– Lois Alexander · Jan 11 – Feb 21
Pilotprojekt Residenz
What if what I want from you is new, newly made
a new sentence in response to all my questions,
a swerve in our relation and the words that carry us,
the care that carries. I am here, without the shrug
attempting to understand how what I want
and what I want from you run parallel—
justice and the openings for just us.
-Claudia Rankine, Just Us
15 February 2021
When I think about the mother, I think about longing. When I think about longing, I think about memory. When I think about memory, I am really thinking about its traces. And finally, when I think about traces, I think about the traces of the unspeakable violence…before…during… and after the transatlantic slave trade… and then I think about trying one´s tongue.
From a movement perspective, I consider how the body can be a point of connection to reclaim a lost or unknown homeland(s) and fill an absence of kin. In a way, it’s about healing intergenerational trauma… but it can also be about claiming ancestral knowledge to carve new paths. As I leave my residency in Lake Studios, I continue walking down a non linear path where past/present selves can integrate toward a future that has the space for blackness to be multiple…fluid…
The dance is how to become fully alive in the participation of it all.
In the words of Octavia Butler:
All that you touch, you Change.
All that you Change, Changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change.
God Is Change.
Photo by Nina Kay, Collaborator
From new video work, Black Venus