Observational Musings from an Aimlessly Wandering Modern Black Flâneuse
(or in pursuits of multi-sensory engagements)
Textiles by Bessie Champion Wicker
Have you met many black flâneuse from the South who never had the tell-tell accent? I aspired to be a flâneuse once I learned of them in undergrad. I realized there was a term, a persona for how I wandered streets. How I paused how I questioned how I observed. And I’ve been collecting and absorbing for years without a knowing of why, what for. Until, I did. Until I knew. Yes, you’re an anomaly. For a reason. A practice to combat aloneness. A practice to combat loneliness. A practice to combat helplessness. Ruled by intuition and feeling, not logic or theory or pragmatism. Allowing the viewer/the reader to create the connections, to identify the connections. Allowing the viewer/the reader to actively participate, to actively engage because there is no other option. Reaching tipping tipping tipped point. A deep dive escape into a truer into a more vulnerable into a more real pure State of Being that’s flawed & imperfect but wholly sincere. Wanting to connect to touch to change to shake to purge to reveal. Performance as safe space. Performance as self-amplified. Performance as release & exposure. Performance as a truth that in day to day we suppress we control we keep keeping up appearances. Let’s take a break from all that. Performance as holding the intangible. Performance as grappling with the incomprehensible. Performance as the roar the cry the laugh despite the expectations to behave. Hair out of or in place. Performance as presence as making taking occupying space. Performance as processing in real time. Performance as an unearthing. Performance as ritual repetition revolutions. Poetry & performance as a radical action to be seen, to demand visibility. If you leave as you came, I failed you.