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Jenny.Was.A.Pirate.Hater

Pirate.Jenny : I.AM.Radio #PirateRadio

4/7/2015

Thesis Approaches. Install is next week. All I can do is look back and just think about how far I've come and how long I have to go.

As I reflect on PJ I'm thinking about what she represents. Never thought I'd leave my MFA with this incredible alter ego who stands for my experiences - triumphant and traumatic, as well as this meeting point of slaves and piracy as an Afro-Caribbean woman immigrating to the UK. Last december, as I was still fleshing out PJ as a pirate/timetraveller - I went to a studio lecture on Sound. I was sick as a dog with sinus issues in the middle of installation tech nightmare for Fall Show, but managed to get enough to solidify some key thoughts about Pirate Jenny, sound, territory and boundaries.
Just as pirates defied the boundaries between land and sea - PJ is navigating the airwaves.

My newest inquiry into Pirate Jenny is #PirateRadio. I wanted to embody the idea of looking, tuning, seeking. She is, I am searching, tuning, dialing, navigating, always. For something, for home, for Mother for justice for vengeance. She is, I am Radio. I'll be chartering some new and experimental ground with words, music and conversation with wonderful local baltimore artists and activists.

Specific to Baltimore, I'm also interested in exploring the working relationships of pirates and slaves especially in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland, and seeing how those relationships are present in social justice work today. Of course, I had to have it at my favourite radical space Red Emmas Bookstore & Coffeeshop. I've got a beautiful line up of artists and activists including Josiah Morgan, Sydney Spann, Mark Gunnery and Paul Rucker...

IN the meantime, check out my thesis process and ideas - Hopefully you'll get to make out to MICA's thesis show opening for thesis Spring 2015 (April 17th - May 3rd). Stay tuned...

Shola aka PJ

#LovePJ
#PirateRadio
#IamRadio

Pirate Jenny, Piano Exercises and Keeping Time (travel)

4/4/2015

I've been feeling the need to have Pirate Jenny help me confront a lot of things. Around February of this year - I started using aspects of piano in my installations. Since the age of 6 and well into my early twenties, I trained heavily in classical music - mostly piano, a moderate amount of trombone and I had experimented with violin, and clarinet. At some point in my undergraduate days, the identity I had built around myself as a pianist was sticking, but subconsciously i couldn't deal with not knowing anything else. Learning, practicing and performing piano no longer became the safe space I would go to and eventually became traumatic. The learning environment I was in also didn't serve my emotional needs, especially as I was dealing with uncovering my sexuality, identity while being away from home for college.

What has evolved, is a series called Pirate.Jenny.Scores in which PJ is confronting, or facing those things that have affected me (Shola). The idea of scoring, scores - as music, as record as getting even sits well with me, and as PJ has been developing, I have been using her as a means of confronting events in my own life as well as social injustice in the world. Earlier, I had been working around the piano, putting it in my installations. Almost unavoidably, I had to start physically working with it, just so I could embody what I had been dealing with. Piano excercises/etudes such as having Pirate Jenny Pushing, pulling, dragging, leaning against this thing felt interesting. Setting up spaces/installation where I experimented with items and artifacts let me feel like I could insert her in them and give her tasks, or give her regimens that she had to receive.

Piano Exercises:Etude No 1, Video still (2/15)

Piano Exercises:Etude No 2, Video still (3/15)

Piano Exercises:Etude No 3, Video still (3/15)

The last etude in Pirate Jenny Scores involves a video performance of Pirate Jenny leading a funeral procession as she decides to find a place to bury her piano. There is a first time for everything. Producing the third piano exercise of Pirate Jenny Scores required: getting a cast, having a pre-production meeting, creating a storyboard, doing costume design, making sculpture, costume accents and props, rescheduling, scouting and locating a site, hiring a videographer and production assistants... among other things.

And it all happened. In Branford, CT - West woods Trail. It was cold, but I had some warm hearts helping to make the majic happen.

Stay tuned,
Love,
PJ

A Timely Matter of Black Lives (All Lives, rather): An open letter to Mt. Royal

1/7/2015

I've been taking time to think and heal and strategize for the year ahead. If anything - I don't have answers for the following year, I've just come up with some simple resolves in the following months to get through thesis, nourish myself as fiscally, lovingly and as emotionally well as I can - and to reflect those upon myself, those I care about and to my surroundings. For me that also means putting the art in articulate. I want Pirate Jenny to not just be another angry voice in the din of social justice in the quest for betterment of all lives, but to see her as an entity using concept, functioning in society with various actions allowing people to think, breathe and consider this point in time - and how we got here. As a first step, I've upgraded my vimeo account (Yay! Still figuring out other logistics) and uploaded together a series of self produced video shorts where I've experimented with some editing while working with two amazing video artists Cola Lola Marie and Lani Asuncion . The last clip, with the working title, "A Timely Matter of Black Life" - is the most recent exercise in performance as a response to what feels like a peaked frenzy of so much social injustice at the hands of various racist systems and institutions. I hope to produce and perform more of these experiments under the working title "A Timely Matter of Black Lives (All Lives Rather) - creating articulate work as Pirate Jenny that provokes meaningful thought and positively effective social rebellion.

Also, below is a letter I wrote to my studio mates at Mount Royal that I am using as momentum, and perhaps a personal manifesto, or my guide for the new year. I had sent this shortly after feeling proud that I had finally installed my work (after much electronic media drama) and we had a great opening as a program. However, on the heels of the Ferguson and Garner verdict, and all the news pouring in about lives of color meaning so little to some people, I felt compelled to write this. I'm so glad for the positive responses my studio mates gave as well as their own compassionate - and the beautiful dialogue that came forth, which I won't include, but it's got some institutional dialogue going as far as how we can bridge the gap as students and as artists preparing to re-enter the world, in a position of privilege in Baltimore - with so much going on in the world, let alone outside our studio. Please read below.

Happy New Year,

Love, Pirate Jenny aka PJ
*************************************
"Hey Kittenz.

I'm so proud of us all getting our show up. Go mount royal!

However despite all the festivities and our accomplishments I still am recovering from being sick and feeling a deep dark sadness within myself with whats going on in Baltimore with all the protests, with Ferguson, the non indictment of Eric Garner and other social injustices that are happening right outside (or inside) our studios.

I feel helpless, confused and guilty for worrying about my sound on my installation when right across the street Red Emma's was packed to the brim with a Ferguson teach in because all around us right on North Avenue mainly black people and young black men are getting killed and beaten for being who they are.

How on earth can we as artists/MFA students at MICA and at Mt. Royal - balance crits, lectures, homework, studio time and oh, Finals and Thesis - with taking stock and processing this awful time/police state we live in? I personally can't continue to separate the two any longer. When I get harassed/cased/followed by a cop who initially mistakes me for a young black man who then realises I'm a woman and attending MICA and lets me off the hook - I can't ignore my race-gender-education privilelege dilemma.

I'm definitely open to having more discussions about this, and how MICA can support me and others who feel like this. I have no idea what to do. No one is talking about this in the open. I can talk to graduate studies and others about creating space to talk. I think there needs to dialogue, time and space for healing around this. Personally, I'm kind of a wreck and I can no longer afford to hide in my studio bubble and not acknowledge the national crisis that is happening around me.

I'm open to tips, suggestions and thoughts that can generate discussion and healing space. If anyone has any ideas I'm way open.

Thanks

Shola

#BlackLivesMatter "

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

12/27/2014

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

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

12/27/2014

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.

Navigating Activism.

7/5/2014

So PJ's got her navigational tools, right? She just needs a place to try them out and use them.... Like, say for instance at the University of Maryland Baltimore County 's Rethinking Intellectual Activism Conference. What a fun and eye opening experience presenting PJ in that context. I was in the "Performing politics of race" section and gave my presentation on "Social Gesture: the Choreography and Performance of social rebellion" and discussed social and expressive choreography, anarchy in all forms in regards to slave rebellion, capoeira, sea chanties, gender politics, especially within pirate and slaves communities. It was nice to finally use and map out space during my presentation in order for PJ to take, or rather move the discussion outside of the classroom and through the conference space and after lead a Q & A session. I'm also very excited to say that I'm collaborating with a great video artist on the footage of this presentation - Cola Lola Marie, a fellow Mountie and we are working on a multidisciplinary video of Pirate Jenny and a conceptual exploration of who she is, it's definitely a moving piece in progress...

So with the use of navigational tools for hurtling PJ through time, sea and water, I was very inspired by the ancient sea navigation tools that were used by mariners ages ago. How could something so simple as an astrolabe and the night sky be so influential in getting people where they had to to go by sea? Well, it wasn't that simple - it was intricate and the night sky and the day sky were easy to read if you knew how...

With that in mind - I developed a body of work using photography, movement and sculpture based around Pirate Jenny's navigational tools for sea and time travel. The use of reed and bamboo was a great carry over from my performance costume class as its flexibility allowed me to create 3D pieces that reflected my love and experience of movement and gesture. Of course in the spirit of anarchy, I took pictures right outside of the equally principled bookstore and coffeehouse Red Emma's. Check out some of the pics of me prepping for the shoot and sizing up my stuff.

Spring Recap: Shola meet PJ (Pirate Jenny) - PJ meet Shola

7/5/2014

Well its been an incredible spring and its turning out to be an even more wonderfully juicy summer. Happy to say that the Spring semester and final reviews on the Mountain (Mount Royal School of Art) kicked my tail and taught me so much. My fellow Mounties are definitely one of a kind and it's great to be sharing creative space and expressive time with these folks.

Figuring my way through the semester is definitely something I won't forget - and I do think the occurrence of me stepping outside my comfort zone and working in unexpected creative contexts helped me with navigating my way expressively. Speaking of navigation, I decided to take a performance and costume class - The Expanded Body with an incredible Baltimore based fiber and performance artist Melissa Webb. This exposed me to so much history, fiber, culture and performance context. In addition to learning how to walk on stilts (yes - I said and did just that), I was so happy to have one of those universal artist "aha moments" when it came to the building of wearable structures part of the class - especially with such flexible mediums like reed and bamboo. In regards to the topic of navigation, I had been looking to see how my newly acknowledged alter ego, Pirate Jenny could get around. Ideas of navigation - all in the realm of sea navigation instruments, time traveling, movement and mapping began to take shape.

This was definitely a perfect place for me to link those ideas into the previous context of pirates and run away slaves interacting, as well as examining the social choreography and anarchist themes that came from such a collusive existence in the context of social governance within outcast communities. Also, I'd never mapped out my alter ego before, even with the many mediums of drawing and fabric it was great to see where I could take PJ creatively, conceptually and realistically. I know she's definitely an anarchist - but I'm not sure entirely where she'll take me either.

Jenny. - Origami Boats

12/9/2013

Some information about some of the boats that were in the installation. They are made from African cloth called 'gele'. This is the well known Nigerian material used as a head wrap by their women. They are really quite a work of beauty, and I personally believe this can be of the most unique and personal statements of art that Nigerian women all over the world can make so simply. Check out the amazing pics below of the gele.

Jenny. Mount Royal Fall Show - Best.First.Program.Visual.Show.Evarrr.

12/9/2013

This process is still quite amazing. The more I learn, especially about how the Golden Age of Pirates was woven so tightly with the Atlantic slave trade, the more I can't stop looking. Sea shanties, African songs, dances, music all interchanged with each other because of this intersection.

For this site in the Studio Center in Baltimore, MD - it was interesting to adjust to the space - much larger for sure, but such a wonderful challenge to embrace and experiment with, especially in video. My first visual arts show of my graduate school career, I was very eager to learn everything the experience had to teach me. As I continue with this and other installations, I am so excited to see what the social movement of this research provides me - as well as the creative and expressive ways these historical moments manifested themselves.

This go around was also interesting because I looked at different creative movements that may have come about or been exchanged between cultures on the seas. I loved looking at the martial art form Capoiera and how it was used to communicate between slaves against the slave masters. I was fascinated by the sea chanties and the sailors jigs as means of staying sharp and nimble with ones voice, feet and fingers in order to stay in the captains good graces. As a movement inquiry into the human spirit during slavery, I was very drawn to moving with the African gele cloth throughout the space. I had used it at the LAMP festival, it was surprisingly hypnotic despite it sharp staccato tones, and provided me much room to create to. I carried it over into this site. What fun! Also, in my research I was not surprised to find out that at some point, many African songs and rhythms interchanged with sailor chanties during this time - and that the governing land colonies could penalize a sailor who sang such a fusion!

L.A.M.P. Festival - New Haven, CT (Ct'd)

12/8/2013

Me working on my first installation of Jenny. *sniff* *sniff* Look at Jenny. she's so little in this pic! Take a look at the finished result - Much love to Chris Sedita for the assistance and to Adejoke Tugbiyele for getting this moment on video.