Author: The Tenth

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_column_text] PROFILES | WINTER '22 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] A BRUTALLY HONEST DEBUT MEET DAKOTA JONES, THE NEW YORK CITY BASED ROCK BAND BRINGING YOU A RAW AND TIMELESS MESSAGE  [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] INTERVIEW by GABRIELLE LAWRENCE [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="3018" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]GABRIELLE LAWRENCE: “I Did it to Myself," the single, really resonates with me as a twenty-something coming into my own, and getting to know my body. So many of the lyrics tugged at the messy parts of myself. What inspired you to write that experience? TRISTAN CARTER-JONES: In general, my main goal is to be as brutally honest as possible in my writing and I just like to tell the story of wherever I'm at at the moment. I Did it to Myself was a self-examination of the—I guess—more fucked up parts of myself that want to get messy and are needy and unfinished. I wanted to expose that so that it could resonate with other people who are feeling the same way. That's a big theme for me—just wanting to connect with people through music. GABRIELLE LAWRENCE: I think the openness and vulnerability at the core of your writing process definitely shine on the album. When did you start writing this? Was it during the beginning of COVID? I know we had the opportunity to do a lot of self-examination during that time. TRISTAN CARTER-JONES: “I Did it to Myself”, specifically, I wrote during the pandemic. It was after New York had gone into lockdown, but before we kind of got to the other side of things. It was actually the first song I’d written in a very long time. I wasn't able to write much during the beginning of the pandemic because I felt so bogged down with everything that was going on, and I didn't know exactly what I wanted to express or how I wanted to express it. I think it was a direct result of that time for self-examination and like taking inventory with yourself. About half of the songs were written during the pandemic and the other half a year or two before. GABRIELLE LAWRENCE: So in “Black Light”, it feels like the speaker is desperate to be seen, heard, nad understood. Many of the speakers on this album are quite vulnerable, but it seems like they’re craving something much deeper. That has me thinking about the difference between vulnerability and intimacy. How do these concepts play out in the journey of this album? TRISTAN CARTER-JONES: Yeah, you can be vulnerable, I think, without being intimate. Vulnerability, I think, is just the ability to be open about wherever you're at in the moment. Intimacy is more like sharing those private details of yourself or sharing that vulnerability with a specific person. So a lot of this album is coming from a very vulnerable and raw place, but there is definitely that desire for real intimacy. I mean, I was lonely and just alone for a very long time. When I wrote a lot of the songs I was on my own, and for the majority of my life, I've been on my own. I grew up feeling very isolated in the communities that I was growing up in, and it wasn't until I got older that I was able to find peers who kind of understood where I was coming from. I have a partner now too, but it felt like being alone was just how life was going to be. And that's part of the journey of the album: getting to the point of putting yourself out there in search of someone to share those vulnerabilities with and growing into intimacy.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="3016" img_size="full" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]GABRIELLE LAWRENCE: Along with the search for intimacy, so much of the album is calling out to something greater than the self. Something cosmic. TRISTAN CARTER-JONES: I think of myself as a very spiritual person and I believe in some higher power. I'm lucky to still be here for so many reasons, and I believe that I'm here for a greater purpose. I believe that I'm supposed to be doing something for other people, greater than myself, and I think that at the moment that’s what the music is. The best way that I know how to connect with people is to make them feel like they're less alone. GABRIELLE LAWRENCE: Who are your musical inspirations on this journey and how do they show up on this album? TRISTAN CARTER-JONES: I mean, it's all over the place. There are so, so many. We have a lot of throwback inspirations like Janis Joplin, Chaka Khan, and Marvin Gaye. Led Zeppelin was a big influence of mine as well. My favorite contemporary artist and probably one of our favorite writers is Frank Ocean. Fiona Apple is another. They’re the first two to pop into my head just because they are so relentlessly themselves in their writing and deeply vulnerable in a way that I very rarely see anywhere else. I aspire to maintain that sense of honesty because I think that creates some of the most original music—when you’re not trying to be formulaic and fit into a space, but instead, you're trying to create your own space. Isaac Hayes is the big one though. We listened to so much Isaac Hayes during the creation of this album. It was just unbelievable. Yeah, that’s hard. It’s like being asked your favorite book or your favorite song. We’re in a time where we have access to absolutely everything, and many of my contemporaries have such an eclectic taste in music with influences from so many different places. GABRIELLE LAWRENCE: A lot of music styles these days are very blended too. You cite one person and 12 more are in the footnotes so...

11 March, 2022

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_column_text] PROFILES | WINTER '22 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="60px"][vc_column_text] BACK TO THE FUTURE FRESH [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Meet PRETTYFCKNBOY, A Black Queer Tumblr Kid Realizing Pop-Rap Potential in a Tik-Tok World. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="60px"][vc_column_text] INTERVIEW by NOLAN TESIS IMAGES by MALCOLM KHALDI [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2994" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]NOLAN TESIS: A friend of mine hit me up and was like, “Yo, I got a new artist I want you to check out.” I listened to “HBK” and I rock with the shit! I'm a fan. So tell me how this all got started. Where are you from? PRETTYFCKNBOY: Oh yeah. I'm just a little from the lower east side. I'm a nerd. I went to school, ahead of my class. I've always been into art, mainly in the books though. Everything I rap is the truth of the life that I live. I'm an introvert, so I live life a lot differently than most people are used to. Like, I don't really do social media and stuff. So this is a fresh wave for the people. My lyrics are a little bit different.  NOLAN TESIS: Take me back. How did you start rapping at 13?  PRETTYFCKNBOY: So my father is a DJ. Growing up, he would always do mixes on turntables, which was very like vintage—different than how DJ's do it now. So pretty much we would vibe every day, literally day and night. When he would get off of work on weekends, he'd blast music on them turntables. And one day, bored, he was just like “Oh, D come over here. Rap for me. Rap. Do something.” I was just saying stuff for fun and he was like, “No, you actually are kind of good. Let's do this again.” After that, he started teaching me how to structure bars at a young age, because like I said, I was already a nerd. So me writing and me reading all the time for fun just worked out in my favor when it came to actually riding and flowing on a beat. I just knew how because music was played around me all day, every day. Then he started putting me in talent shows and all this crazy stuff that helped me write my raps in the beginning. It all worked out for the better because now I'm doing this at 25 and I'm coming in there with like this whole new wave of just organic, fresh, new everything.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2993" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]NOLAN TESIS: It's amazing to hear that you had support, especially from one of your parents, because so many people want to pursue the arts and don't have that. Who are some of your musical influences? PRETTYFCKNBOY: One of my biggest influences is obviously Jay-Z. You hear it a lot in a lot of my cadence. Then obviously Foxy Brown because she was the Bonnie to his Clyde, but female rap and me being gay is a very big influence in who I am, so Foxy Brown more so than Jay-Z. Then would come Nas, Azealia Banks...

28 February, 2022

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] REFLECTIONS | WINTER '22 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] An African Digital Revolution [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2961" img_size="full" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text] WORDS by TIMINEPRE COLE IMAGES by RACHEL SEIDU [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]LGBTQ+ Discrimination in Nigeria and Ghana “I remember being in the car with my mother a few days after the SSMPA was passed. There was a conversation on the radio about the fairness of the law. My mother said gay people were agents of Satan who deserved to go to hell. I was dumbfounded. At that moment, I knew I could never speak freely about my sexual orientation or gender identity” recounts Alexandra Maduagwu, a 25-year-old community organizer living in Nigeria.  The violation of the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in Nigeria peaked in January 2014 when former president, Goodluck Jonathan, signed into law the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (“SSMPA”). With provisions that prohibit same-sex couples from entering a marriage or civil union, and the registration and meetings of gay clubs, societies, and organizations, as well as the direct or indirect public show of same-sex amorous relationship, the SSMPA criminalized the existence of LGBTQ+ Nigerians by denying them simple pleasures like stable family life, community, and freedom to assemble.  In Nigeria, sex between people of the same gender is an offence punishable with fourteen years in prison or death by stoning in northern states where sharia law applies. Gender expression and presentation are also heavily policed, and it is a crime for a person to dress unlike their assumed and assigned gender in a public place. As a masc-presenting person living in Nigeria, most of the harassment I encountered on the streets of Lagos came from state actors. My daily routine included policemen holding me hostage at the roadside whilst interrogating my gender identity and my choice of clothing.  Sadly, this is the status quo in many African countries that operate legal systems built on Christian traditions and doctrines that were imported and enforced by European colonial administrators. These countries also have several legislations modeled after old European laws which criminalize significant parts of queer existence. The Ghanaian Criminal Code declares unnatural carnal knowledge illegal which has been interpreted to mean penile penetration of anything other than a vagina. On the 2nd of October 2021, members of Ghanaian parliament began deliberating a bill called The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values which seeks to prohibit the “promotion, advocacy, funding and act of homosexuality” in all its forms. If passed into law, campaigning for equality of sexual and gender minorities, or for an anti-discrimination bill, would be illegal.  Discrimination faced by queer Ghanaians is sanctioned by the government then promoted by the media and religious institutions who deliberately misinform the public on what it means to be queer. Since news about the proposed bill broke, the Ghanaian population has become more resistant to the queer community’s demand for social protection and has resorted to outing people they suspect to be queer to their employers, institutions, and even landlords. In a press release following the homophobic and transphobic attacks on Ghanaian citizens in the past months, The Christian Council of Ghana went as far as describing queer sexuality as “an affront to human dignity and not a human right.” Though there have been protests in cities like London, Toronto, and Oakland by queer diasporic Ghanaians and others showing solidarity, the queer community in Ghana is unable to physically protest the gross human rights violations they face. It has become impossible for many queer folks to identify as such in these countries, and some have resorted to lying about their identities to access employment opportunities, housing, and healthcare. It has also become dangerous for the LGBTQ+ community to organize in defence of their human rights, and even more difficult for human rights organizations to work with and protect the rights of LGBTQ+ community members. For example in Nigeria, organizations like the International Centre for Advocacy on Rights to Health and The Initiative for Equal Rights that cater to the needs of queer folks cannot be registered as queer organizations. Instead, they have to operate under the umbrella of human rights advocacy as organizations contributing to policy issues affecting sexual minorities or promoting human rights regardless of identity and orientation. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2963" img_size="full" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]Social Media: An Alternative Tool for Queer Activism? With all the legal restrictions in place in these countries, queer existence often involves a lot of secrecy and it is difficult to find people who identify as queer in the real world. It is therefore not surprising that social media became a place for queer folks to build community and exist freely and loudly without reprisal. There are valid concerns about the dangers of social media, but for queer Africans like me, social media can be a haven and a place to feel less alone. The first time I started to question my sexual orientation, I needed to read and hear the thoughts of people who look like me and share a similar identity. Twitter gave me that community. Interacting with other queer folks online made me realize that social media is a place of solace for LGBTQ+ folks who have no acceptance or support from their parents or direct community.  “Social media was the first place I was able to accept my queer identity and live as a man without fear of violence. It was easier to find people with similar identities and have conversations that helped me build the confidence I needed to exist as myself in the real world,” says Tom Kola, a 25-year-old trans man from Nigeria who uses his Instagram account to post educational resources for trans-Nigerians.  “When I started to come to terms with my sexuality, I did not know a lot of queer people besides my partner at the time. I longed for a space where I could talk about being queer freely without it having to be a secret. So I started a podcast called The Pride Diaries. Initially, it was just me putting out my personal experiences but I also wanted to hear from my listeners, so I started an online group called Haven. I had a lot of queer people from Nigeria join the group, and seeing us exist in such a large number made me feel alive” says Mariam Sule, a writer and podcast host from Nigeria.   Finding representation online made a difference for me and other queer folks in both nuanced and life-altering ways. Online groups made it easier for queer folks from all over the continent to connect and affirm their identities in ways that were not possible physically. In June 2020, Maduagwu started an online group called Boi. Boi is for masculine presenting women and people assumed to be women who either identify partially with womanhood, are non-binary, or gender non-conforming. It is a space to share resources and discuss issues that affirm their identities. The call for folks who were interested in being a part of this online community was made on Twitter and reached queer folks in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Haiti. Since it was formed, members of the group have been able to offer emotional and financial support to each other when needed as well as unlearn toxic ideas they previously held due to norms prevalent in their homophobic and transphobic societies. Dean, a queer Ghanaian who is a member of Boi, says being part of an online group has been helpful since physical gathering is heavily policed in Ghana right now. “Being able to stay in touch with other queer folks and get information about what is going on in the queer community does a lot of good for me at the moment. On Boi, I am able to get book and film recommendations that help my political education. I am able to share my struggles as a masc person and have so many people who look like me tell me about their similar struggles and how best to navigate them. I love hearing them talk about whatever badass stuff they have gotten up to. It is really good to see queer folks all grown up and intentional about forming genuine connections with each other.” Ed, another member of the group from Haiti says, “I love being in a group with queer folks from African countries. Our issues and cultures are so similar and I relate to most of the things we talk about. I just hope one day I have enough money and it is safe enough to go have fun with them in real life.”[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2962" img_size="full" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]In countries where LGBTQ+ hate is encouraged and upheld by legislation, these laws contribute to the audacity with which homophobes commit crimes against queer folks. Various reports show that since the passing of the SSMPA, there have been high levels of violence, including mob attacks, against LGBTQ+ people in Nigeria. For example, in the highly publicized case of the Egbeda 57, officers of the Nigerian Police Force raided a private birthday celebration, arrested 57 men, and prosecuted them on bogus charges of cultism and homosexuality. The court case carried on for two years and the 57 men were discharged in October 2020, but not acquitted of the accusations levelled against them. In 2019, a video surfaced on the internet that immediately went viral. In the video, two men in Imo—a state in southeast Nigeria, pretended to be gay, lured a gay man to meet with them, extorted him, and then murdered him. It was quite shocking to watch traditional media and homophobic Nigerians re-write the story and paint the victim as the depraved aggressor and the murderers as victims who had acted in self defence—even in the face of video evidence. The question on the minds of every queer Nigerian was ‘who’s next?’ The current laws prevent queer folks who are victims of hate crimes from reporting these crimes to appropriate authorities because there is fear of exposure, arbitrary arrest, extortion and even being murdered by the state’s security force. Consequently, social media has also become a place for queer folks to document their oppression. Queer activists have taken to using social media to show resistance and advocate for their rights and freedom with many online campaigns like #AcquitThe57, #EndHomophobiainNigeria, and #Killthebill.  In October 2020, thousands of Nigerians took to the streets for a nationwide protest tagged #Endsars against police violence. Social media, particularly Twitter, became a place to organize and disseminate information about the protests. Queer Nigerians who constantly face aggression from the police joined in, and unsurprisingly, they encountered violent homophobia from fellow protesters as well. It was during the heat of these protests that 22-year-old writer and queer liberation activist Ani Kayode Somtochukwu created The Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation (“QUEST9ja”), a socialist, abolitionist queer collective fighting towards queer liberation in Nigeria. Somtochukwu who already had experience in digital organizing and advocacy saw the possibility of using social media to organize in defence of queer Nigerians and to provide mutual aid to poor queer folks who were in need. “The #EndSARS protests showed more than anything that we needed to expand models of safety adapted to the liberation of queer people on the African continent, and in Nigeria in particular. Because whether the issue is police violence, incarceration, housing, or healthcare; what we need is a system where resources are provided to everyone to meet their needs and not distributed or hoarded for the purpose of maximizing capitalist profits.” During the protests, Quest9ja helped provide food for safe houses in Lagos, Abuja, and Enugu state. Since its inception, they have secured housing for homeless queer Nigerians in these cities and organized a fundraiser...

28 January, 2022

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] REFLECTIONS | WINTER '22 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] Refuse What Has Been Refused To You [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2947" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text] WORDS by NKGOPOLENG MOLOI ILLUSTRATIONS by DONOVAN EDWARDS [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_row_inner row_type="row" type="grid" text_align="left" css_animation=""][vc_column_inner width="1/6"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="2/3"][vc_column_text] ❝ Own Nothing. Refuse the Given. Live on What You Need and No More.  Get Ready to Be Free. ❞ [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/6"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]I think about insurrection and anarchy every day. It is difficult not to when you live in a world such as this one, where power continues to forcefully stake its claim—whether it is endemic gender-based violence in South Africa, anti-Black violence in the US, Covid’s impact on the poor, US forces in (and out) of Afghanistan, billionaires colonizing space, or billionaires existing. Undergirding each crisis is a well-established system of domination and accumulation that calls for resistance and refusal.  As I meditate on enduring systems of control and the ways in which we might be able to dismantle them, or at least subvert them, I return to a phrase that was offered to me a few months ago; refuse what has been refused to you. At the time, I did not fully comprehend what these words meant, at least cognitively, but I felt them to be true. Deep in my belly, I felt a  resonance that drew me towards this new modality in the quest to live free of oppressive structures. My crudely oversimplified model of refusal is enumerated.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] Refusal in time (refusing today what was denied to you yesterday).  Double refusal (refusing the refusal).  Overt refusal (claiming for yourself whatever the world has decided to deny you).  [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]Each of these feels useful in different contexts when considering how best to respond to power. In her seminal text, The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner, writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman introduces us to Esther Brown, a wayward coloured girl with no social constraints. Esther Brown—ungovernable, riotous, an embodiment of anarchy—refused what she was given and got ready to be free. Hartman writes;  “Esther Brown never pulled a soapbox onto the corner of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue to make a speech about autonomy, the global reach of the color line, involuntary servitude, free motherhood, or the promise of a future world, but she well understood that the desire to move as she wanted was nothing short of treason. She knew firsthand that the offense most punished by the state was trying to live free.” 1 Even as she understood the dangers of reaching towards freedom, Esther continued to live on her own terms. She owned nothing, refused what was given, lived only on what she needed, and got ready to be free. “Own Nothing. Refuse the Given. Live on What You Need and No More. Get Ready to Be Free.” These four lines might be considered a manifesto of the wayward, had Esther Brown bothered to write it, had she cared enough about rebellion or politics or manifestos. But she didn’t. Instead of a manifesto or a political speech about the global reach of the colour line, we are left with Esther’s refusal, through which (and in which) we can imagine what might have been said. We are left with notes read through anarchy, that is to say, how to live life on one’s terms regardless of the consequences. More specifically, the lessons are;  that anarchy—read as a refusal to recognise authority—can in fact be asserted as gesture and non-gesture. that anarchy—read as a refusal to recognise authority—can occur in a riotous manner as method.   1 Saidiya Hartman. The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner. (Duke University Press: 2018)[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="50px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]Through the instruction of old and new, far and near ancestors, practices of refusal run in our blood. I return over and over to American abolitionist and women's rights activist, Sojourner Truth, and her powerful speech delivered at the Women's Convention in Ohio, in 1851. Being refused humanity and womanhood, Sojourner Truth responds with a question that isn’t really a question; Ain't I a Woman? She notes;  "Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!" This was one of many instances when Sojourner had practised refusal in order to liberate herself. Hers was a double refusal (refusing the refusal) as she also manipulated the extractive postcard industry (which at the time was used to further the colonial empire) to her advantage, selling images of herself taken in a photographer’s studio in order to fund her activism and support her abolitionist agenda. When we think of Sojourner Truth, we can think of refusal as a route of escape from hegemony. It is the stubborn refusal to conform—the embrace of odd constructions and the oddly constructed. This type of refusal runs toward crossroads, pathways, and intersections where things contradict and surprise—it is the beginning of queer theory before it was co-opted by Harry Styles, Billie Eilish, and Gucci. Back when being “outside the norm” was a fugitive strategy of survival used by those who were cast to the margins and who understood the power of the space between resistance and capitulation as well as subservience and subversiveness. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="50px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]But of course, refusal is also insurgency. It is also insurrection. Recalcitrance. Disorder. Withdrawal. An errant path. An action. Oftentimes, acts of refusal are small, unseizable, and repeated over time. Writing in, "At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics", an anonymous anarchist notes;  "If we refuse centralisation we must go beyond the quantitative idea of rallying the exploited for a frontal clash with power. It is necessary to think of another concept of strength—burn the census lists and change reality," elaborating further; "[The] main rule: do not act en masse. Carry out actions in three or four at the most. There should be as many small groups as possible and each of them must learn to attack and disappear quickly." These insurrectionary principles of carrying out small unseizable actions over time, are visible in the methods of many artists and artist collectives across the world. Through his most recent body of work, South African artist Nolan Oswald Dennis gestures towards possible ways of refusal through the act of care. Dennis begins with the model of a globe of the world—used to map and organise the world. Refusing the systems that come with the singular mythology of the globe as an organising unit, Dennis draws on Black geographies and Black cosmography to investigate world endings. One of his works, "a garden for fanon" (2021), is an installation that meditates on care through the production and decompositions of knowledge. Within an environment filled with stands, glass globes, izinkhamba pots, and machines, earthworms are cared for as they consume the cellulose fibre of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth. Through this consumption, the worms turn the books into soil, pointing to the interactions between theory and the material world—a dialectic that considers both theoretical and objective conditions. I read Dennis’ gestures of care as a refusal against units of classification, as a rejection of accepted knowledges contained in mappings of the world, and as a reconsideration of hierarchical sutures that are placed between man and other species; theory and praxis. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="50px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]Refusal is a contestation. It is fractures and fracturing. It is an anti-colonial revolt. It is the Black Panther’s Ten-Point Program—We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people. It is Mick Jenkins’ y'all can't just front on us niggas no mo'. For Black feminist theorist and member of the Practicing Refusal Collective, Tina Campt, refusal is not just a simple act of opposition or resistance, but a fundamental renunciation of terms of impossibility defining certain subjects. While for the Sudanese Crystalists, a group of artists who produced a radical manifesto in Khartoum in 1975, refusal came in the form of pleasure. Pleasure was considered the sole measurement of man’s essence, functioning as both a means and an end, as time as well as space and direction—containing the multiplicity and duality of truth. If the goal was “trying to live free”, then pleasure was the manner through which to achieve it. I think of pleasure as joy. Queer joy! Black joy! Deep-capacious-all-consuming-sensual-radical joy.  I’ve also learnt that refusal can be gentle and warm. While Audre Lorde reminds us to refuse the master’s tools, bell hooks reminds us that love is the antidote to colonial violence. That we can refuse by loving. Loving ourselves and loving each other. Deep-capacious-all-consuming- sensual-radical love as refusal.  Practices of refusal are not only useful conceptual frames but are also catalysts towards possibilities for constructing new conditions of Black life. They exist as grand refusals recorded and documented throughout history but also, to evoke Hartman again, as quieter moments that reflect on everyday choreographies of the possible. What continues to make refusing useful is not that it is radical or novel, but that it continues to inspire actions (and non-actions) that yield real results in our quests for freedom. Refusal against the unending ruthless crisis of anti-Blackness. Refusal against heteronormativity. Refusing Black death. Refusing gender and class oppression. Refusing now. Refusing together. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="50px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_separator type="normal"][vc_empty_space height="60px"][vc_column_text] NKGOPOLENG MOLOI is a writer and photographer based in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa and is excited and intrigued by history, art, language and architecture. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="20px"][vc_column_text] DONOVAN EDWARDS is a multi-disciplinary artist out of Portland, Oregon. Singer, lover, writer, mischief-maker. Seeker of magic in all things.  [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="60px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="10px"][vc_single_image image="675" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" qode_css_animation="" link="https://thetenthmagazine.com/"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row]...

13 January, 2022

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] FICTION | WINTER '22 [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] AStRA, ACT III An Excerpt [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Transcribed Memory Archive I Ârchiteta: Mowgli Olóyè [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] III. Òdo: Sísíkiri [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2914" img_size="full" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text] WORDS by ANTHONY WASH ROSADO ILLUSTRATIONS by DEXX RUSHIN [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_row_inner row_type="row" type="grid" text_align="left" css_animation=""][vc_column_inner width="1/6"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="2/3"][vc_column_text] ❝The first movement is death.❞ [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/6"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text] -An Ankoku Butoh principle, realized by Hijikata Tatsumi  [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]I buoy. I don’t have the words to render where or what I just was. I clasp my eyelids as I embrace my ghostly body in fetal position, clutching each scapula. Home, for me, used to be my mom’s aged three-story building in South Philly. Now, home might as well be concrete on a sidewalk. I crave anything mundane.  I focus on my memory of the cherrywood-stained banister leading to the second floor, where my mom—stunning in her yellow slip and pink bonnet; her baby hairs undulating in the morning light—is fixing the radiator in my room. My house smells of Pine-Sol, bacon, and eggs. I am twelve years young, full from breakfast and gliding my fingertips along the rail, climbing the steps. Not a single grain of dust. I laugh. Leave it to my mom to manage nurses all day while battling cystic fibrosis, being a full-time mother, and keeping everything/one intact. I miss her weekly declaration, “You get that beautiful nose from me.” But I am not home. My solace is demolished by an impending panic. I have no reference for time. I miss the cosmos. I hover in a foreign part of outer space. Here, there are no stars or planets. The chartreuse void I traverse is a vacuum trapping me and these silver, misshapen pool-portals. They orbit nothing. As do I.  Fear chokes me as I picture myself in bed. Haunting myself as I sleep. I imagine flailing at myself in desperation. I ward off images of me decaying into a skeleton covered in grey moss. I need to get back. A pool-portal inches toward me. Unable to avoid its approach, all I can do is await the…  Blackout.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="70px"][vc_column_text]⏔   “Now things are ‘bout to get interesting,” a voice whispers. I peep between a curtain of fingers. Fully visible flesh-fingers? Elated, I sit upright and— “Oop!” the voice interjects.  I bang my head on a surface. Delicious. The pain in my crown and base of my skull is thunderous and delectable. For it is a semblance of home to me, which is a tangible body consisting of what my sensations are confirming to be—Yes! A head, torso, two legs, and arms. Best of all, no fur. No fin. Skin made of vulnerable, stretchy flesh. Whether this body is mine is of no concern. It is a sweating, throbbing body. Its head is bald and its hands look just like mine.  A crouched woman dressed in oversized Gainsboro overalls spilling onto itself, and a dingy white long sleeve collared shirt moves a rolling chair to expose my hiding place.  She asks, “Cramped enough for you under there?”  Her tranquil voice submerges from, then is again drowned by boisterous discordant typing that acts as her basso continuo. I look past her and realize I am in a cubicle, under a desk. By the sounds of the keyboards, there must be hundreds of people here. One is in the seat before me. She slides onto the floor and sits on her calves to meet me face to face. Her eyes are a glade of amber juxtaposing the deep Davy’s gray of her skin, which matches everything in sight. Here, either black, like her cornrows, or some hue of slate-gray comprises a five-point color palette.  She smiles with eyebrows conspiring in portentous curiosity, “Can think of no rhyme to reason you. How, here? And now?” Her thick, button nose resembles my mom’s.  She extends an open hand blotted with ink, “Peripeteia.”          Her fingers wiggle impatiently. She speaks with the wisdom of an elder but appears to be no older than twenty-four or twenty-five.  Peripeteia elaborates, “Whether you hibernate for three sleep cycles or millennia, I am as screwed as you.”[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="50px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="70px"][vc_column_text]I ease and reply, “Mowgli.” Her recognizing eyes deepen into purple.  I offer my hand, disdaining my comfortability. She firms the hold, nods with conviction, and releases. When was the last time I shook a hand? I breathe deeply through my nostrils and out of my mouth, trusting her unconditionally in a cubicle too small for two. Sweat beads on my forehead and the nape of my neck. The humid air is dry and infested with tobacco ashes.  “Mow-guh-lee,” she remembers my name with her lips, jaw, throat, then tongue.  I relax into the frayed carpet, unbothered by the nauseating fetor buried under a dollar-store-brand citrus absorbent powder. Perfumed excrement cannot disturb me. Not now. Though her table, chair, and metal filing cabinet cramp Peripeteia and me only two feet apart, I caress thighs and calves foreign to my true body and am calmed by their alien familiarity.  She sits across from me, leaning on the cabinet. She crosses her arms and presses her chin into her fist. She stares into and past me. Her eyes flash from purple to hazel.  Peripeteia queries, “It is not Imaga, or else the memory keeper would fear my presence. Unless…the Imaga have transmitted information between dreamscapes, warning one another of the AStRA’s Collected Consciousness Center initiative to extract data from dreamers for political and commercial interests on Earth. No. It has no idea what I’m talking about. It is definitely not a Reflectitype. Otherwise, it would not acknowledge my presence. They do not see officers of the AStRA Protection Unit. It’s only function is to embody the rules and enforce the reality of a dream.”  My face twists, perplexed by her inference. She picks at a tear in the carpet.  “If it were a Dyspnea, it would not be cowering under a desk. It would be pursuing the control center of the dreamer it possesses. And Dyspnea can’t take human form in dreamscapes.” Her eyes dim to grayscale, then dart to meet mine. The typing chorus swells and pummels into my skull. Goosebumps bristle in succession from my head to my feet.  I shimmy closer to her. She peers upward with me. Miles above, smattered with bare fluorescent lights, the ceiling goes on for an immeasurable distance. I study her in my periphery. Is she observing this place with a new lens? I climb onto the desk. She follows suit. Her early-1990s desktop with an external, chunky keyboard sits between us. I look over the divider and descry enough cubicles to congest a canyon. Each is quarantined by flimsy-looking ten-foot-tall walls. Some administrators beat their keyboards. The person next door grunts and sucks his teeth at the computer screen. Invariable keyboard clicks and the buzzing whir of that lazy overhead together chime a John Cage-esque ballad. Peripeteia and her neighbor have shadows under them, but under me is no evidence that light is blocked from the floor. I catch Peripeteia, mouth slightly ajar in awe, fixed on me. Her eyes are now crimson. She notices and evades my stare, her eyes returning to grey.  We return to the floor. I beg, “How do I get home?”  Her eyes glow hazel, “Leave? Will do.”  We sit, anticipating the other’s response.  I urge, “So?”  Her eyes fade to opaque. She cocks her head.  I rephrase, “How do I get out of here?” She checks the cubicle opening. Not a stir. She sits on the ground mirroring me and aligns her posture. I do the same.  She breathes, “Not certain how long here will last.” She firmly grips the matted ground. “Inconclusive whether a Dyspnea is present—” Her eyes brighten into orange. “Irrelevant. Unauthorized AStRA do not belong in the dream realm.”  Is that where I am? I cower back under the desk. So it’s true. I am no longer in outer space. I drifted so far that I ended up in a green void housing silver dream portals. Trembling and without words, I plead for Peripeteia to help me. My tears blend with budding sweat droplets.  Peripeteia reaches for me then stops herself, returning her hands to her lap. With amber eyes she says, “Worry naught. Astral protectors existed long before the AStRA. They didn’t wipe all of our ancestors out, as they claim. My hands will not shame you.” Her eyes turn to the yellow of a ripe mango. I exhale and tension along my spine withers.  She slowly stands and instructs me, “Be brave. Stay close. And be bored.”  Her pupils kindle into amber. I rise. With a playful sneer, I insist, “You first.”  She goes to and flips through a cabinet near the cubicle opening, then withdraws two stacks of manila folders. Each is neatly bound by a thick rubber band. Unrecognizable symbols in handwritten graphite decorate the labeling. Outside the cubicle opening is a carpeted wall with humming, weak construction bulbs. Their shine fights to light Perepeteia’s dim cubicle. Nobody has passed it so I am certain no one else has seen me yet. This comforts me. But I don’t cling to the idea of safety. It has been fleeting thus far.  Behind dreary, grey eyes she directs, “Grab these.”  I retrieve the pile and hold it to my chest, securing it steadily against my shaking palms. They’re heavier than they look. Nonetheless, I am euphoric. Walking out of the cubicle with them is the most human act I’ve engaged in since the day I astrally projected from Earth. Hopefully, Peripeteia can get me back to my solar system. Or, at least, my galaxy. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="50px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="50px"][vc_column_text]We exit the cubicle together. The carpeted walls are dingy. Peripeteia leads me through a myriad of hunched, groaning typers packed into an atrium with a tarp-covered ceiling. The folders slide out of place now and then. I re-stack them continuously, grateful that they are slowing me down. Musky lime stings my nostrils. We walk along the perimeter to two swinging doors and enter a decaying banquet hall. Hunching our shoulders, Peripeteia and I trudge with concealed exigency through a disorganized grid of metal desks and a sea of wrinkled paper. She nudges me and points to her face. I imitate her grimace. We drag our heels past a wide hall of disinterested people looming over or leaning on oversized printers. Some slap and jam paper into the printers. Others cuss and bark, flailing wads of paper about.  Peripeteia’s pace deteriorates and she turns left. I mimic her lackadaisical stride with precision. Weary light somehow cascades the strands of hair that escape Peripeteia’s braids. Incognito, we enter a narrow hallway that is five feet wide. We shamble through, anxious and expressionless. There is a grimy bay window at the corridor’s end. Our steps squish loudly on the gushy, dirty floor. It is made of sponge-like cardboard tiles attempting to resemble wood and festering with warped growths. Some blocks are missing, mainly along the center of the walkable aisle. The level below is an abyss. The ceiling above is indefinite. As we near the end of the hallway, the back of a tall, leather chair obfuscates someone sitting behind a wide wooden table. They face the corridor’s dead end, clacking away. Light struggles to perforate through layers of dusty sap on the window.  She stops, fists locking with her wrists in a criss-cross on the base of her spine. I halt.  She requests, “Present: ÂPU’Peripeteia Upsilon Atabex Behique dash Twenty Two. Appeal: Permission to auto-adjudicate.”  The person sitting in the scraped and torn chair motions a closed peace sign. The chair’s back and the person's pale hand are all I can make out over Peripeteia’s shoulder. The hand retreats, re-commencing their calculations.  She begins, “Requisition: Permission to be reassigned.”  The clicks stop. This interim abides by her superior, the computer, who gently places the device behind their seat...

08 January, 2022

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_column_text] REFLECTIONS | WINTER '21 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APERTURE—GRIER’S DIRECT, COLLAGIST PORTRAITURE [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] WORDS by MALEKE GLEE [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] IMAGES by JEREMY GRIER [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2887" img_size="large" add_caption="yes" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]Grier bridges eased and invitational looking through trusting engagement. There is something to be said about Grier’s maneuvering of equipment, the draped black cape he prefers to guide light and focus on the images, and the sitting time that may exceed fifteen minutes. For someone to not be overly distracted or dismayed by the preparation process, there is something else more powerful holding their interest. There is a broken barrier for a stranger to welcome this nomad hulling equipment, and then agree for their image to be captured, not knowing the form and function of its finality. There is trust. The experience of Grier’s practice is heightened after a conversation, learning more about the sitters, most of whom are strangers in his hometown of Hartford, Connecticut.  After a diagnosis of COVID-19 in February, Grier traveled home to Hartford, Connecticut, from Brooklyn, New York. Given the urgent circumstance and pre-existing contentious dynamics between Grier and memories attached with home, this was not a trip met with great expectation. However, what was found and worked for has pronounced some self-affirming attributes of Hartford perchance overlooked.  Grier left Hartford for New York to explore a career and love, both seemingly missing in his hometown. As a same-gender-loving man, Grier most remembers cultural homophobia more so than acts of tenderness, platonic or otherwise, between men. In his return home, Grier has found new queer communities; and newfound and deeply informed appreciation for the love bestowed from his family. The effects of COVID required caretaking, and in those moments of less movement, less busyness of mind and body, Grier observed his family from a new space of acceptance, for fleeing was not possible. He had no choice but to view, engage, and ponder. His visual-emotional gaze also lent itself to Hartford broadly, as new social dynamics needed to be established. Both in the home and on the street, it was with a unique circumstance, requiring a different way of viewing, that pronounced beauty, and possibility.  Grier describes his most recent body of work as “autobiographical,” which one might not consider upon first or returned viewing. In the majority of his photographs, Grier’s body, and those more intimately connected to him, are absent, pushing against expectations of autobiographical portraiture. I believe the aurotic is Greir’s imprint rather than his figure. It often takes trips back, altered eyes to view the basis, the interwoven elements of an environment—upon first gaze, familiar and obvious look back. Upon intentional, continuous looking, new layers appear. Through photography, Grier pieces together elements of the self, assembling a body from gathered bodies, gestures, clothing, environments—varied but all gazing to and from centered confidence. The gaze of the figure and their stylized self-adornment offer more information about the environment. Both background and figure inform the totality of the image and its symbolic apparatus. Grier's work in street portraiture and domestic space privilege realism and thus the humanity of the sitters. Their gentle, relaxed expressions exist because, to some extent, they are without the harsh studio lights and the artificiality embedded within that arena. These street sitters do not present perfected bodies; they are not always available to flesh, sheen, or gloss.  A studio setting, wherein the sitter is a guest, carries embedded significance and histories that inform our ways of viewing. The studio asserts an intention, premeditated, thus rehearsed and performed expectations are captured in stills, leaving the present to past projections. In that space, while full of visual potential, there lives a hyper-vigilance from all parties, all having something at stake, something being unveiled in that present moment.  In Grier's images, the gaze is significant given that the subjects exist within exploitation paradigms, even from collaborators operating from a Black Gaze. Black working-class urban landscapes and Black male nude photography are fraught with histories of exploitation and exotification, guised under romanticism but captured under dynamics and modes of view entirely limiting. Grier's sitters are not on display. Grier's subjects look with authority and naturality, which may remove a fourth wall or pronounce it, depending on the visual politics of the viewer. At home or merely a few steps, bus or car ride from home, the sitters are likely comfortable, feeling safe in the familiar. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2889" img_size="large" add_caption="yes" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]There is intimacy in the gaze and posture. We feel as if we are looking through one’s eye, not the camera's aperture. This is seen in Nyhzere, documented while confidently pumping through the North End of Hartford. Nyhzere upholds self-regard and maturity as guided through generations ahead of him, embodied and inscribed within this shot. The Louis Vuitton bag and shorts, and the cap askew—with a twist, reflect the hybrid high-low, masc-fem presence of Black gay men. This is not often the image in our cultural and visual lexicon which privileges a binary. At his age, he is likely in the space of in-betweenness, gray, exploration. The black and white photo holds gradience and depth, adding to the time and consideration of viewing.  Nyhzere holds onto a fence, outside of it. He is on the sidewalk caught amid movement but finds reason to pause and pose for the request. What attracted Grier’s eye to Nyhzere was his existence in the environment Grier has known as violently homophobic. Nyhzere’s femininity was not hidden even if threatened. Grier’s viewing is also a revisiting of his occupancy of fourteen, what was possible, and what was required for safety. Nyhzere stands out like a concrete rose caught in spring bloom.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2888" img_size="large" add_caption="yes" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]There is a hypervisibility and consumption of Black queer life and culture, a fixity that centers, even in its methods of rejection, the heteronormative gaze, intrigue, and ignorance. Grier's depictions of queer lives provide space for often the unseen, acts most quotidian, and expressions most subdue.  He captures the non-performance of living, not under surveillance or for anticipation of applause.  The absence of the fantastical, the en vogue mode of presenting and defining Black queerness, allows room for relation. Viewers may relate to this range of subjects who exceed limiting and privileged, socially attractive bodies often cast to encapsulate queerness. In collective cultural lexicon, Black men are queer if deemed legible, and signifiers deeming legibility are commercially viable and predictable. Through media, queer experience becomes memetic, with symbologies of identity more reliant on exclusive biological and classed aesthetics, rather than lived experience. There are no flower crowns nor wings required to receive regality, beauty, and ethereal grace. Here, More Gay Love in the Hood, Tobias and Michael are queer, in self-defining function. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2893" img_size="large" add_caption="yes" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2890" img_size="large" add_caption="yes" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]In the chapter “Representing the Black Male Body,” bell hooks offers a critical observation that Black men are taught to be "more body than mind" in her seminal text, Art on My Mind. This focus on physicality is reflected in photography, which privileges Black male bodies with bulging penises and muscles. Black male bodies in nearly all forms of media are dealt with seriously when fitting expectations of scale, of muscular or penial grandeur. The body is always made to feel active and a screen for social projections. On feminization, hooks refers to the social history of women in media and art, wherein their bodies become objects with embedded values and voids for constant, expected looking without value returned. All that said, the canonical ways of viewing and rendering images have some hyperbolic relevance in Grier’s practice. Grier’s diptych Untilted evokes a still or ad from early gay-ebony genre pornography in both its body posture and color gradience. Juxtaposed against the rear-facing shot, there is an interesting connotation in the facial expression, one of direct gaze, but emotionlessness. There is certainty in the gaze. Our gaze, presented first with legs open to center framed penis, conveys an availability and authority of sexual aptitude. The penis, flaccid, is still given visual priority. In this positioning within the image, the penis is most active, competing with the symmetrical head and face. One is privileged over the other, and perhaps emphasizes the frequent iconography and social treatment of Black male bodies.  The second image is encoded with meaning, the body face down in complete reversed posture, is clothed. Now laying on his stomach, back to the sky, we see no face. We see less body. The center lines guide to the bunching of jeans and elevation of glutes. This orifice, unlike the phallic frontal image, is deemed more taboo in the sexuality of men. This juxtaposition reflects interpersonal dynamics with sexual positions and the gendered expectations of “top” and “bottom.” The latter assumed submission and femininity, antithetical to traditional masculine values. This hierarchy in viewing is even expressed in the upward angle of the camera, looking down upon the jeaned bottom. In thinking about these two images, I am confronted with an observation held commonly amongst Black gay men, that one cannot be masculine and boldy, assertively availing themselves to entry, albeit bodily, emotional, or spiritual intrusion. For such requests of intrusion and the pleasure found therein require some level of layering, of discretion, as seen through the absent face and article of clothing in Untitled. Intrusion is different from display; there is more self-accountability in the former, something masculinity has not required or swiftly rejects. Perhaps my reading is too obvious, but it is informed by personal history and the pornography these images reference. The bottom-up, clothed, and anonymous reflect the shame of anal pleasure and the lack of its discourse. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2891" img_size="large" add_caption="yes" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]I am taken somewhere else in my viewing of Grier's photos, relating to new and old thoughts brought to the fore. Willie peers out of the window of his apartment. He is receiving the warmth of the sungrazing his face. The face and the mind with an inward fixation, as implied by the shut eyes, are central to reading this image. Grier's photos allow me to view out while looking in, to see myself through the other. Willie is eased, seemingly in solitude. Grier's images are the warmth into my face, illuminating within areas unmasked and remembered. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_separator type="normal"][vc_empty_space height="60px"][vc_column_text]MALEKE GLEE is a Washington, D.C.-based curator, writer, and cultural worker. Maleke obtained his M.A. in Cultural Sustainability from Goucher College and B.F.A. in Arts Management from Howard University.  Maleke is the Executive Director of STABLE, an artist studio, and gallery space. He has held positions for the Studio Museum in Harlem, Prince George’s African American Museum; and has produced exhibitions and programs with the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Red Bull Arts, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, No Longer Empty, and more. His curatorial and writing practice focuses on contemporary Black art, specifically abstraction, performance, and the evolving terrain of the digital world. JEREMY GRIER (b. 1994 Hartford, CT) is a photographer whose work and practice fit into the lineage of portraiture while exploring the beauty and subtleties of blackness in his world. He is a 2016 graduate of Southern Connecticut State University with a BS in Communications. Grier moved to New York City from Hartford, Connecticut to pursue his career in photography. Since his move he has shot client work for The...

16 December, 2021

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_column_text] REFLECTIONS | WINTER '21 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] I FEEL SO [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] WORDS and IMAGES by LAQUANN DAWSON [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2876" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2877" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]unnecessary. in a fit of joy (?) and nerves, a sparkling, smiling, stunning Little Richard chuckles to an audience of many. he is sent to the stage to induct Otis Redding into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. he laughs and he serenades the audience with music, history, and so many stories. he says, “see, y’all should be recording me. I don’t know why you’re not. and i’m still here? and i look decent? shut up! ooo-wee! shut up! make my picture. let the Black man make it too, go on. oh, he can’t find his button! mash the button Black man! actin’ like his light can’t come on. that’s the problem, we’re waiting too long now. mash it baby, mash it! you better mash that button quick! ooooo! i feel so real. i feel so unnecessary!” he laughs again. finding joy and spreading love when you’re in pain and when you feel unappreciated can be a daunting task, i’ve found. i am also wondering what it means to feel necessary these days. what are we supposed to fill our days and nights with? outside of survival, i mean, if we can ever get beyond surviving.  i do think images and words are necessary. i do think proof of our living and of our wellness are important. i do think we need to keep sharing even when we’d like to be invisible, or when we’d like to look away. a friend told me we are here because we want to be. i suppose all want doesn’t need to be explained or defended, but i’ve still got questions.  i am wondering lately if what i feel is exhaustion, boredom, and burn-out, or existential dread. joy and community remind me of the truth. a body and a voice are not disposable.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2878" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2879" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_separator type="normal"][vc_empty_space height="60px"][vc_column_text]LAQUANN DAWSON (he/him) (Brooklyn, NY, 1994) is a filmmaker, creative director, and photographer out of Elyria, Ohio now living in Brooklyn, New York. His interest in photography grew out of a desire to document himself and the world around him. At 13, he began making self-portraits and over the past decade has created a prolific body of work that has evolved, exploring themes of Blackness, isolation, community, desire, joy, and Disappointment. LaQuann is the visual director for MOBInyc and director of MOBItalks: A Digital Series, Risk Magazine’s content director, and one-fourth of HIM Podcast. He is the creative director and curator for Impulse Group NYC’s Our Light Through Darkness coffee table book. LaQuann’s recent work has focused on the visibility, the wellness, and the sexual liberation of queer people of color. ARC OF ANDRE is a contemporary ready-to-wear and accessories brand founded by Andre Moses in 2018. Coming from a lower-middle-class family that resided in Detroit, Andre obtained a degree in apparel and textiles in 2013, and ultimately moved to New York to launch his brand in 2016. Andre uses his own journey and development, or arc, as inspiration for the brand, exemplifying the thought that our upbringing and past socioeconomic status have a profound effect on our daily dress choices that we make in the present.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="60px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="50px"][vc_single_image image="675" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" qode_css_animation="" link="https://thetenthmagazine.com/"][vc_empty_space height="10px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row]...

02 December, 2021

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_column_text] FEATURE | WINTER '21 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] IN THE ROOM WITH THE FUTURE [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2835" img_size="full" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text] WORDS by PICASSO MOORE PHOTOGRAPHS by AVION PEARCE  [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]Nearly a year into a global pandemic, and six months after one of her most intense PTSD flare-ups in a decade, Anyanwu faces a mirror in a white tank top with the bullet wounds she has termed her “battle scars” on full display. She’s newly engaged, reinvigorated, and flashing a megawatt smile. Nimbly, she glides a barber's clipper across her forehead. She shapes her own haircut and chimes “I’ve been feeling amazing this past week. My PTSD has been great!” While looking at herself in the mirror there is a distinct focus in her eye. It’s not the same focus she’ll later display while pontificating to the room about the apathy of her activist contemporaries, and it’s starkly different from the look she displays when leading groups of mixed and contentious company through a conversation about race and power. Her focus, in this moment, is not directed outward. It’s not intended to disarm or inform a room, but rather to preserve her hard-fought balance. She admires the sharply shaped-up woman in the mirror and generously gives herself the type of radical self-love people read books and meditate to try to muster. Her focus is striking and very clearly internal. She’s “feeling amazing” and her “PTSD has been great.”  Particularities of her condition aside, her sentiment is echoed by everyone in her apartment. We’re all feeling amazing, beaming to be in a room with, get this, actual people. Making art, conversation, and covid safe connections. Ironing out the logistics of a profile can always present challenges no matter the subject. Once hampered by rain, once by scheduling, and once by mental tissue left understandably tender after extreme trauma, now, it’s finally happening! Photographer Avion Pearce and I stand side by side documenting Anyanwu, as she exhibits dynamism typically possessed by characters in heightened and fast-paced television series. Like pistons firing, she’s off. First, about her plans for physical training that go beyond aesthetics and bolster emotional and cognitive strength, followed by a demonstration of intuitive mentalism that even the most hardened of skeptics would have to admit is more than a party trick, and then a stark shift to her disappointment—rage, even—at the community of American activists who, in her mind, have been apathetic in the face of the #EndSARS movement. Anyanwu’s fiance Tishara, a dynamic woman in her own right who works as a ballet dancer and educator, is at this point unsurprised by her partner’s vigor and eloquence—but still charmingly inspired. Standing on Anyanwu’s right, she quickly takes out her phone and begins filming. Anyanwu, laid across her couch, stares directly down Avion’s lens speaking passionately about how the gruesome murder of George Floyd galvanized the entire world in a way she’d never seen; adding that even in the midst of an unprecedented health crisis people showed up in droves to let it be known that the world was watching and will not tolerate such evil. “Where is that mobilization for Nigeria?”, she asks and demands. Motivated partially by genuine ideology, partially by curiosity and desire to witness her extemporaneous rebuttal when challenged, I ask what steps people in America can actually take. Citing the geographical limitations, the stress and danger of the COVID epidemic, and that the rapidly rising unemployment rate has surely made munificence a challenge for most, I offer that perhaps what we’re witnessing isn’t apathy but helplessness.  What follows is an immediate shift in posture and position along with a surge in conviction. Tishara moves further back to the wall, making sure to capture every bit of Anyanwu’s relocation. Avion adjusts the lights and continues to snap away. Now, perched on the backboard of her couch, she counters me while simultaneously engaging every entity in the room. Aware yet affected by the fact that she is being photographed. She expands on her previous point, weaving data with anecdotes and folklore. With her head high and her gesticulation mighty, she forces us to engage, citing the work of our elders who did far greater with far less infrastructure and access. It’s the type of occurrence that shapes the mythology of our heroes. A moment of revelation...

11 November, 2021

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_column_text] INTERVIEWS | WINTER '21 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] KALUP LINZY: SHE'S STILL HERE [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] INTERVIEWED by JAMES POWELL PHOTOGRAPHED in TULSA, OK  [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="12px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]In the new world order, mired in pandemic, most social interactions have been formatted to the screen. After indulging and equally being force-fed a full spread of endless video conferencing, for the first time in a while, it was refreshing to be physically lost—knowing that once I found my bearings I would be sitting in person with multi-disciplinary artist Kalup Donte Linzy. Raised in Central Florida and a product of Gen X’s baby busters, a generation that was amongst the last connective tissues to the early stages of the Information Age, Linzy uses his erudition of American daytime television, southern aesthetics, and pop culture to have comic, yet challenging dialogue around the infamous threesome: race, class, and sexuality. It was not long after moving to New York City that Linzy would be participating in a group exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2005. That exhibition would lead to Linzy's permanent mark in collections of The Whitney, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and MoMA. Linzy’s talents were not limited to the blocks of Museum Mile but extended to Hollywood, television, and fashion, having appearances on General Hospital and collaborating with the likes of actor James Franco and doyenne Diane Von Furstenberg. Our dialogue explored ancestral acknowledgment, paid homage to 90’s Golden Age films such as B.A.P.S., and the impact of Tulsa’s haunting black history. We spoke about the importance of print, tactile experiences, archiving, and sorted through reasons for his visible hiatus from the contemporary art scene. In addition to the gift of his new album Paula Sungstrong Legend Recordings, we were left with the suggestion to exercise grace with ourselves and those around us.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2861" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]JAMES: This is Juneteenth, the anniversary of the so-called emancipation of slaves in this country, of African peoples. When you woke up this morning in Tulsa, what were you thinking about? KALUP LINZY: Some mornings I open the shades and it's sunny, and I do it to get some vitamin D. When I opened my shades this morning, it was raining. I was like, "It's raining outside?" Then I said, "Oh gosh. I hope this is a divine intervention with some help from the ancestors." That was my thought, that hopefully, with the weather not being so sunny, it won't get too wild.  I believe in God and Jesus and Buddha and all those things, but I also believe in the spirits of the ancestors and that they do watch over us. I call upon them sometimes. I spent a couple of nights, like a week or so, not being able to sleep. I questioned and wondered if there were ancestral spirits keeping me awake to deal with it. I went to a Greenwood's project meeting, and they were talking about the mass graves. They said, "People around here are literally dancing on their graves." I was like, "Gosh. I don't want to be dancing on someone's grave." When you walk out of my apartment on that street you can see some of the businesses that were destroyed; they have all these plaques. When I first moved to Tulsa, I knew about the Tulsa Riots that's now called a massacre, but I hadn't studied it in detail. I feel it's my duty to keep them in remembrance, moving forward. We can't change the past, but we can remember the past, come together, and move forward in productive ways.  JAMES: I want to go back to how we remember those ancestors. The nostalgia of listening to Keys of Our Heart and being a gay, Black man from the South amongst other gay Black men from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, watching your work, was comical. It was endearing. It was powerful because I could see myself, my aunts, and my grandmothers.  Let’s talk about the connection from your past that you have to your present. One of the gentlemen we work with—Bill Ferris, is a preeminent scholar of Southern history. Bill always says “if you scratch hard enough, you can always find some Southern roots.” We don't have to go too deep with you, because you're from Clermont, Florida. Correct? KALUP LINZY: I was born in Clermont, raised in Stuckey, a small, rural town. JAMES: Tulsa is emblematic of so many other points of Black capitalism. There's a couple called Sally and James Townsend in Clermont, who started the first AME church, and the first school for African-Americans. Towns like Rosewood, Florida have experienced destruction similar to the Tulsa massacre. KALUP LINZY: That's not too far from where I grew up, maybe an hour and a half. The Ocoee Massacre, which nobody is talking about, is closer to Clermont. They're both the suburbs of Orlando and the Groveland Four. I went to Groveland High School. We got that whole retelling growing up. The Klan actually came to Stuckey and The National Guard was sent for a week. My family gathered up all the kids and got them out. My grandmother was telling me one day how the Klan used to ride around Stuckey on horses and just harass them. I was so surprised. I don't know if she saw the look on my face or it was her own anxiety that was coming back up, but she stopped talking. I had one uncle, her brother, who would never talk about any of it. The newspaper always tried to interview him and he would never talk. My grandmother's oldest brother was a civil rights activist and a pastor of St. John's Missionary Church in Orlando. He was always talking about it and making sure we knew those stories and knew that history. My aunts, grandmother, and all of them were a whole part of that 1949 Groveland Four Raid. That’s what they call it. A lot of the white people there don't want to talk about it. They're just like, "Can we please move on?" I have had that with me my whole life. Although I don't overtly say it in my work, I have always been completely aware of that type of racism.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_video link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IyM0dTJf94"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]JAMES: These stories are frightening. What does that do to the imagination of a creator like you? Does it seep into your work in some way? KALUP LINZY: In the '90s, in undergrad, I did documentaries. One of the reasons why I did all of the voiceovers with different people of different races and cultures is because I was exploring language early on. It doesn't matter what your skin color is, your language, or your syntax. All of that develops based on the environment you're raised in. It has nothing to do with the color of your skin. You can turn your back, then hear someone talking, turn around and sometimes they're white. You're like, "Okay, why does she or he sound like that?" They're not even trying to be a hip-hop version or of the hip-hop influence, so to say.  I was thinking about that because in college, doing all the critiques and that sort of thing, I was making work that was surface and superficial at one point. I was doing the family documentaries and stuff. My family and some of the professors were like, "That stuff is kind of interesting." Then some people said, "Kalup, the performance stuff is a little bit more interesting," because I guess in the '90s, we did have a lot of that. We had the Rosewood movie. Everybody was wearing kente cloth. We were more concerned about Black-on-Black violence than we were about police brutality, even though it was still happening, but that's just what we were focused on at the time. My work went more performative, but I was always trying to stay aware of cultural and race relations.  People have asked me if I will ever explore some of the overt racism that happens in the art world. As Da Art World Might Turn, one of the pieces where it's dealing with the storyline of Dick is an actual representation of the friends I'm surrounded by in Florida, but I think the work can still reach people by having the majority of those characters be white. It's a universal thing, they will likely be open to that whole conversation. I don't want to be too overt with some stuff where people end up not being able to receive the message. That's one reason why it's cast like that.  I've been thinking about how to incorporate some of the Black Lives Matter stuff. What about those artists who have spoken up? I'm thinking of a character, an artist that has spoken up in the past, and his whole career was ruined because nobody would listen. So where is that artist now? Does that career get revived? Why, when our white male, straight artists burn down something or get away with doing something really crazy, it's sexy, but then if a Black artist does it, it's repulsive? I'm thinking about the politics of it. That's one way I'm thinking of some storylines in season four of As Da Art World Might Turn because I do feel like we're in a revolution. I don't see it ever not being in my work, but when it comes to dealing with it overtly and in more obvious ways, because I've always been subtle, I'm not quite sure. I don't know if that would take away from my approach to it or not.  JAMES: The art industry is a billion-dollar industry. Art is also a form of protest. Especially during the 1950s, with the Black arts movement that largely originated in places like Chicago and New York City, by outsider artists or artists that were not formally trained, and artists who were activists. With Black Lives Matter being at the helm of the movement, at least visibly, you see a lot of these artists addressing themes about race, sexuality, and gender. Do you feel, because there is now a value add, this type of artwork is selling at such a high rate, being a Black artist and talking about Black oppression is the trend? Do you think all of the art that's depicting Black rage and oppression is authentic? Or do you think it's been co-opted and commodified? KALUP LINZY: You're going to get me in trouble. I've actually been conflicted because I always question myself, which is why I put myself in my work—I don't want to be making money off somebody else's pain. If I'm going to explore that, then I need to be in there talking about some of the stuff that's personal to me, because I do think people are making money off Black issues. I just hope the artists and the majority of the white dealers that are making that money are supporting the communities in other ways. On one hand, if it's our pain then we have a right to exploit that, but I don't think we're the only ones exploiting that. It is trendy. It's bad to say from that perspective, but it is.  I'm conflicted, I'm torn, which is why now I'm looking to open an art house here in Tulsa in 2021 through art integration grants with the Tulsa Artists Fellowship to bring artists here. All artists won't necessarily be Black or gay or female, but it'll definitely be the majority. It'll be giving artists a platform where they'll get a stipend, get to stay here, and hang out. That's my social practice project, to give back to my community because again, I mined my own pain and also the pain of Black culture in my work. Although my work, it's not always selling at high prices—I get a lot...

04 November, 2021

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][ultimate_spacer height="90" height_on_tabs="50" height_on_tabs_portrait="50" height_on_mob_landscape="50" height_on_mob="50"][vc_column_text] REFLECTIONS [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] THE URGENCY: TABULA RASA FOR BLACK GRIEF IN AMERICA [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text] WORDS by MARCUS ANTHONY BROCK  IMAGES courtesy of NEW MUSEUM  [/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner row_type="row" type="grid" text_align="left" css_animation=""][vc_column_inner width="1/6"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="2/3"][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]“I’m not who I used to be, a part of my childhood was taken from me. […] It changed me. It changed how I viewed life. It made me realize how dangerous it is to be Black in America.” –Darnella Frazier, Grief and Grievance Personified[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/6"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]It is certain that Black life is a gift. I believe that all our humanities have gifts to share. We have inscriptions to leave upon each other and throughout the gravel, crust, and salt of the earth—but if only we could get on with the business of living and forego the strain of existing with swiveling necks—waiting for the next guillotine to drop, swarmed by a spectacle of ongoing death. We are not born with the instructions to shame, hopelessness, or pathology. Yet, along the way of living in Black bodies—of living in bodies—like a piece of papyrus or tabula, we are inscribed, erased, and written onto again until the bounty and beauty of Blackness are distorted into a tabula designed in the destructive image and ideology of the oppressor. We have been brought to the world by hook, crook, and by way of our ancestors, standing at our backs hurling us forward, crawling, walking, and rising. They carry us up over yonder closer to that ‘ultralight beam’ that the controversial Kanye West yearns, “We on a ultralight beam, we on a ultralight beam, this is a God-Dream.” One thing about Black people: we are truly descendants of a mighty oral tradition, and we will give you song, story, and some blessed assurance. But our lives in this country are continually under siege and Black people are continually intentional in their approach towards our grief.   I am forlorn—from writing about death.  I am forlorn—from thinking about death. I am forlorn—from singing songs of sorrow.  I am forlorn—with grief. I—am forlorn.  Still, I am hopeful that the ‘In Memoriam’ of Black people slain by the spectacle were not lost in vain, and that our grieving and mourning are not in vain.  It was a sunny, Spring afternoon when I attended the New Museum’s exhibition, Grief and Grievance: Art and  Mourning in America. With Mahalia Jackson’s “Trouble of the World” on my mind, I chose to attend on my birthday and would endeavor to experience the dichotomy of living with the anarchy of mourning. I would also arrive to pay homage to the work and life of Nigerian-born, Okwui Enwezor, who began to produce Grief & Grievance in 2019 with plans for it to showcase just before the historic 2020 election, but he passed away at the age of fifty-five years wise to cancer. The global pandemic left us in shambles during that same year, further delaying the opening and prolonging our mourning. Acting as advisors, artists, and curators, Naomi Beckwith, Massimiliano Gioni, Glenn Ligon, and Mark Nash were able to resurrect Enwezor’s vision and carry the exhibition through. Grief & Grievance is a tribute, but also a commemoration of the atrocities placed on Black life in America and the global civil unrest of 2020. I do believe Enwezor’s intention showed us that the work of sitting with grief is much larger than the grief itself—it was—and it is. I imagine it is grotesque, laborious, and empowering on another level to create an exhibition confronting the shock and horror of being Black and American, in a pandemic no less. And through it all, both a catalog and an exhibition were created as historical documents conveying the grief of Black Americans. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="80px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2781" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]In the exhibition book, Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, Claudia Rankine has republished, “The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning.” A photo of Mamie Till Mobley hovering dejected over the casket of her son, Emmett, in 1955 at his funeral in Chicago accompanies Rankine’s words. Till was originally sent to his mother in a pine box from Mississippi, where the grievance occurred. Even over sixty-five years later, racists and white supremacists refuse to let Emmett, nor us, rest in peace. Till’s memorial in Mississippi at Graball Landing along the Tallahatchie River has been replaced four times now. Racist vandals have destroyed the memorial sign by riddling it with bullets, wanting it made plain—we don’t belong here. As of 2019, the sign is now bulletproof and weighs 500 pounds, to fend off racial terror, or rather the psychological racial terror of learning about the number of times the memorial has been replaced from a litany of news notifications. So, in that regard, the condition of Black life is one of mourning, but I wonder, just how much longer can we mourn? We deserve to feel free.  [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="60px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2782" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]In just three years, the centennial of James Baldwin’s born day will undoubtedly implore celebrations of grandstanding. Like Enwezor’s exhibition, it too will be one of mourning, but also one of resilience and commemoration. Grief has taught me that these stories can live on and impact the maturation of so many Black people.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="60px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_row_inner row_type="row" type="grid" text_align="left" css_animation=""][vc_column_inner width="1/6"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="2/3"][vc_column_text]During a 1990 interview with Bill Moyers, Toni Morrison paraphrased Baldwin’s words as a reminder: “You’ve already been bought and paid for. Your ancestors already gave it up for you. It’s already done. You don’t have to do that anymore. Now you can love yourself. It’s already possible.” And yet, the problem is that Black grief is one of psychological terror in a futile, but repeated, attempt to erode that possibility. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/6"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="40px"][vc_column_text]It is a grievance that a Black teenager, Christopher Martin, has to sift through the dirt that is receiving the counterfeit bill from George Floyd as the cashier on duty. During testimony, he recounted that he offered to pay for Floyd’s cigarettes himself. His awareness of Black people and the police is omnipresent here: ultimately he knew it all could have been avoided. Darnella Frazier, seventeen years old at the time, filmed Floyd gasping for air for more than nine minutes on her camera phone. Following that dreadful day, she said she shook so much at night that her mother had to “rock her to sleep.” [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="60px"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_single_image image="2784" img_size="large" alignment="center" qode_css_animation=""][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]Taking this all in, I crossed the street to enter the museum. Black people don’t just understand Black grief, they have also recorded it. Perched on the outside of the museum was Glenn Ligon’s neon fixture, Blues Blood Bruise, originally conceived for the Venice Biennale, but a reference to a recording of teenager Daniel Hamm, one of the Harlem Six brutally beaten in 1964 and denied medical treatment. During an interview, he makes a slip of tongue, “I had to, like, open the bruise up, and let some of the blues blood come out to show them.” Following Ligon’s piece atop the roof, I was greeted with a familiar song as I crossed the threshold into the museum: loud, like a headwind lifting me up, carrying me into the space, and setting the stage, a repeated recording of Kanye West’s, “Ultralight Beam” from The Life of Pablo. Grief and Grievance occupied all floors of the museum, but before I could enter the space holding the familiar tune, I followed a young woman’s voice, narrating Garrett Bradley’s award-winning short film, Alone. A single mother, Black, shares an experience about how incarceration shapes a Black family. In choosing to marry her lover behind bars, she is intentional and making a commentary on choosing and defining her own happiness in spite of those who disapprove. She yearns for love. She yearns for freedom in this lifetime. Also within that room were the X-ray photographs of ritual funerary objects, “memory jugs,” by Terry Adkins. A juxtaposition, if you will.  I then sat to watch Arthur Jafa’s montage, Love is the Message, the Message is Death. I sat and consumed the montage twice, spending fifteen minutes on a bench, shaking my head, nearly in tears, and reciting the lyrics of West’s backing track through my mask, “I’m trying to keep my faith, but I’m hoping for more, somewhere I can feel safe, in this Holy War.” A closer inspection of Jafa’s work asserts that relinquishing to Black death is not the only option. We must not fold under that grief. Perhaps, the message is not death, because the spirit of Black people transcends such triteness. As Chance the Rapper beckons on the record with West and Kelly Price, “You can feel the lyrics and spirit coming in braille, Tubman of the Underground come and follow the trail.”[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="60px"][vc_video link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPRo4R8HEr8"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="grid" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern" z_index=""][vc_column width="1/6"][/vc_column][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_empty_space height="80px"][vc_column_text]In Memoriam  During Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd, Darnella Frazier told the jury, judge, courtroom, and global viewing audience, “It’s been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life.” Instead of Chauvin on trial, it was our Black children on trial. Her act of contrition, much like Martin’s, is a reality for teenage Black children who are now living with the trauma and the “condition of Black life” in this country. They are not at fault for the engineered system of anti-Black aggression. Yet, they wear the scars.  It is tried and it is true that Black people, in all our majesty, have been in a state of perpetual mourning in America since we stepped upon these shores shackled at our ankles. But, those are not our origin stories. Yet so much of our outward existence and portrayals around the world, in media, film, and art are wrapped in the trauma and systemic grievances flowing from our enslavement. Though we have created home in this country, Black people have mourned their homeland since we arrived here, and not just the physical homeland, but our spiritual homelands. In Zora Neale Hurston’s, Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo, Hurston speaks to “the last known surviving African of the last American slaver—the Clotilda,” Cudjo Lewis, or Oluale Kossola. He speaks of Plateau, Alabama, which was once called Africatown, where he settled after his freedom was granted. It was a sacred place where they restored their rituals of song, prayer, food, and gathering to create an Africa in this land—an African American identity and culture. Scholar, Deborah Plant, found and edited Hurston’s work in a posthumous publishing  through the eyes of “the Last Black Cargo” almost ninety years later. I wonder when Phillis Wheatley was stolen from Senegal at just seven years old, did she think that we would still recite her poems centuries later to trace and hold our history? We inhabit the organic matter of our bodies, but what is true is that we will leave them, eventually. The body will die, but the spirit of Black people will not. The legacy is there in perpetuity, and we are here to make sure it thrives. The grievance is racism, but we must find a way to use the grief if we are to live out our full potential and leave our descendants with a reminder that we are not born of pathology. Before Enwezor’s passing in Munich, he wrote about the “national emergency of Black grief” and the assemblage of thirty-seven intergenerational artists who are responding to the emergency, imploring Black communities to aspire and transcend those images about...

09 September, 2021
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