Cauleen Smith
Before taking the class, Approaching Aftermath, I had never heard of Cauleen Smith. My first interactions involving her included having to read her manifest work. It was called The Association for the Advancement of Cinematic Creative Maladjustment - A Manifesto.
Link below, please read and engage. It's truly inspiring.
In this Manifesto, Cauleen discusses in her words: "a dogma for filmmaking" and how these set of principles she follows as a moving image artist further her practice of resistance. These declarative statements are explained in the relationship to MLK's Speech at Western Michigan University in 1963. He uses the word "creative maladjusted" which Cauleen became interested in because of its "generative qualification" in his "programmatic plea".
Anyways, in response to her manifesto work, we were prompted in class to make our own. So I did. I feel though that it will be something I continue to add to throughout my life as an interdisciplinary artist and writer. Cauleen Smith also identifies herself as a interdisciplinary artist. Her bio on her website states that her work "reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination." I like this definition of her work because it is very true and experimental. She focuses not just on the African American identity or issues plaguing black women contemporarily but also topics concerning time, love, science fiction, location (place), nature, utopia and much more. She has made a number of films and has performed a number of times and has taught sooooo much, she is honestly incredible. She also does work including audio, written and performance art.
Artist Talk
At her artist talk, I sat on the floor to the right of her and took notes frantically. I was amazed with all of her moving images, her words, her thoughts and answers. I wrote down images, phrases, thoughts I had throughout the talk.
"Language is what we have" - Smith
"Language is violent" - Me
Harriet Tubman's house on screen. "Harriet Tubman/Icon" - me
Cauleen talked about her use of projections and sound. These forms are interesting too capture. I thought of her exhibit, the long and wide hallways, the fabrications and films displaying. Smith said the fabrications were "dutch", "made of rice" and geometrically were formed to "makeup [the] space, shape and distance of countries across the world".
Smith showed us her "Crow Requiem" film.
"I just thought o a lot about trust. I watched a woman wave a flag in the field and I fell into a world where I know strange woman in my life, as if these woman aren't valid in their strange ways for longevity. Examples: Grandma Vera, Aunt Titra" - me
Smith said we should think of ourselves as "tool builders of craft". She talked about the maladjusted and MLK and how he embraced youth.
She showed us another film, this one called "Sojourner". There were multiple image: horses running, old buildings, windows, blue, ones with goddesses on them and symbols. You could hear sounds of singing California and a see a sequence of people waving flags, in streets, in fields with flowers and its windy. There's a long-wide shot of city then a pan down of a tall tower structure. There's another audio, this time of a woman talking about heaven and praise. A sequence of towers decorated is shown (I lated in life found out these were the Watts towers made by Simon Rodia). "At Noon" reads on a banner held by two women, on beach, at rocks, people sit. Voice still talking, speaking about the essence of earth, it's oldness. It says meet me at eventide, Chicago. There's a clip of a woman on a microphone at an event repeating "disappeared" a lot.
"Mourn" - me
Black women walking are shown and audio of black women's role under and in and of a white male rules and how that is resisted.
"Black women are valuable" - me
A public space of just (black) women boding is shown, along with a general pan shot of women. This voice still speaking talked of God inside of motors and instruments and breath. Women are shown walking at eventide in dresses, pantsuits, color and style.
Smith begins talking to us without the slides. She says "find mediums that support one another."
I envy how she uses flags as language. I asks her what she enjoys doing for fun and she says: "cooking, gardening" and I can't tell if I wrote "rest/pets".
Someone asks her if she feels her work is autobiographical. She says: "It doesn't matter what I eat for breakfast..[the] singular position is not progressive to sustainable living...we are all interconnected." I felt that!
The talk ends. I ask Cauleen Smith for her autograph. Bless her. I'm not sure what I asked her next but it was something about "utopia" and her response involved a brief discussion her engagement with work spaces in which she practices generosity, reciprocity, and respect for the environments she's in. She says she tries to uses sites where utopia is active (could be born).
Drylongso Screening
The next work that I began to engage with by Smith was her film, Drylongso. The screening happened in the Jerome Libeling building on campus and I am truly honored to have seen it. Watching it, I felt like I was seeing my life on screen. This is the important of representation people!
Cauleen Smith’s film, Drylongso, reminded me of home. In response to a personal death of hers, the main protagonist in the film, Pica, begins making a memorial arc in the place her lover was killed and found. Prior to the death, Pica was already exploring a project in which she was capturing pictures of black men because she feared they were going extinct because of their high rate of death. The community sees her memorial and people in the neighborhood start asking for ones to be made for their loved ones. Her arc making reminded me of my my hometown’s expression of mourning, which when someone in the hood dies, a telephone pole or street corner or park or fence is decorated with teddy bears and flowers and candles. You also have the telephone wires with the shoe tossed across them in acknowledgement of loss of youth and life.
In relationship to this film, for my next class assignment, I was heavily inspired. The assignment was to revisit a prior arc assignment and add to it by this time: choosing a new space, increasing the elements and items gathered by the number you chose before and to bring out the magic of the memories you chose as well as add to. I decided to explore the aftermath of death which is mourning. I gathered photos of people’s deaths who I felt connected to or have been impacted by as well as poems that help express the aftermaths of their deaths. One of the poems I selected was a person poem I wrote about a girl I knew in high school who was killed violently. My site was on a tree near the yiddish book center because it’s a jewish related land and my childhood neighborhood where I saw a lot of these street corners memorials, used to be a heavily jewish neighborhood, before the desegregation of housing by the fair trade act in 1968.
In the presentation of my second arc, in which I explained my elements and had each person in my group go around and read a poem, it began raining and my items became soaked. I had placed the photos onto the tree by tacking them and also hung a belt (from prior arc) and a gold ribbon for the spirits. It felt like it was meant to be, since I always associate rain with funerals. That experience made me think a lot about my work as an artist and presenter, especially in terms of location and form. I tried to reflect this thought process in my manifesto, detailing important reminders and rules to obey when it comes to my own creative development. As challenging as it was to sit and think about my own process, it was extremely beneficial and as I said before, I will continue to add to it and revise until I die.
This movie was a need and it was fufilled. Speaking of needs:
Cauleen Smith's MASS MoCA exhibit entitled: We Already Have What We Need.
Getting engaged into Cauleen’s exhibit work was really inspiring and thought provoking. There were so many forms of expression and medias, which really made me think a lot about what my forms I wanted to explore next in my own work.
While experiencing Smith’s We Already Have What We Need exhibit, I took many pictures, even an audio recording of my journey through it because it just felt like a spiritual experience. It is wise that in creation, there be always something metaphysical happening. In discussions in class surrounding Cauleen’s work, I vocalized my obsessions with accessibility and challenged if in fact, Smith was right in stating that we already have what we need. Prior to class, I had always had a concern for how our society doesn’t really know what their needs are, let alone how to vocalize them. This was also something I brought up in my discussion of why Hampshire College is such an intense environment. I feel that my peers have extreme difficulty communicating and expressing themselves and their feelings in a healthy and resolved way. Anyways, getting to experience this exhibit work really made me think about myself as an artist more. I felt like I belonged in that space and I saw myself represented. I'll never forget that.
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