Observational Musings from
an Aimlessly Wandering Modern Black Flâneuse
(or in pursuits of multi-sensory engagements)
(unmute to turn sound on)
P P P
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 the 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.
But wait! Aren’t you a programmer + arts worker?
​
[beat]
Recently, a collaborator texted me the question: Where is your head heart in terms of production at the moment? Art making, writing, programming?
I replied that I’m at a crossroads in my life and these are the questions I’m asking myself—I’m over sharing but I’ve struggled throughout my career because I never stayed in one lane. I haven’t fit neatly into a category and I’ve worked in all kinds of places so it’s meant I never worked my way vertically up. And I’m just really embracing that it’s because I was oblivious to the fact that I have an artist mind—I was working and responding to opportunities as an artist and not as the pragmatist I’d been raised/trained to be. Which has created a perpetual tension. Either/or not Both/and.
In an ideal state, the three parts would coexist because to me, they’re all parts of the same whole. They inform and inspire each other. I develop programs like I create my performance/film work and my writing is just an extension/reflection of that. I’ve let go of trying to write “the right way.” I use the same tools, thinkings and references. I have the same goals—they just manifest in different forms. And I create with an awareness of the distinctive audiences and whose “voice” the work is speaking on behalf of (mine or a specific institution’s). But it’s challenging because most of the jobs I’ve worked at didn’t respect me as an artist or recognize that I was an artist who also was an admin. And should be treated like an artist who is an admin and not an admin who also makes some art on the side—so I’ve tended to burn out. This sabbatical period has been about me healing and recentering myself properly.
​
(In the hopes of embracing a life that is truly both/and)
or let’s simplify and make it clearer:
P P P
these Ps
core pillars
performance
poetics &
programming
are my pedagogy.
combine
these parts
to compose
one (whole)
me.
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