10/10/2024
In Episode 7, Kayla Farrish shares her fascination with other worlds and alternative paths, drawing inspiration from authors Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Toni Morisson, James Baldwin, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s “Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders.” Their writings have inspired her recent works, “Martyr’s Fiction” and “Put Away the Fire, dear” where she expresses and shapes her own characters and stories through choreography and embodiment dance. Farrish invites us to witness how art can serve as a bridge to new realities and untold narratives.
Episode link https://azart.fyi/RaceRemix7
Full quote:
“Yeah, I really am interested in radical imagination, and I love this poem. At the end of this total work, we’ve navigated through this quartet and duet. I find it’s like playing with different ideas of power and history. And at the end, there’s one person who becomes the reporter and they’re telling us all the news events.
But it’s like, oh, what headlines have happened under the Trump administration that could be both imaginative or real? And what was scary, as we were saying these headlines, even if they were imaginative, they weren't very far from the truth. So, it was this high impact and also trying again to play into the erasure and things that have been happening, created in satire. So, this reporter’s ridiculously cracking and then this person comes out at the end and is reading this poem, which, I was inspired by James Baldwin, actually, and then finding my own words.
Swing low, sweet chariot. That’s the song that’s been there forever. Just imagining turning the trauma that enslaved folks have lived and breaking their backs, creating magic out of hopelessness, turning soil into a nation—such a powerful image, while also saying, we’re still here. Like, you can’t change this. You can’t alter it. This is what happened, but we’re still here.” - Kayla Farrish