The video for my thesis work will be presented in 3 parts. Each part includes research and my response. The streamlined water cycle track creates a motif that connects all three sections.
Part 1 - Waves This section begins with a prologue, providing contextual information for the viewer. It continues with a descriptive narration of my experience in a particular space. Not only does this section connect past with present and experience of place within the overall narrative, but it also prepares the viewer to experience the subsequent story through my point of view. This narration segues into video self portraits of me in various landscapes and an excerpt from Lucille Clifton's poem, "Driving Through New England," shown as text to be read by the viewer. This section ends with an unanswered interrogation of my 4th great-grandmother. Part 2 - Ripples Visually, this section uses the commodification of trees as a metaphor for exploitation and features an attempt to physically un-write history. Aurally, the interrogation of Charity Ann continues before segueing into a transcription of the inventory of property she and her children are listed on. As with all 3 section, it features a series of video self portraits and ends with an excerpt from Alice Walker's poem, "Turning Madness into Flowers." Part 3 - Rivers Charity's Ann's interrogation culminates with a number of blunt questions. More self portraits and the work ends with excerpts from Lucille Clifton's "Cutting Greens" and Fredrick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the 4th of July."
I have a new draft of Roots & Remains, though I don't have the same conviction about this piece being complete as I do with Isaiah's Inventory. I feel that for now it is in a good place. Originally, I intended for this to be an audio piece but I believe that it becomes stronger by combining the image of a landscape near the cemetery where I found Great-Uncle Flemming with an image of the bill of sale showing that Isaiah Jr. purchased Charity Ann and her children with Flemming's signature on it. I will use the same photo installation as Isaiah's Inventory.
Yesterday, I completed the 1st draft of a new audio piece. A question that I've struggled with this semester is how to incorporate my research and artistic process more into the finished work. In this piece, I wrote narrative describing my trip to Harris County in search of my ancestral home, Negro Heel, and Isaiah Parker Jr.'s grave. I combined it with a nature recording of my childhood home and recitation of and repeated excerpts from Alice Walker's poem, Turning Madness into Flowers. I'm currently exploring ideas for turning the piece into a video installation and will discuss this further as it develops.
I have a new draft of Isaiah's Inventory. I was very unsatisfied with the quality of sound in the original draft, so I re-recorded everything. I also considered tone more with the mixing of this work. My intention is to create a sense of confusion and complexity. My mentor, Cathy, suggested being more thoughtful about the sculptural qualities of sound. Taking her advice, I experimented more with the use of stereo to create sound that is more dimensional and experiential. I'm currently working on the installation for this work. Although I intentionally overlapped the tracks containing the lists of animals and inanimate objects, I also tried to space out the narration of the names so that the viewer/listener can catch snippets of the contrasting list. In between the names of people and their valuation, one can here things like bay horse mule, or meat, or buggy. I'm not quite convinced that enough of the animal/object list is discernible, making the contrast clear between it and the list of peoples names. Finally, I added more contextual details in the document's narration, in an attempt to aid in the listener's understanding of the work.
Ever since visiting Harris County over the summer, I've been haunted by the probate records of my slave owning 5th great grandfather. I find the inventory and subsequent sale records of his belongings fascinating. Over the past weeks, I've been working on transcribing the inventory. It was not as easy as I had hoped. Old styles of penmanship, farm equipment jargon, and misspellings made the transcription slow and frustrating. Currently, I have a draft that I find satisfactory, with only two words that I have not been able to figure out. According to my research on Georgia standards of agricultural wealth, Isaiah would have been considered in the elite class of farmers called planters. This means he was reasonably wealthy. At the time of his death in 1961, his entire estate was appraised at $35,340 and included about 900 acres of land and 23 slaves. This inventory is extraordinary because it lists each slave by name and monetary value, along with farm animals, equipment, and household items as mundane as wash kettles and lard. One of the questions this document raised for me was what factors determine a slave's value? The obvious answer to that question was work potential, but I also found that reproductive potential and life expectancy were also significant factors. When comparing this inventory to the slave schedules that accompanied the US census taken the year before, I learned several things. The first thing that I noticed was the number of children; over half of the slaves were under the age of 16. The second fact that the women of childbearing age and had at least one child were more valuable than those who do not have children. After crosschecking both documents with the 1870 census (which listed African American people on the regular schedules which included names and ages) I was able to match Charity Ann and several of her children (Henry, Julius, Hiram and possibly Virginia). Another question this document raised is what would an inventory of my possessions look like when compared to Isaiah's? I have started working on taking a complete inventory of my workspace as a result of these ponderings. This inventory might grow into a larger project, where I attempt to record all of my possessions but I want to set a limit for the time being. Although not a question, the fact that this is the first official document listing my 4th great grandmother, Charity Ann (and several of her children) by name it seems almost like a genesis of sorts. Something that laid the foundation for everything that came after. It provides personal context for my family and their eventual migration to Muscogee County and beyond as well as cultural context for issues of power and valuation. How much was a black life worth in 1861 and how does that contrast with now? I'm working on an audio project in response to this list. By overlapping one channel with a list of slave names with another channel listing animals, objects and property, I seek to emphasize the contrasts between the two while also pointing out the fact that they appear on the same list.
Already this semester has been a major turning point for my work. In addition to returning to the familiar medium of photography, I also plan to continue working with the more recent narration practice and to incorporate a completely new element; using sounds collected from various sources. For the past couple of weeks, I've been collecting ambient sounds from specific places at various times of the day. I document the name of the place, as well as the date and time the recordings were made. I've also recorded interviews with my mother and grandmother. I consider these sounds, like the photographs I've been taking, raw material to work with once I return home. Click video below to hear a recording sample of my grandmother's backyard on August 17, at 7:49 pm.
Here is a brief list of goals and ideas in regards to sound and narrative elements in my work:
Research technical
aspects of ambient and viewer initiated sound.
Rosemarie
Trockle and Lynda Benglis
Continue writing, keep a
commonplace book and daily reflectionnaire.
Think about
looping/overlapping narratives vs. voice/movement activated narration
(presented as chapters).
Continue to record
writings and experiment with different methods of storytelling.
Record interviews with
family (perhaps people I meet during trip to Harris County).
Do a lot reading, like, a
lot. Academic/non-fiction and lift my self-initiated ban on fiction that I started at the beginning of the program.
