thequietwalk

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childhood games, 2017, on view at Charlie James Gallery

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activation through removal, 2015-2017, on view at Charlie James Gallery

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playing with cell phone photos, graphite drawings and form to create visual narratives around single piece of language

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MARLON JAMES ON THE SUBVERSIVE ART OF THE DANCEHALL SIGN http://lithub.com/marlon-james-on-the-subversive-art-of-the-dancehall-sign/

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You should go home to your hermitage; it is inside you. Close the doors, light the fire, and make it cozy again. That is what I call ‘taking refuge in the island of self.’ If you don’t go home to yourself, you continue to lose yourself. You destroy yourself and you destroy people around you, even if you have goodwill and want to do something to help. That is why the practice of going home to the island of self is so important. No one can take your true home away.

Thich Nhat Hanh (via purplebuddhaproject)

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Gerald Horne's Counter Revolution of 1776. True story.

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Michael Cina, A New Approach to Space, 2011

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Akomfrah on the role of avant-garde art making processes

One of the reasons that I do what I do is because I am interested in that question. What I know for a fact is that it’s not something you can answer in advance. I think part of the problem with waves of the avant-garde in the past is that they’ve tried to put the cart before the horse of work, the horse of process. The horse of process and engagement has to be the focus of our activity, because in a way the impact of that activity, the “political” reverberations, are almost an outcome of that work. It’s not something that you can know advance of doing it.

Again, this is not necessarily a recipe for passivity or lack of engagement. What I am saying, though, is that I think if you wanted to read off what an artwork is going to achieve in advance of doing it, you’re lost. This is where we end up with socialist realism [laughs].

It seems to me that the task of any avant-garde is not to prescribe or to be prophetic in its decision-making. The thing is to hope that the work will have resonance and reverberations and enter into contact zones with the present in which it has some meaning and some value. But one cannot know that in advance of doing it. That seems to me to be the very reason why one should do it, not the opposite.

It’s important that we know certain things. I know that works have political reverberations and implications and impact. I know that. I’ve lived through enough to see what works and to know that I can do that. I know that there’s no way of prescribing what that impact will be in advance of the work.

I also know that’s no reason for not doing certain kinds of work. That you can’t predict the outcome is not an excuse for not doing something, but one has to remain, it seems to me, absolutely agnostic about this question of the work’s value until it starts to circulate. Even if you lose that several times, even if these particular works here have no reverberations whatsoever, that in itself will still not be an argument for believing that they couldn’t.

Via http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/qa/john-akomfrah-interview-brexit-53962?platform=hootsuite

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John Akomfrah

"One of the modern ironies is that, really starting with Bush and Blair, a number of these so-called humanitarian gestures at resolving conflicts across the world are cause for military interventions, which then have these knock-on effects. So, we create these war zones that are basically not conducive to sustaining life [laughs]. People say, “Ok, this is now a toxic space. I need to leave this.” Then, at the moment when they cease to take the toxic space that we said is a humanitarian gesture on our part as theirs, we suddenly get all amnesiac. “Oh, wait, wait, what are you guys doing here?” we say. And they say, “Well, we’re from the warzones.” That you created. And we say, “Oh, no, no, we were just trying to help.” You know what I mean? It’s just a weird state of affairs, and it’s almost as if we forget not just that we were active participants in the becoming of this drama, but that we’re continuing to participate in what we started. We’re still doing it! It’s a very strange form of amnesia built on this schizophrenic understanding of both our agency and the results, the consequences, of that agency. “Oh, we haven’t done anything.” It’s not that you haven’t done anything—we are still doing things." Via http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/qa/john-akomfrah-interview-brexit-53962?platform=hootsuite

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her approach

i made a comment to my students once that we were are all in an essence ‘dying’; moving closer to the inevitable passing of our bodies, lifespans elongated, for better or worse, by the age of industry. but what is dying? what is the moment of passing? it all seems like this mad puzzle of keeping your mind, spirit and, finally, body on the same timeline, racing toward that moment. for some, their bodies give out way sooner than their mind; for other’s their spirit never stood a chance and thus their bodies bore the brunt of that ‘failure’. death is not failure though, really, no matter how it comes about. on my visit home, i found myself witness to an ‘approaching of rest’ and i had no idea what i was watching.

her eyes were darker and carried the depth of an abyss compared to when i saw her in april. literally like someone had punched makeshift holes in a piece of notebook paper that was steadily positioned over a deep well. a look that moving pictures would call ‘horror’ but for me, in that moment, it was what i could only call reverence, rest…and her ‘approach’. everyone is pushing; pushing to keep her limbs going, her mind sharp, her spirits above drowning. trying to assure that the trifecta remained neck and neck on the timeline of approaching. but you, you were ready for rest. you had EARNED that rest and you would get it not matter the inconvenience. the endless run of programs - ‘stories’ to you - that slowly pace across the tv screen. walker texas ranger, judge judy, gun smoke, local news. a strange soundtrack to a film approaching the credits. i cannot forget that look. was it even a ‘look’? or was it simply a state of being that i in my naive and arrogant youth had no form or words for. it haunts the vast caves of joy in my heart. we come to sit with you. and that is what we do. sit. a question every few minutes, a caring assurance that you are still with us. but your focus is rest and approach. your focus is no focus because blurry abandon to this life is yours, calm disengagement. what now? an end perhaps. an end is not the end. i read this recently. an end holds a finality, but also a beginning. one that we on this side do not and should not see…until. rest is only a yearning for an end only to bring forth a beginning. beyond all these words. you are simply a beaming light. grandmother and great. great and grandmother. approaching…

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A collection of experiments on color and connections by Studio E.O

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“For the purposes of liberation, it is not necessary for Black radicalism to shadow or reiterate the world-system. There will be no proletarian armageddon with capitalism. Centralism is anathema to revolutionary change for the courage, resolve, and intelligence necessary to defeat oppression issues from different historical and cultural sites.I believe it is necessary for the Black Radical Tradition to remain focused upon the cultural legacies that have provided for its strengths. The Tradition is most powerful when it draws on its own historical experiences while resisting the simplifications of Black nationalism. This protocol allows for the emergence and recognition of other radical traditions, drawing their own power from alternative historical experiences.”

rest well.