Movement, Memory, and Masquerades

  • Date: February 17, 2022
  • Time: 2:00 pm—3:30 pm
  • Location: Video Production Studio
  • Speakers

“And We Will Fight ‘Till the Last of Us Falls on the Battlefield”: Queens of the Nile, Now, Participatory Arts, and African Women Leaders as Knowledge Producers

A Lecture/Demonstration by Adisa Anderson

In an era of #BlackLivesMatter and national protests against institutionalized racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2018), it is critical that educators, activists, policy-makers, researchers, and community members understand and challenge antiblackness within U.S. education policy and discourse (Dumas, 2016). Considering the scholarly documentation of how racist ideologies are used to denigrate the humanity of people of African descent (Mills, 1997; Omi & Winant, 2015; Treitler, 2013), through their signature stage play Queens of the Nile, Now and their accompanying curriculum, Queens Historical Society (QHS) uses the ancient regalia and historical legacies of African heroines and women leaders across the African continent to present critical educational interventions. Converging at the intersection of fashion, music, theater, formal and informal education, and resistance, since 1989, QHS has used the arts as a means to disrupt the dominance of racist and colonial hegemonic narratives (Levinson et al., 2011) that serve to justify the marginalization of Black people in the U.S. and the world more broadly.  

During this interactive presentation, Adisa Anderson, the Managing Artistic Director of QHS since its inception, will demonstrate how he and his late wife Sakkara (QHS Founder) use the royal attire and legacies of African women leaders to intervene in their historic erasure and position them as leaders, advocates, and knowledge producers (Collins, 2009; James, 1997). Adisa and Sakkara have worked in the tradition of Africa’s skilled mask makers whose art facilitates communion between corporeal and spiritual domains during ritual ceremony (Walker, 2010; Mclnery, 2020). Their contemporary urban ritual theater conjures Africa’s legacy of female rulers, spanning from Kemet’s (ancient Egypt) Queen Hatshepsut in 1500 B.C.E. and concluding with Ghana’s Queen Mother Yaa Asantewa in the late 1800s. More specifically, Anderson will demonstrate how QHS employs Dejali (Elese, 2018), their participatory arts model, in reclaiming the cultural memory of Black students, with a particular emphasis on Black women and girls. 

Anderson will discuss five elements of play/performance resistance within their urban ritual Theater; 1.) African Women, leaders, advocates, and knowledge producers, 2.) Dejali, which combines role-play, dance, and storytelling, 3.) Performer, history through the incorporation of public-school youth as cast, 4.) Masquerade, the 1000-piece collection of ancient regalia all personally recreated by QHS founder and fashion designer, Sakkara Thomas, 5.) Environment, the repurposed and reimagined public play/performance space and 6.) Music, the unique role of their music score, “Journey through the Secret Life of Plants” (1979), gifted for use to the organization by Stevie Wonder.

Jennifer Williams

The summer 2020 uprisings in the United States were defined by COVID-19 fears, property damage, the ubiquity of racial violence, and police aggression against protesters. Amid this chaos, a chimera of race, nostalgia, social media, and urban culture walked the urban landscape. “Philly Elmo,” with the phenotypic and cultural signifiers of a Black person, appeared at the Philadelphia protests on May 30, 2020, wearing a white t-shirt, black athletic pants, and the head of an Elmo costume. In one of many iconic photographs, this odd figure stands with their right fist held high in the air in front of a municipal trash can that has been set ablaze. Their presence amidst the urban turmoil signifies a contemporary response to the dream-like reality of black death. Philly Elmo distorts space and generates a hypnagogic liberation seasoned by the idiosyncrasies of Black Philadelphia. They are a signifier of the psychological reckoning for the timeless afterlife of slavery, “forcing [his] viewers to confront the black hole of their emotions, memories, and dreams of the future.” This presentation is a meditation on the Muppet, the meme, the municipality, and the movement that gave birth to Philly Elmo. With his Afrosurrealist performance, he asks ‘why so serious…’ when we inhabit liminal spaces where the absurdity of black death grates against the fantasy of Black life. 

Matter and Memory: Black Feminist Poetics and Performance in Berlin, Germany

Ayasha Guerin

This paper presents two examples of contemporary Black performance in Berlin, Germany, which employ Black feminist Poetics in the service of anti colonial critique. The first, “Wayward Dust” by Monilola Olayemi Ilipeju, was an invited performance at the Deutschen Technikmuseum, a partnership with Dekoloniale, which took place in August, 2020. The second untitled performance, by the group Black Art Action Berlin (BAAB,)  was uninvited, and took place in Berlin’s Humboldt Forum in October, 2021. I analyze how this Black performance has responded to institutional pledges to “decolonize” museums, inverting expectations of Black performance and white spectatorship in this space. I argue, they are important interventions for this contemporary moment of institutional reckoning that challenge expectations of Black labor and white leisure in the museum. Employing what Tina Campt has recently termed A Black Gaze, these creative practices “produce radical forms of witnessing,” and “reject traditional ways of seeing blackness and ways of seeing that historically depict blackness only in subordinate relation to whiteness.” I explore the resonances of these performances with the assistance of Campt’s analytic as well as my own analysis of Berlin’s activism and anticolonial discourse. 

Theoretical Performance of Jonkonno Masquerade and the fear of Slave Rebellion and Uprising in Jamaica

Alao Luqman Omotayo

Rebellion, resistance and uprisings were among the insurrection with slaves in the Caribbean island. Aside from the religion practices among the enslaved African ‘Obeah’ which was tagged as evil to dismiss the possibility of slave uprising. A new Christmas custom arose at the beginning of 18th century in the British West Indies called Jonkonno, this Caribbean Christmas celebration blended with African and English masquerade and mumming traditions. At one time Jonkonno celebrations spread as far as the southern United States. Jonkonno masquerade was at its peak in Jamaica in 18th century but out of fear, the celebrations of the masquerade was suppressed by the authorities at that time to discourage gatherings of blacks, use of drums, blowing of horns, and conch shells an elements often used as a means of communication among the slaves which could possibly lead to slave rebellions. Jonkonno masquerade suffered decline even after Emancipation of the slaves in 1838 and the civic authorities opposed the tradition which resulted in a serious civil disorder at that year and the riot was labeled the ‘John Canoe Riots’ of 1841. Non-conformist missionaries also attempted to stamp out pagan amusements and rituals among their converts, however the festival survives today in Jamaica, the Bahamas, Belize, St. Kitts-Nevis, Guyana, and Bermuda. This research paper will discuss the costume, musical instruments and the theoretical performance of jonkonno masquerade and the fear of slave rebellion.  Furthermore, it is noted that English colonists brought many cultural traditions with them to Jamaica, including the celebration of Christmas with music, dancing, masquerades, and mumming. The African slaves retained their own music, dance, and masquerade traditions, for which they, too, sought an outlet. These two cultural streams flowed together in Jamaican Christmas celebrations, giving rise to Jonkonno.

Keynotes: costume, musical instruments, theoretical performance of jonkonno masquerade and the fear of slave rebellion. 


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