engage,
play and ceremony.
We engaged space very particularly,
I remember as in the sanctuary
of the first black church
in Durham which is Hayti
which is actually right out my window
right now where I'm sitting.
And we were also engaging an adaptation
of technology at the same time,
because I don't know how many
blogs we created Ebony.
EBONY: Blogs and blogs and blogs.
ALEXIS: Blogs and blogs.
It was
like every idea we had,
we wanted it to be
digitally accessible
at the same time that it was very
grounded in physical space.
I mean all the things I'm saying,
can describe the work in this,
in this moment right now.
And so I feel like we
were cultivating that
and we were cultivating that
because we were just
continuing to ask
ourselves the question,
what does our community need right now
and what do we have?
The number one thing that we
had is our ancestral memory
and our black feminist traditions
of people who have been responding
to all sorts of crisis,
but also, also responding
to the huge deep love
they and we have for our communities
creatively for so long.
KIRYA: And let's bring the name of this
current project, go ahead Ebony sorry.
EBONY: That was, that was 15 years ago.
But more like 17 years ago,
we were both members of Spirit House.
We are both members (CROSS TALK).
That preceded the Duke Lacrosse and
the National Day of Truth Telling
work that we did deeply for an
extended period of time.
ALEXIS: Yeah.
So it was, it was that
as a major collaboration,
but before that it was this,
you know, this, this cultural
collaboration through Spirit House
and the work of Spirit House that took
us to the United States Social Forum,
that took in Atlanta and Detroit,
that took us I don't know if
you went Alexis physically,
but you were there intellectually
and spiritually
for Highlander and Alternate Roots.
I know you did come to Roots Week.
So it was, it was, you know, I think
it's important to say that,
that I believe that we
would have met each other
and, and, you know,
work together anyway,
but Spirit House as a, as a, as a,
as a cultural elai if you will,
as an artistic elai and a political
you know, portal space
brought, brings all kinds
of folks magnetizes
to that energy, that organization
and we become family.
So we go quickly from being
people who were doing
interesting things in Durham,
to a family we call ourselves tribe
and there is a lot of work in that.
And i think i'll say just, you know,
just, just as a bridge to what does
that have to do with now, you know.
In within Spirit House there are
so many brilliant folks.
Right.
And as a person who calls
Durham a home and,
but lives in New York City and came here
for more school and other adventures,
you know, it has been important for
me to stay connected to home.
And when I think about Alexis,
I think about home.
Right.
You know, just period point blank
and that, and a home in a rigorous
way in a layered and textured way,
you know, home is not
just structures,
but its people and what
people have taught you
and what people have brought you,
and how people have healed you whether
they were sitting next to you or not.
You know, and that to me is I think,
critical because collaboration,
especially among folks that walk in
and move in the world like Alexis and I,
it starts with a project.
Right.
It's like, oh, you're cool, you're dope,
Oh, I think you're cool and dope,
let's do cool dope things together
and there is layers
and layers and layers
of depth and growth
and shift and change
that go, that have gone into why.
Talk about fangirl, I mean Alexis is,
is a dear friend and
I'm a fan.
Right.
And also Alexis is my
teacher, you know,
among, among, you know, all
of the other things too.
So there is an accountability that's
rooted in this collaboration,
that's just like, I see how
people do art in New York City,
they're not doing that to my sister.
If I say me, you know what I'm saying?
Like there is a layer of, of expectation
that isn't about art making,
that isn't, is about being in family
and that is the collab, the
collaboration is not the art.
The collaboration is as, is family first
and then because family people
and family do all kinds of things,
how can I be in right relationship
with a family member
who has this movement work in the world?
Well, I wanna just see that movement
work in the world
be more and more and more,
how can I do that?
Well, Alexis is prolific
and so it was one book,
then two books, then three books which,
today I was listening to
a podcast you posted
where you said, actually
this is not a trilogy,
it's a triptych of books
that happened to all,
have been published by these people,
but they are doing lots of
different works and ceremonies.
Right so.
Well, because Alexis
keeps writing books, you know,
why should I do anything else
but figure out a way to
continue to have people engage these
ceremonies, these textual ceremonies.
What else do I need to do as a
performer as a maker of things?
Why?
You know, so it's that kind of thing.
KIRYA: Yeah.
I mean, that kind
of thing needs a lot of things.
ALEXIS: It's profound.
KIRYA: But mostly what you're grounding
which, which is apparent in your bios
and anyone who follows
your work is that,
as you just said Ebony it's
not art for art's sake,
it's art as, as home as
political home,
as site of practicing
new ways of thought,
of new ways of being in
relationship with each other.
Art is a practice space as much as it
is about the, the creative craft.
I wanna ground us a little
bit in this current work
In the Name Of... that you're
developing through SKY LAB.
We'll talk another, in
another conversation
about some of the specifics
about what it means right now
to develop in this virtual laboratory.
But one of the things that
you said about it
in conversations that we've had Ebony,
is calling it a work of or in
the lineage of black eco feminism
which is something that sort of
intuitively makes a lot of
sense and aligns for me,
but it's not, it's not a framing
that I think we're often
given in the popular discourse.
So I'm curious a little bit more
about what this black eco
feminism might mean to you,
I wanna just offer a little bit,
I got to peek at some text that
Alexis wrote about June Jordan,
who developed these plans
for a Sky Rise in Harlem.
But I had never heard
of an incredible full
utopian in the complex
sense of that word vision
for a redevelopment of
this, of this area,
that was then through,
you know, means that
we can talk about maybe or not,
co-opted by a sort of a white
supremacist male gaze.
But the plan itself has these really
visionary ideas about space and place
as a site of reinvention
and re-imagining
of relationships of black identity
and you argue Alexis of queerness of...
All of that.
So what about black places and spaces,
what about this black ecofeminism,
where did that start to become a sort of
site of work for you both,
what does it mean right now in
this work that you're working on?
What might we how might
we ground ourselves
in that if it's a new term for us?
EBONY: I will start with this.
So I mean again my understanding of the
concepts that I wouldn't have known
about June Jordan's Sky Rise
if Alexis didn't tell
me about this like a
month and a half ago.
Right, we were we weren't even talking
about this project when Alexis mentioned
that and was like oh and here all of
these things you should read, right,
here's your medicine.
There's always a prescription
of a book with Alexis.
And so this is the thing right and
I love you for dear one. [LAUGHING]
But here's the thing like,  you know
Kirya this I'm looking up
and out but I really should
be looking right here.
But I need to, I need to be in,
I need to look in space.
But here's the thing I
wanna say as a person
who finds the theater building
as not less and less
critical and important.
For political reasons, we have to
complicate these institutional spaces.
And I mean buildings and structures
we must. Theater is one of them.
But I also think that we also need to
complicate this in terms of
higher quote, unquote, higher education spaces.
Our ways of liberation don't fit inside
of them don't fit on those stages.
They can be...
Something can happen
there but the fullness, the grandness,
the radicality of what it means for a
black woman femme gender nonconforming
person human to be fully
liberated in a rigorous way.
Those institutions don't deserve
the magnitude of that
if you ask me
They can participate
as allies and accomplices
but really that work of being a
liberated black woman for me and my
identity deserves
to be with the trees and the stars
and the ocean and the garden and the
river and we have to go outside in a way
where people can be there and be safe
and be comfortable and be in their
own skin and be pushed
and nourished and nurtured to new
awakenings and pathways.
KIRYA: So liberation not just from
white institution as an idea but the
physical parts. EBONY: The physical
EBONY: Physical, all of all of the
political things that get mapped
on to that?
Yes, yes and but I need for this
black woman-ness this
black liberation-ness to
be in the daylight.
ALEXIS: Mmh, yeah.
EBONY: And what that means for me
is to put work on streets
in public spaces
and gardens and parking lots.
You know, so to bring all of that to
bear when June Jordan says no
more sharp edges.
That is an architectural mandate but
it's also a political and economic
mandate, right, no more sharp edges.
We had a little technical difficulty
but we're gonna get right back into it.
Ebony, please continue.
EBONY: Yeah, so you know
the thing that I want
to continue to be investigating
in this work with the environment.
I would say the environment,
the ecology, blackness, liberation
black feminism, for me it has
to happen in public spaces.
You know, the investigation,
the research, the conversations
and the practices
and I think about this in
terms of historically
and in contemporary, in
this contemporary moment
what it means for groups
of people to move together
in ceremony and protest
and vision all of that,
all of that to me is my
entry point in my thought
process into what is a
black feminist, ecological
or environmental justice.
It's that communal moving
in all of our abilities
and capacities and ways to get from
where we are to where we want to be.
And I just do not know I also say that
Alexis's work for me as someone
that just like wants to
do that all the time,
wants to be let's process
with the flag and some
water and a flower literally all the
time, it's like the work asks us to
travel, travel dimensions travel in our
understanding of what community and
family can be, travel in our own
discomfort through our own discomfort.
So there is an, you know, kind of
an astral projection that happens for
me when I am engaging Alexis's text in a
deep and profound way and it ask me.
It's basically the work says, get
up girl and go do something. [LAUGHING]
And so well and you know and to the way
that our... familial relationship
started it's like, but don't go by
yourself, you know, get up and move but
move with your people.
And that to me I think and when we think
about the trees moving with us and
oceans moving with us and animals
moving with us and other people
moving with us.
That is a black feminist eco systemic
politic and poetic that I wanna
continue to be studying forever,
forever, forever, forever
thus sayeth The Lord, you know.
ALEXIS: Yeah, thus sayeth the Lord
and thus sayeth June Jordan
because so Alexis DeVoe
interviewed June Jordan for
Essence Magazine and by
the way, Alexis DeVoe and June Jordan
lifelong friends
and collaborators with each other.
So they did this interview
in June Jordan's kitchen
and June Jordan said poetry
is housework, right.
And this question of what it is
to be at home on the planet,
I mean June Jordan also
said in her essay The
Difficult Miracle of
Black Poetry in America
Something Like a Sonnet
for Phillis Wheatley,
she said a poet is someone at home.
How could there be black
poets in America, right?
That's the founding question of that
essay which is one of my favorite
essays would actually the first essay
I ever wrote about in college.
Anyway, but interestingly enough
June Jordan went to Barnard
College which is that college
where I wrote that essay
which also is the place where
the first person I ever
heard say black ecofeminism Chelsey
Frazier, Dr. Chelsey Frazier who is
that I know of, the scholar on this
that schooled me that that was
even a term that really
is drawing on something
that I never would have
named it as ecofeminism.
I didn't know that that
was a available name
but I definitely knew that Alexis
DeVoe and Gwendolyn Hardwick
were having salons in their
living room talking about
what is it for us to be
at home.
At those salons, they were talking
about what's the nuclear crisis
mean for black communities
right there specifically.
It's not, there's not been
a separation between
what some would now call
environmentalism or eco feminism and
a very long project of homefulness that
is expansive beyond planetary.
I mean it's planetary but also cosmic
that you see it everywhere is
why homegirl is a black feminist
anthology is called home girls.
It's all about what is it to be at home
which is an environmental
question right.
That is literally
the question of environment.
So yeah, I would say that's
exactly what Ebony is saying
is that it is wonderful to
have the scholarly work that puts
the different things together
and that we got names for things that
you know, things can be accessible
and and visible in different ways.
But for sure, I know that in our
collaboration, it's coming from the
same thing, same reasons Spirit House
is our cultural and political home.
What is it about, what's the most
creative thing about being
part of Spirit House?
It's creating the family
that is Spirit House.
It's how can we be at home together, how
can we actually create at the scale
of our relationships with each other
a life giving, sustainable,
beautiful home.
And yeah, so I would say that's what
Black ecofeminism is to me.
And just shout out
shout out to Chelsea
Frazier because if you wanna
see, you know,
like if you wanna see that scholarly
lineage and all of that I just
I celebrate it, I celebrate it
and I'm grateful that I'm
just grateful that I get to be at home
in the practice of black feminism ,yeah.
KIRYA: I think you know in a way, I
feel personally, that where
we're in a moment of opportunity
because right now so we're recording
this on August 21st of, you know, of
2020 in the middle of a pandemic,
right, and which there is also social
upheaval in this country in
which we are seeing fires again
raging through California,
we are seeing you know the evidence of
ecological destruction is all around us
while we are also like having this viral
threat to human existence.
In a way, I am grateful to be
rediscovering these
texts right now about what is home and
as you ask in some of your work
particularly in your triptych of...
I'll
get I'll get the names of all of these
Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist
Fugitivity, M Archive:
After the End of the World
and Dub: Finding Ceremony.
You're really experimenting
and not only with form in terms of
mixing together narrative, poetics,
theory but also experimenting
in sense of human identity, not
just black woman identity, not
just queer person identity
but humanness even of itself.
You imagined in these texts
and you source other
people who have done similar
the end of the world,
the end of framing ourselves
in the way that we have
and using our language
and our artistry, our
Poetics and Poeistas to
really just completely blow
up apart and invite a new
sense of interaction,
internal process, definition
of of even like where
a body begins and ends
and that's all you know,
lovely to read and sit back in my
in my armchair at any point
to just sort of take in the poetry
and the beauty of your language.
But now in this moment, it
feels like a guidebook,
it feels like OK, here is something,
there's literally a section
called Instructions which I'm
really grateful for.
So I'm curious, looking at your own
work now in the way you think about
the use of this work, what's, how are
you applying this now in this moment
of seeming impending apocalypse or how
might you recommend we apply
some of these things, what does it mean
in our actual lives to live some
of these texts?
ALEXIS: Yeah, I mean what I would
say you know, Ebony spoke
about astral travel or you know like I
feel like that the work calls us to
astral travel or to travel
through the universe.
I feel like that what's
happening the entire time I
was writing, you know, it was
just like where are we?
Well, this is what it looks like, this
is what it sounds like, this is
what I can hear, you know, this
is this is what I can perceive
and I would say that the way
that I continue to be guided
by the work is I allow
it to meet me where I am.
So I see it as as
an ongoing Oracle practice.
I just I mean just yesterday I was
like, what's my oracle question,
what's my number.
I just open that page of
the book and I was like
Oh, that is what I needed to
know for today, right.
And so I think that the same, in
the same way that I agree with what
you're saying that it's not
necessarily just to sit back in our
chair and let it pass over us as
Ebony was saying that the fact
that it does seem to instruct you it
does seem to be like OK, this is active.
That's absolutely how I
felt the entire time
and how I still feel.
I don't relate to...
the triptych as something that,
well, I figured something out,
then I just told the people,
and I already know so now
they can know it too.
You know, sometimes I
write down things I know
just to tell the other
people and that's great.
That is not what this
work is at all.
This is the stuff that I do not know.
This is, this is the energetic
ceremony for continuing
to be able to be present
and so that's how, that's
how I engage it.
That's why it's such a
huge gift for me,
that Ebony will allow me to
show up to meet my own work,
you know, in the street,
like just on a day,
you know, like embodied.
It's such an incredible reflection
because there has never been a time
where collaborating with Ebony
and performative iterations
that engage this work,
where I have not been like, yes,
that's exactly what I
needed to learn today.
I wasn't gonna know it, I wasn't
going to be able to perceive it.
Somebody might be saying words
that I wrote years ago,
but it's, it's not,
it's actually meeting what my
consciousness needs in this very moment.
So, so I would say that there is,
there are content reasons that
you're saying what you're saying, Kirya.
Like there are, there are words that
it says in the book that are like,
it's really talking about epidemic
and people not be able to
touch each other's hands,
you know, it's really talking
about these things, content wise,
but I think it's actually the form
that causes it to be able to
meet us in the present moment,
whatever the present moment is,
because we are having a
breakthrough always,
we are having to face
contradiction always,
no matter when you open up the book,
this contradiction that you face
and there's breaking that you're having
whether you realize you have it or not,
you know, remains to be seen
and that's why the way that
Ebony relates to ceremony,
relates to community,
relates to practice
is the most appropriate way
to engage the work,
because we can actually
have the ceremony.
So yeah, so I'm so grateful because
I'm like, I'm learning the most.
I feel like I'm learning the most from,
In the Name Of and iterations.
I feel like, it's this huge gift because
it's like, what do I really wonder?
And I could spend a whole
year wondering it
and then that is the part of the
frame for what I get to actually
see and hear and learn from
and witness, it's, it's huge.
So yeah, my instruction would be,
you know, engage it as
oracle, if ideally at
and through In the Name Of really
I do engage it in that way.
And if for some reason you
don't have access to that,
then just, you know, just
open up to whatever page.
People have come up to me
again and again and then like,
your book was sitting here and I open
to a random page, like what is this?
And they'll be like, how did you
know?
Why are you in my business?
Why does it say the stuff is
going on in my life?
And I'm like,
[LAUGHING]
it's you meeting your own
intuition, you know,
cause all I did was meet my own
intuition and just document it.
And do the discernment work to say
which part of this is to be
shared with the community
and which part of this is
just like Alexis,
you only you need to go
walk over there, right.
I had to parse that and
discern that, but it is,
for me, it is less.
It is an archive all of it
but it's more a technology
than an archive even
because what it's asking for
is it's asking for us to be
to know that we have access
to the ceremony
that will give us what
we need right now,
which we may not have known
we needed 15 minutes ago.
So I see it as a technology, even
more than I see it as an archive,
even though it is also an archive.
EBONY: It's a practice.
KIRYA: Yeah, thank
you so much for that.
I'm gonna take advantage of
this moment to ask a personal
sort of question about this when you
talk about meeting your own intuition
in this work,
I mean, that is something that,
I as an artist as well,
I struggle I think and I
think there are ways that,
maybe some of your writing
might articulate as well that
my judgment or skepticism
around on my own intuition
might come from framings and
systems that came from outside
even an imagination of
my body as fully human
my mind
structure as, as fully,
you know, intellectually
capable, right?
So I doubt myself.
I'm curious in your own
practice, you know,
you do meet your own intuition
you name that, you speak to that
and you know, there is literal
poetry in this work
and it's beautifully laid out
on the page even right
you know, there is an artistry that
that we might more associate with
intuitive listening and response.
And also you are a scholar
and you do research
and you do, and there's
a passage even here in the,
in the, the note
where you talk about
listening to your ancestors
and your lineage
and then you say relatives outside
what we understand to be human species
had some storytelling and
untelling to do as well.
And then you speak about
the bottom of the ocean
and you speak about phyla genus
and, so on and so forth.
That's researched, right?
Like, you know the names of these
species at the bottom of the ocean
as much as you also are intuitively
listening and just responding to oracle.
I guess I'm wondering if
there's anything you'd say
about the intersection of both things,
about the intellectual as we frame it
in the common language
and the intuitive
about the creative craft and
the critical research craft.
ALEXIS: You know, no sharp edges.
You know, like, I would say
they don't even have to intersect
because they were not separate.
So what I have to do,
and this is the rigor and you spoke
to this in what you just said,
I have to not separate them.
Right.
That's what I have to do.
I don't have to bring
them back together.
I just have to not separate them
when I when I when I sit there.
Now that's more than a
notion cause as you said
there's these constructs, there's
the violence, there's the fear
you know, the sharp edges I have
erected to try to protect myself
from all of that, right.
But at the end of the day,
or more specifically at the
beginning of the day,
because that's when I write,
at the beginning of the day,
they're not separate.
So, like this morning,
I was looking outside,
can you believe that there's like
pieces of rockets orbiting our planet,
just like, that you can see
without a telescope,
like a piece of a rocket that Japan
had launched a satellite from, in 2003
went by like out, out the
window, and I saw it
and I took out my sky app
and was like what,
cause I was just trying to look at Venus
which is very beautiful in the morning.
Why did that happen?
Like the
whole situation is an oracle
and so I'm like, well, there's
something for me to learn
and I learned so much
looking into what was this?
What was the purpose
of this satellite?
The story of the satellite,
you know, I said, I want to be
a cousin to all sentient beings
but now I'm realizing I'm
related to like space litter,
because that rocket it's called
an expended rocket body.
It is just collateral in what
it took to get the satellite up.
Why did they put the satellite up?
They put the satellite up to
look at disasters on Earth.
The whole purpose of the
satellite is to study disaster.
But, in fact, it sees a disaster,
the tsunami in Japan,
it was launched from Japan
and then for reasons unknown,
it goes into power saving mode.
Now, evidently, it's
totally powered off
or the people can't perceive
any power coming from it,
they don't know if it was
hit by a meteorite.
Anyway.
So of course, I find all
this out cause I'm researching
because I find some some space
litter but I just,
and then what I had to allow
myself to understand is
this relationship between
this expended rocket body
and this satellite that has
powered herself down, I'll say her,
is exactly what I needed
to meditate on about
my relationship to my father,
who has passed away,
extended rocket body,
expended rocket body,
and who launched me into space
for a purpose, I mean,
I was just going in like,
her purpose is to look
at the disaster
but she said no.
[LAUGHTER]
Can you believe the people say
the pictures that she sent back
were too blurry for
them to even use.
And I'm sitting here blurred
with my tears crying
thinking about, you know,
all of this, right?
Now, if you had asked me yesterday,
do I think, if you had said,
Alexis, what's the intersection
between your father
and, expended rocket body
H-A11?
I would have been like,
that has, those, I don't
even know what that is
right now there's no separation.
Ultimately, ultimately all
of it is just all of it.
So yeah, so that's what
I would say, I would say that,
when I doubt myself, exactly, Kirya, exactly what
you said, I feel like I'm separate.
When I'm trusting my intuition
I know that I'm deeply
related, period
and so I write from that place,
or at least what I
write from that place
I feel is the most
useful of what I write,
you know, sometimes
I write other stuff
where I'm just venting
about how separate I feel. [LAUGHING]
What I consider, you know,
that's part of the discernment,
what was my process what
I needed to go through
and then what was the part of
my process that I also needed to have
that is for us, that is
the part to share.
So, so yeah, I would say that,
my research is not separate
from my intuition,
it's completely guided
by my intuition.
It just happens to be that
my intuition consistently
brings me to black women,
consistently, right.
And that's not a coincidence.
That's because that's exactly
what I need, however.
So also do I need to know about
this non functioning satellite
that I had never heard of yesterday,
and, yeah, yeah, it's not
a sharp edge, it's round
it's literally orbiting us right now.
KIRYA: Thank you
so much that I mean,
now I'm gonna Google that later.
There's a lot there that
I'm sure you could respond to
and take us on many other orbits.
I wanna offer a little bit also.
So In the Name Of I didn't mention
is a commission by the Apollo Theater
and there are other folks involved
as well and feel free to name who else.
You're working, as we've
discussed already,
inspired by this triptych by
Alexis and other sources,
and you're working in this
moment of global pandemics,
social upheaval, ecological
collapse, etc,
that's led you to do some virtual
process in the beginning.
And you are envisioning this outside of
physical institutions, physical space
ceremony site specific in
Harlem in 2021, which,
depending on who you read and follow,
we'll still be in the midst of a
global pandemic in that moment as well.
So I'm curious about how
this moment is shifting
the needs of the work or the needs
that are driving the making of this work
and what's showing up for you
and your creative practice right now.
EBONY: Yeah, so, you know,
this question keeps coming up
and I wanna say first that
I've never made a work
outside of a pandemic.
I'm just making work inside of
different types of pandemics.
Pandemonium, chaos, rupture,
break down, disaster forever.
You know, like, that is the state
of this country in many ways,
finding a way outside of that is,
is the necessary, you know, work for me
but the default of what this the,
you know, the propelling
of a certain type of,
you know, disruption and
rupture and chaos is...
Is what I'm used to
working through is really,
you know, I wanna be visionary,
but the fact is I'm a human
in this lifetime with the circumstances
and the environments that are impacting
how I breathe every day.
It is also my work to figure
out another way to breathe,
but I'm here where I'm dealing
with what I'm dealing with now.
The thing about making the work
that I think is in this moment
that's so generative, is the fact that
everybody does not have to be
beholden to the systems and
structures of making theatre
in New York City, I don't
have to be beholden to that.
I'm working with people literally
right now, who are in Ghana,
North Carolina, who are in Texas,
just got back from Portland,
like people are...
Arkansas...
people are all over the place,
always all over the place and to
try to pinpoint them to be here,
and now in real time is very
hard to do given all of what
we know is happening
in the world.
Storytelling is an ancient technology,
it does not require us to be
in the same space, right?
It really doesn't.
The way that I have been
able to dive into my practice
is to be very roots based,
very roots focused.
None of it exists without story
and because the work is
also couldn't exist without
Alexis writing these books,
you know, it's very important for us
to understand source material, right?
This the spirit work that is guiding, not
just dance now five, six, seven, eight,
say this for two seconds
and then do that,
but it's like, what does
the body have to access?
What does the body have to
remember in order to build a world
that these books are asking us to build?
What is the foundation of that?
You know, the work is dealing
with a central question,
what is a Black feminist?
How does a Black feminist world thrive
after the end of this world,
which is really rooted in
death and destruction and
chaos and pandemic?
And so, you need to do that at home,
you need to do homework,
back to what Alexis said, you know
the thing about getting in the studio
and having all of that kicked
up and swirled around,
really you should have a whole
medic team, a spiritual medic team,
first responders to ask people
to do as Dr. Teer has taught us
decruding in space with other people,
exfoliating, metabolizing pain and trauma,
and then saying, now do this five,
six, seven, eight kickball change,
twirl, twirl.
It's not actually the most
responsible way to start,
the work requires an internal and a
personal and an intimate life practice,
that is about what you're doing
when we're not looking.
I don't need you to twirl
for me, I never do.
But if you are really invested in
telling a story and embodying a story,
singing a story that is about
a Black feminist thrival,
then you better be doing work at home,
you know, this is not for show.
So, the ceremony is a slice in...
the public processional ceremony
is a moment along an
infinite amount of, you know,
movings and occurrences
where we show and share
a reflection of what the
deep work has been.
So, now I don't wanna make
work in any other way,
to get to the point here,
well this is all the point,
Kirya I do not wanna make
work that requires us to jump up
and get in bed with each other
before we actually know each other,
I believe in making slow art
and to your point about
what it means to trust
yourself and have intuition
to tell a producer or presenter,
colleague, collaborator,
this requires you to be in ceremony
with yourself, separate from me,
separate from rehearsal
process for a year or two.
I don't need to even know
what you're doing over there,
but I will know the effects of it
when you show up here.
We skip that, this is not, you know,
swipe right, swipe left art,
this is deep intimacy that
isn't just about proximity.
It is about intimacy and
intimacy is a personal journey
that hopefully, maybe if
you choose to you share
moments of that, but it's not
about giving over or giving in.
And this book and not just
the book, you know,
this is the thing, I also I'm very
privileged to actually know Alexis,
and you know and so
it's not just the books,
it's the life practice, so that's
what people are really getting
a little glimpse into, is what it
means to wake up in the morning,
watch rocket pieces fly by
and then write every day,
something is flying by every day
something is happening,
every day we're writing
ourselves back into breath,
back into visibility, back into
connection, back into being.
And we're remembering how our
lineages and ancestors have done that
and how they will do that in the future,
how our ancestors would
do it in the future, right?
So, it's a practice
that is the alignment,
it's not about, you know,
here's the thing,
and I have to say this because
I think, you know you get to say,
Hi-ARTS is doing this,
I'm doing this at Hi-ARTS,
I'm doing this at the Apollo,
boo-boo, bah-bah and people think
you know something and people think,
oh she's important
because the Apollo says,
and Hi-ARTS says,
but this is the thing,
if you really, really
read these books,
if you really study the holistic ways
in which just this one June Jordan piece
on the Sky Rise work, right?
All of that is fleeting, all of
that it can be fleeting,
somebody can think you hot
one day and not the next day,
can understand you and find you
outside of the realm of comprehension
the next second, something
else needs to ground you,
something else needs to
ground what you're thinking
and what you're asking for
and what you are investigating.
And so, again you know, this I'm
going away from your question,
because I wanna say how,
like my practice is,
what Alexis has talked about
many times, many times,
Sylvia Wynters, you know,
M. Jacqui Alexander and Hortense Spillers,
wrote texts that are the
ancestors to these three books.
Well, have you read anything?
This is me talking to me, right?
Through Alexis's voice,
have you read anything by them?
Do you know,
pedagogies of crossing?
Do you know what it means
to make an American grammar?
Do you know anything about,
you know like do you have a proximity
and an intimacy to the
things that are important
to how these books got here?
Well, I have to say some,
maybe no, I don't know,
yes-no, maybe so, right?
And then get about the business
of doing the intimacy work
with the archive that you say,
is saving your life
and giving you a
reason to make art.
Now, Alexis don't have to say that
literally the work says that,
the practice says that
and that is, you know,
to be honest what SKY LAB
and this moment of breakthrough,
which I'm, I think we can say pandemic,
we can say all of those things,
but what does that really
mean when you always have
been in some way in relationship
to a pandemic of sorts, economic,
environmental, social, political?
Well, it means that you
keep doing what you say,
is your survival and your
thrival practices and technologies,
it's more of that.
When we get to a space where
we can be in physical proximity,
I wanna be able to
show up differently y'all,
I'm still uprooting
institutional theatre oppression
and practices out of my own way
of being in shared spaces
that are guided by Black
feminist possibilities and visions,
but still, I'm still even now saying,
but OK we need all of
these people and all of this
professionalism and all of this stuff.
When I know we need a pot of greens,
a pan of cornbread,
something good to drink
and people to feel like they
can unbutton their top,
button on their too tight
jeans and take off their shoes
and live in the world, not at
the world, embody the world
and have the world that we
say on the paper, in the script,
in the books is what we want
and to go on that journey,
it's not a rehearsal process,
it's not a production process,
it is ceremony.
And hopefully the theatre can
be an accomplice to that,
but it is ceremony first.
KIRYA: I'm gonna pause
you there only because
there's a time limit to this conversation,
not because I don't want
you to continue.
[LAUGHTER]
And I wanna say that
I have so much gratitude,
I think it was during our technical
break Ebony you were saying
you were close to emotions and tears
and I'm as well, listening to you speak,
I feel like there's a kind of permission,
you have both given me today
and I'm incredibly grateful,
I'm just paying attention to my body,
I noticed myself, holding myself
while you were talking,
you know, I sort of squeeze
of affirmation, so much as a gift...
EBONY: I'm gonna cut in and say,
Kirya you already know, right?
You already know I'm cutting in, I know
the time I looked at the thing, [LAUGHTER]
I think we would be...
I would feel like this was lacking
if we didn't honour that there's
a reason why you're in this room,
this virtual room, you know,
having a conversation with us,
that is about the dope work that you're
making, you know, like come on now,
let's not like you're doing some
powerful work too...
ALEXIS: Yeah.
EBONY: You know, in alignment with...
that's family to the work that we're doing,
right now you're doing it,
right now and being recognized
and honoured and supported and I don't know
all about what all of that means, right?
But I do know,
I see you is what I'm saying
and I feel you and one of the reasons why
I was like open up our process archive,
whatever it's there to Kirya on purpose,
because whenever you need it,
you're gonna be in there reading
and looking at stuff.
And that's, I think absolutely critical,
like Alexis has opened up her process
to the universe to be like,
come and get your medicine,
and that's why my work has
to be in public spaces
with people who identify
as artists and non-artists
because freedom is not what?
A secret.
ALEXIS: It's not a secret, it's a practice.
KIRYA: OK.
EBONY: It's a practice,
that's from Alexis.
KIRYA: I'm getting a secret text
message that we should wrap up.
(LAUGHTER)
ALEXIS: Speaking of secrets.
(LAUGHS)
KIRYA: But, thank you for challenging
my unnecessary humility in that moment,
in that way, just some wrap up
thoughts I wanna remind the audience,
this gift, no sharp edges
there's a call for a liberation from
corners and rigid structures,
even as a concept, that there's
a deep inner connectivity,
which you've just demonstrated Ebony,
by pulling the loop back to
all of the work we're doing,
all the lineage we share and
all the ways that we're discovering
new lineages together.
And all poetry, all art is housework,
work pertaining to home, an ecosystem
an ecology and speaking of home
we've got homework to do,
which among many things may also be,
cultivating a practice for when
people are not looking at us,
so that when we show up
in our public spaces,
that work is apparent
and is already in process.
And I share, as you share Ebony,
a hope that when we're able to be
in physical space together,
we as the collective humanity,
going through this current iteration
of pandemic, which is always
happening, (CHUCKLES) that we're
different, that we show up in different ways
because we're doing our
homework right now.
So, thank you both so much, there's more,
there's gonna be more In the Name Of,
there's gonna be another
conversation with Hi-ARTS
and also there will be more of
Ebony in many places,
and you should immediately
purchase all of Alexis's books.
(LAUGHS)
And I think there's gonna be links
to their work along with this video.
So, I wanna thank again,
Brandon Kazen-Maddox for interpretation,
I wanna thank Hi-ARTS for holding
the virtual container for this.
And I wanna thank everyone who
tuned in to watch, so thank you so much.
EBONY: Thank you.
ALEXIS: Thank you
for such excellent facilitation, excellent.
EBONY: Peace y'all.
ALEXIS:
Thank you.
KIRYA: Thank you.
