along with other themes and issues like abolition, emergence, black study, black anarchy, fugitivity, living archives , ancestral wisdom, African cosmologies
Already, just a few pages in, and I feel that this is going to shift my practice along even further down this path of refusal, stealing my body away through liberatory practices and beings.
I’d set it up with Theresa Easton to go play with her letterpress printing gear again. I didn’t have so much as a plan as I did have a word: PLOT.
I rocked up with a number of different subtracts to play with and just wanted to explore what I mean when I use the word, PLOT.
We set up the printing plate with the word PLOT repeated in different type fonts. We arranged them into a neat A5 sized piece and then let the inking commence.
I played with different coloured inks, directions of papers, different papers and got myself into a meditative rhythm.
It was so much fun and I’m so grateful to Theresa to allowing me to play in her studio for free.
For half of my life, I lived with someone who made me question my reality.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that within white supremacy culture and racial capitalism, I was primed to see myself as guilty and so discipline myself accordingly.
So then when I get into a relationship with someone who had their own mental issues and superiority complex and sense of entitlement, then I’m already primed to let whatever they do slide and make the (wrong) assumption that it is me who’s wrongs too demanding. Too needy. Too much. Too stupid.
I was primed and it was frequently reinforced that I knew nothing. That my reality was not reality and that if only I listened to the white man, let him lead me and control me then I would be saved. Or at least assimilated.
Psychic intrusions, near and far. The far is society itself. The colonial settler mindset that those who are colonised are already flawed, wrong, inferior and in need of assistance. In need of direction. In need of being controlled.
Psychic intrusions that meant that for most of my life I’ve been hating on self. Thinking and feeling less than. Thinking and feeling that I need to prove my worth. Prove my humanity.
Of course my eyes are open now.
Of course I’m taking back my psyche and coming out fighting.
I’m not playing this subordinate role anymore. I’m not playing stupid. Because that’s what it all was/is a charade. A falsehood.
The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.
Malcolm X made this statement as part of a eulogy he delivered at the funeral of Ronald Stokes, an NOI officer who was killed by Los Angeles police in April 1962. A recording of the speech can be found here.
I had the pleasure of gathering with the WOC Azadi again in Sheffield today.
We gathered to share ideas around how to plot/plotting our healings, our liberation together.
Visual journaling was on hand to capture our thoughts, feelings, plans and plots.
It was such a nurturing and nourishing space in nature. It was a gathering of hope and aspirations.
It was an honour to be part of the day retreat. Ideas for The Plot of Our Repair came about from a reading is Saidiya Hartman’s essay , The Plot of her Undoing (2020).
The plot of her undoing begins with his dominion. It begins in the fifteenth century with a papal bull, with a philosopher at his desk, pen in hand, as he sorts the world into categories of genus and species. It begins with a bill of sale, with a story in the newspaper that enumerates her crimes, with a note appended to the file: she answers questions easily, but appears stupid; it begins with a wanted poster that reduces the history of her life to a single word-condemned.
And then towards the end of this essay there is a switch. A turn to explore how we can undoing the plot of her undoing. How we can move against the forces aiming to ruin/ control/ oppress the black/brown woman.
The undoing of the plot proceeds by stealth. It is almost never recognized as anything at all and certainly never as significant.
…
It begins with the earth under her feet. It begins with all of them gathered at the river and ready to strike, with all of them assembled in the squatter city, with all of them getting ready to be free in the clearing.
The undoing of the plot begins with her runaway tongue, with her outstretched hands, with songs shared across the unfree territory and the occupied lands, with the pledges of love that propel struggle, with the vision that this bitter earth may not be what it seems.
The undoing of the plot, the plot developing towards our repair was started before us. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We continue this journey, this plotting together. Today makes me feel that we have already won.
Living Wild Studios 