Jenny.Was.A.Pirate.Hater
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A Timely matter of Black Lives: Pirate Jenny - looking back, moving forward

12/27/2014

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As the new year approaches - I'm thinking about the ways how Pirate Jenny, aka PJ and her tools have grown, changed and developed in this social context - and this timely/less idea of historical police and authoritative brutality and social injustice in which she navigates and time travels. To me, its the same concept but different contexts - whether its the idea of the slave catcher - or the police officer - human beings of color, are truly embattled with authority in a way that brings to light the true issue that #BlackLivesMatter - and that these horrific crimes against black, brown, yellow and red bodies in and out of various institutions are unacceptable.

I started out my grad school journey with the idea of gele boats armed with the tune of Nina Simone's Pirate Jenny running through my head. As I finish up my Fall Semester - and decompress and process over the holidays, I also realize that I've revisited those mediums by stretching, wrapping and redressing those navigational instruments with gele - using chains to suspend my boats, also using video to capture me performing,  hanging from them the letters "BLM"  - finally, albeit joyfully writing on the wall parts of  Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera Song, brought to light by Lotte Lenya, and made iconic by Nina Simone. Maybe it's the act of writing on an institutional wall - or just the kinetic connection of hand to surface - but it was definitely freeing, symbolic and is another instance of performative work that I'm exploring as I incorporate my studio practice into a social one. As a black queer woman - I have no choice but to connect the two as I live my life. Nina Simone puts it so well when she tells her interviewer that we have an obligation and a duty as artists to do this, to reflect the times.

This semester has taught me not just about Pirate Jenny and how she will move forward for the next year - but about taking the time, seizing the moment - taking time to pause and reflect and using that to inform how I will react. The writing on the wall of this installation literally came after I had to de-install my media - sound and video. That came after getting feedback after my final critique with my program director and two incredible filmakers/conceptual/performance artists. Putting into action feedback after your own reflection is a skill that I'm still learning and moving forward with the new year I hope to see reflected in Pirate Jenny and her choices in travel, instruments and adventures in this increasingly troubled social context.

Happy New Year,

Love,

Pirate Jenny aka PJ

#BlackLivesMatter


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Pirate Jenny - A Timely matter of Black Lives...

12/27/2014

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It's two days after the holidays, Christmas - and wow... That's all I have to say. Wow.
I've still been on the momentum of Pirate Jenny using her instruments to time travel - I've had the gift of having time (well, sort of) to evolve my pieces and let ideas that I had introduced in my first semester show up in my fall semester of my second year of graduate school.

I must say that right before the thanksgiving holidays - the grind and rush of the deadline for our Fall Show definitely kicked my sinuses into gear - as well as finally seeing the non-indictment for Micheal Brown and watching Ferguson explode. I didn't know how to react - all I could feel was rage and the feeling of falling inward, spiraling towards despair, hopelessness and emptiness as that verdict - and then the non-idictment of Eric Garners CopKiller had me feeling so numb and helpless. All around me, despite my Fall show installation deadline, the  failing media for my installation, my sinus infection and school, work and exhaustion  was anger, rage, despair, mobilization in Baltimore and across the country in reaction to the growing awareness of  the police state and that #AllBlackLivesMatter despite the historically blatant horrors of police brutality coming to a head in the 21st century.

It took successfully putting up my installation for Mount Royal Fall 2014 Show "Maybe For Sure" for me to fully realize how empty I felt despite a now "media-drama-free installation", complete with sound, video and sculpture and that the world outside my studio had a place in my practice - and that I had no choice but to start making plans to implement my studio practice into a social one.
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