Posts Tagged ‘#707 + 20 JANUARY 2017 + MY NOW “DIS-UNITED” STATES OF AMERICA’S INAUGURATION DAY + SOS + SEPTEMBER GALLERY’S “POST-ELECTION” – WOMEN ARTISTS’ RESISTANCE / DEDICATION FOR ALL HUMANITY; CATHERINE L. JO’
“The truth is, us kids, we just want to be the voice for the people we lost, or for people who don’t think they have a voice. I am prioritizing this over college right now, I am prioritizing people’s lives over my education.”
SAMANTHA FUENTES, who was wounded in the school shooting last month in Parkland, Fla., on whether to begin college in the fall or continue the campaign to promote more rigorous gun safety laws.
Our America has become a “reality show” watching/reading about the lives of others – passively.
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The America of now does not witness what is real – real lives. Living life as”personas” on social media platforms aware of being watched – not witnessed.
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What happens to empathy if one’s lives are circuited/hijacked by what other people think? We are hardwired to smell truth like dogs. Sacred listening is the morning of hope.
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What happens to becoming a life harvested from one’s vision quest, dark nights of the soul?
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Living is complicated. Living a life where you rise to your TRUE North and to know your integrity is incomparable currency. Welcoming those who rise and whose word=action is GOLD issustenance.
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We are and become the stories of our lives. We choose to honor and respect our souls by selecting those who SEE you and welcome the bone, marrow, blood and heart of who you are and as you sail on the seas of living life – y/our blessed voyage.
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Our children live the reality of lockdown. Our children are enduring the secrets, betrayals, hustling, deceptions and lies of our government.
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Our children dared because their torment was overwhelming. Our role as adults to protect/shield them were blind to the shattering of their innocence.
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Irony: 60 Minutes’ interview with Stormi Daniels follows the MARCH FOR OUR LIVES. Watching v. witnessing. “Reality show” voyeurism v. call to action.
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Our HOPE has been taken hostage – our lamentation and our complicity. We need a WWII’s DUNKIRK to retrieve our soul. The dialectics of COURAGEACTIONEMPATHYFURY’SHOPE.
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I marched yesterday. Yes, of course. Yes, absolutely. Yes, because I live now. To witness the current, the voltage, of children march to the Capitol’s steps was deafening. To hear their child voices pleading eviscerated me and my friend. The event was somber and cried out a NEED to atone by ACTION for OUR children’s unforgivable suffering.
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Truth RISES. RADICAL Hope. Sacred listening. That is the JOY of being ALIVE!
*Moral courage is the courage to take action for moral reasons despite the risk of adverse consequences. Courage is required to take action when one has doubts or fears about the consequences. Moral courage therefore involves deliberation or careful thought.
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If you know something is wrong and youchoose to do nothing, you become complicit.
The composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard at Clove Lakes Park on Staten Island on Friday.
Credit Ian Douglas for The New York Times
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The emotional climax of Terence Blanchard’s SummerStage concert on Friday night, at Clove Lakes Park on Staten Island, arrived precisely one hour in, like a timed detonation. It was the title track of his most recent album, “Breathless”— an elegy for Eric Garner, who died at the hands of police officers on Staten Island just over two years ago. Mr. Blanchard, in his trumpet solo over the plaintive theme, struck a careful tonal balance, sounding haunted but unflinching.
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Mr. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry soon after his death, which was caught on video and viewed by millions. The phrase served a blunt, potent role at protests and on social media, bolstering the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It has been printed on T-shirts, signs and buttons, like the one worn on Friday by Mr. Garner’s 2-year-old daughter, Legacy, as she distractedly took in Mr. Blanchard’s performance near the foot of the stage.
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The saying also surfaced, pluralized, in “Breathless,” via a recorded spoken-word recitation by Mr. Blanchard’s son, who goes by JRei Oliver. “Am I wrong for believing that one day black and blue would not equal pain?” he said. Then, a moment later:
These black roses grow from cracked pavements Freshly watered with the tears of the voiceless As we’ll emit a muted scream to the heavens: We. Can’t. Breathe.
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During a long, hard season of activist urgency in black popular music — among artists like Kendrick Lamar, D’Angelo and now Beyoncé — jazz has by no means lagged behind. Mr. Blanchard’s album, released on Blue Note last year, is just one recent statement of many, driven by indignation, the push for justice and the urge to bear witness.
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Of course, there’s deep lineage for this in jazz, stretching even further than Louis Armstrong’s 1929 recording of “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue,” which inspired a crucial early passage in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Any discussion of this topic would have to include Billie Holiday’s bloodcurdling lynching anthem, “Strange Fruit” (1939); Charles Mingus’s “Fables of Faubus” (1959), about the fight for school integration; Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln’s “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” (1960), a civil rights cri de coeur; and John Coltrane’s “Alabama” (1963), a lament made in response to the notorious church bombing in Birmingham.
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The current upswell has been built on this granite foundation: Jazz musicians are nothing if not self-conscious about their forebears. But the dimensions of today’s moment have also shaped the music. When the pianist Vijay Iyer began a 2014 performance in Brooklyn with a “die-in,” dancers lying on the stage, he was bringing Black Lives Matter into the concert hall. When the keyboardist Kris Bowers performed his song “#TheProtestor” in Harlem two years ago, it featured a bracing topical digression by the vocalist Chris Turner.
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The drummer Max Roach and the singer Abbey Lincoln
collaborated on “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” (1960), a civil rights cri de coeur.
Credit Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images
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Last year another singer, José James, released an album in centennial tribute to Holiday, inevitably closing with “Strange Fruit.” He sings it as an a cappella dirge, with a looping, multitracked moan. It flew mostly under the radar, but Mr. James also collaborated around the same time with the artist Talia Billig for “Peace Power Change,” a video set to his acoustic cover of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
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The pianist Vijay Iyer began a 2014 performance with a “die-in,” in which dancers lay on the stage,
thus bringing Black Lives Matter into the concert hall.
Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
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Part of the power of that song, in its original context, was a yearning faith in the great sweep of history. “Peace Power Change” embraces a more intimate premise: A succession of musicians look into the camera, serious or smiling, and hold up handwritten signs bearing the names of victims of police violence, or “#blacklivesmatter,” or simply “Justice.”
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One of the artists in the video is Keyon Harrold, a trumpeter born and raised in Ferguson, Mo., where the most wrenching confrontations between protesters and the police have taken place. Mr. Harrold tells his story in brief on one track of “Nihil Novi,” a new album by the multireedist Marcus Strickland; he begins by stating his name, as in a testimony.
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The singer José James has covered Billie Holiday’s haunting anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit,”
and Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
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Names are central to this era of jazz protest, partly because of the influence of social media: When another African-American falls victim to violence by the state, his or her name becomes a hashtag, a trending topic, a tragic new meme. It’s a bulwark against the dehumanizing mode of the opposition, and a way of keeping injustice from glazing into an abstraction. The trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire grasped this idea when he put “My Name Is Oscar” on his major-label debut five years ago. The track features a spoken-word poem read by Mr. Akinmusire in the voice of Oscar Grant III, who was shot and killed by a transit officer in Oakland, Calif. (and later inspired the film “Fruitvale Station”). In 2014, Mr. Akinmusire released a more chilling and expansive follow-up, “Roll Call for Those Absent,” consisting of the names of casualties sounded out by a child, over a darkly unsettled synthesizer hum. https://youtu.be/wGFaNHrvY7ohttps://youtu.be/Zw6H-7VZgcE
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Ambrose Akinmusire paid tribute to Oscar Grant III on his major-label debut album, “My Name Is Oscar.”
Credit Eva Hambach/Agence France-Press — Getty Images
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You can find more outright fury elsewhere, as in “K.K.P.D.” (for “Ku Klux Police Department”), a 2010 track by the trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, which he performed recently the Newport Jazz Festival. Mr. James could be seen at the same festival covering the outspoken hip-hop group Dead Prez, segueing from “Police State” into “Behind Enemy Lines.”
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Mr. Blanchard, who has long been the composer of Spike Lee’s film scores (including “Chi-Raq” and “Malcolm X”), has a more mournful disposition. Even when he has mobilized behind his social statement, his natural mode is reflection: The most telling word in his 2007 album “A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina),” inspired by events that literally hit home, is “requiem.”
On Staten Island he led his fusionesque young band, the E-Collective, in a set that often bounded toward turbocharged dynamism, with tragedy seemingly far from the picture. But near the concert’s close, after he delivered his most pugilistic trumpet solo on a tune called “Cosmic Warrior,” to cheers and applause from a crowd with an obvious stake in the moment,
Mr. Blanchard leaned into the microphone with a message.
MY HANDMADE SIGN: HEAL/THY + HEALTHY WOMEN = HEALTHY NATION
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X SEPTEMBER GALLERY
is PROUD to present:
Post–Election
– an exhibition of over150 artists!!!
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Exhibition Co-Organized by: Kristen Dodge and Kate Gilmore
X Opening: Saturday, 28 January 2017
Event programming begins at 2pm
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Opening Day Co-Organized by:
Lauren Barnes and Shanekia McIntosh
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X Exhibition Dates:
28 January – 5 March 2017
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Gallery hours:
Friday-Sunday, noon-6pm and by appointment.
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THE GENESIS:
This exhibition was conceived in conversation between Kristen and Kate a few days after the U.S. Presidential Election. With the intention of providing a reason, space, and context for artists to respond to the current circumstance, they agreed to set a show in motion, and allow the call to take on a life of its own. Word spread between artists and within a short time, the number of participants rose from 50 to 150. The current list of participating artists is included below.
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X THE SHOUT OUT:
“If you choose to make a work that addresses things internal, or external, or some state in-between, that is up to you. Make what you need to make in whatever form, and at whatever pitch you choose.”
(Excerpt from the call to participate.)
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If we stop to comprehend the “unrealistic” endeavors that we pursue, we would never do them. This show has been a leap of faith and a truly collaborative endeavor.
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Lauren Barnes and Shanekia McIntosh are organizing the opening day of performances, talks, and events. Carrie Schneider is managing new media submissions. Courtney Childress, Sheree Hovespain, Eleanor King, Gina Magid, Carleen Sheehan, Elise Siegel, and Ana Wolovick are providing drop-off locations for participating artists. Lilah Friedland is managing the collection of works in collaboration with our staff. Many participating artists have personally shipped their work to the gallery and offered their time and resources.
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A portion of all sales will be donated to the local factions of
Planned Parenthood and Black Lives Matter.
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ARTISTS/ WOMEN / ARTISTS/ PARTICIPATING/EXHIBITING:
Diana Al-Hadid, Jennifer Amadeo-Holl, Polly Apfelbaum, Colleen Asper, Lauren Barnes, Hannah Barrett, Kate Beck, Susan Bee, Andrea Belag, Anne Beresford, Iris Bernblum, Annie Bielski, Hannah Black, Nancy Bowen, Dawn Breeze, Kelsey Brod, Jacinta Bunnell, Beth Campbell, Alicia Casillio, Rebecca Chamberlain, Lenora Champagne, Patty Chang, Nicole Cherubini, Jennifer Paige Cohen, Courtney Childress, Beninga Chilla, Christen Clifford, Liz Collins, Moira Connelly, Jennifer Dalton, Nancy Davidson, Jen Dawson, Donna Dennis*, Shoshana Dentz, Melissa Auf der Maur, Leah Devun, Katherine Mitchell DiRico, Leah Dixon, Angelina Dreem, Jenny Dubnau, Sharona Eliassaf, Michelle Elzay, Julie Evans, Heide Fasnacht, Jean Feinberg, Rochelle Feinstein, Ashlee Ferlito, Alison Fox, Dana Frankfort, Lilah Friedland, Sarah Fuhrman, Sheila Gallagher, Chitra Ganesh, Mariah Garnett, Christy Gast, Tamara Gayer, Kate Gilmore, Jen Gilmore, Joanne Greenbaum, Catherine Hall, Ellen Harvey, Maren Hassinger, Paula Hayes, Clarity Haynes, Karen Heagle, Susana Heller, Elana Herzog, Jane Fox Hipple, Sheree Hovsepian, Nene Humphrey, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Jamie Isenstein, Alia S. Jackson, Catherine L. Johnson*, Deborah Kass, Nina Katchadourian, Lisa Kereszi, Eleanor King, Chelsea Knight, Autumn Knight, Amalia Korczowski, Julia Kunin, Marcia, Kure, Cal Lane, Karen Lee, Miranda Lichtenstein, Cynthia Lin, Kimberly Lin, Anne Lindberg, Meg Lipke, Jen Liu, Patte Loper, Marie Lorenz, Rebecca Loyche, Gina Magid, Dana Majana, Georgette Maniatis, Natasha Mayers, Suzanne McClelland, Francine Hunter McGivern, Shannekia McIntosh, Tess Middlebrook, Ander Mikalson, Marilyn Minter, Carrie Moyer, Donna Moylan, Laurel, Nakadate, Maureen Nollette, Rachel Owens, Ruby Palmer, Alix Pearlstein, Sheila Pepe, Carla Perez-Gallardo, Tessa Perutz, Janine Polak, Kristine Potter, Sara Rafferty, Corinna Ripps, Kenya Robinson, Heather Rowe, Brie Ruais, Adelaide Ruff, Kathy Ruttenberg, Jackie Saccoccio, Naomi Safran-Hon, Jennifer Salomon, Lisa Sanditz, Carrie Schneider, Mira Schor, Lauren Seiden, Becky Sellinger, Beverly Semmes, Nancy Shaver, Carleen Sheehan, Elise Siegel, Xaviera Simmons, Slinko, Barb Smith, Alexandria Smith, Shinique Smith, Jamie Sneider, Agathe Snow, Sarah Sole, Laurel Sparks, Meredyth Sparks, Allyson Strafella, Odessa Straub, Kianja Strobert, Maya Suess, Julianne Swartz, Jane Swavely, Monika Sziladi, Dannielle Tegeder, Constance Tenvik, Dorothea Van Camp Michalene Thomas, Sam Vernon, Stefanie Victor, Nicole Vidor, Jennifer Viola, Marianne Vitale, Wendy White, Jess Whittam, Lorna Williams, Karen Lee Williams, Martha Wilson, Ana Wolovick, Lachell Workman, Sun You
FRESHDRIEDBLOODIAMHUMAN Catherine L. Johnson 2013
WHITEWASH Catherine L. Johnson 2013
CATHERINE L. JOHNSON 