In this episode of Mid-Ground, Tara Aisha Willis hosts a conversation featuring Gabrielle Civil (Los Angeles, CA), a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer originally from Detroit, MI, and Katherine Simóne Reynolds (Mexico / Belleville, IL), whose practice investigates emotional dialects and psychogeographies within the Black midwestern landscape.
In this episode of Mid-Ground, Tara Aisha Willis hosts a conversation featuring Gabrielle Civil (Los Angeles, CA), a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer originally from Detroit, MI, and Katherine Simóne Reynolds (Mexico / Belleville, IL), whose practice investigates emotional dialects and psychogeographies within the Black midwestern landscape.
INTRODUCTION: Welcome to How People Move People, a podcast about the impact that our words, art, stories, and lives have on each other. Each series' journey unfolds in a sequence of six episodes. This series titled "Mid-Ground" is hosted by dancer, curator, and scholar, Dr. Tara Aisha Willis. “Mid-Ground,” brings pairs of dance and performance artists together in kinship around their roots and work in the Black Midwest.
TARA WILLIS: Let's start with where are you speaking from right now? And when was the last time you were in the Midwest? And why?
KAT REYNOLDS: I'm speaking from Mexico right now. I actually just signed my lease (laughs) to be here for a year. So that's quite exciting. I'm very, very, very excited about starting a new chapter of my life here my practice, still very much stems from the Midwest specifically St. Louis, and the, as I call it, the, the post industrial melancholic landscape. The last time I was there was December 31st. And I started (laughs), Yes I started my new um my new chapter here on, like, also on the 31st, because I was flying on New Year's Eve.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: We already have some, some really rad things in common, I have to say. So. So I'm here on ancestral lands of the Tataviam people in my office at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. And I live in LA, but I was just in the Kingdom of Detroit, as I call it on December 31st, 2023. And I'm always in Detroit over the holidays. And I'm usually in Detroit at least once in the summer, and sometimes more. Have a very strong root there. And my parents still live in the house that they bought in 1971. So whenever I kind of think of home. I have a very specific concrete place, which is that place. But I mean, I also have spent significant time in Minneapolis. I've had incredible performance related and, and other kinds of art related experiences in Chicago. I mean, so I feel like I have a strong Midwestern route. And I love the Midwest. But I do also have to say, it's amazing that you're in Mexico because my next book that's about to come out if the production goes through okay, in September, it's all about the year and a half that I spent living and making performance art in Mexico.
TARA WILLIS: And so just to ground us in what each of you are up to, How would you describe your practice? As an arts worker as well as an artist, you know, you all wear many hats, and also some of those hats are the same hat, you know, but look different to different people. What do you do? You know, like not in the sense of like, what is your work, but like, what does it take to do your work? What is the practice of your work?
GABRIELLE CIVIL: I call myself a Black feminist performance artist and poet. But basically what that means for me is that I either create or walk into environments and then make things happen. So that could be with my body, that could be with projections, images, that could be with gesture, that could be with other people. And it is always a very embodied practice that could be on the page, that could be on a stage, that could be in a gallery, that could be in the streets. And a part of the work that I do is very connected, I would say to curating or creating experiences with other people. Kind of like a community arts worker, community arts maker. I would say community, I used to say community arts organizer, but we're in such a fraught moment politically, I feel like I'm not, I'm maybe I'm not worthy to use the word organizer right this minute. Because that feels the work that organizers are doing is so specific and important. And I feel like a lot of what I do, I feel like it's the shaft of the spear. That's what my friend Marcus Young says that there's a kind there's work, that's right on the frontlines of organizing and political protest. And then there's the shaft of the spear, what moves the people to dream and reflect and think and move them forward. And I think that's part of what I'm interested in dreaming with people and doing and teaching classes as a professor in the, or in different community spaces. I feel like I'm interested in a lot of different things.
KAT REYNOLDS: That's a really good way to put it, um the shaft of the spear. Because I, similarly, I mean, I guess like, what is, what is it take. Masochism (laughs). Like I, I, I and I'm joking, in a way, but not really not at all. I think that very much so my practice is very masochistic. And, and not in the way of like, I get off on it, but it's more so of like understanding my relationship to pain, and also our own relationship to pain, but also like, with my latest project and thinking about, over healing, and how it's not really, it is possible, but not really in a way. Like what like what is left behind, like, what are the residues? And so I think that those are the things that I've been thinking a lot about, and like utilizing within my practice of like, it's not always, sometimes things are as concrete as it seems, or it is. But then what are those spaces in between? And I think that that's really like where I live is, is in the in between, which is like what I've been mainly focusing on. And yeah, my relationship to grief and vengeance. That's also something that I've been really into. And that comes from conversations that I've had with my friend, Kearra Amaya Gopee. And yeah, so yeah, we love no. And I hope that they hear this because I love and, and we've had amazing conversations relating to vengeance and how forgiveness is a colonial construct and thinking about that in relationship to the Black Midwestern landscape. And once again, like this postindustrial like thinking about progress and failure and seeing beauty within ruin, of course, but also there's ruin (laughs). And you can't just always romanticize everything.
TARA WILLIS: I really needed to hear you say forgiveness is a colonial construct. Thank you for saying that (laughs).
GABRIELLE CIVIL: No, I just am blown away because, you know, I worked with Kearra at UCLA. And so I have such a powerful admiration for their work and for their thinking. And thinking a lot about grief and vengeance and ruin and beauty. And ruin that is not romanticized, but can also offer a lot of sort of deep, generative inspiration for thought and making. For me that's very connected to my relationship to Detroit.
KAT REYNOLDS: You and I, you know, Just being from St. Louis and Detroit. And for me, it's like also wondering if I could claim St. Louis, because I'm from a lot of different places within southern Illinois. And so I think that that's where a lot of like my relationship to the emotionality of like landscape or psycho geographies, if you will, like how spaces make you feel, especially if you're, quote, unquote, not from those places, and what you can claim as yours or not yours. And so I think, thinking about emotions, and the landscape was like, a way for me to, I guess, kind of feel like I belonged somewhere or even like within that transient space that like I can be somewhere. And not necessarily like claim anything, but like, be somewhere.
TARA WILLIS: I'm curious if there's like synergy with what Kat just said, Gabrielle, around this question of space.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: Very much profound synergy there. I mean, I think, because the space that I'm interested in opening up is so, it's psychic space is metaphysical space. it's, it's space for Black women, and femmes and girls, and it's space for Black people. It's space for Black memory, its place its space for Black grief. But I also feel like I was, I mean, I was just jotting down notes about what Kat said in terms of like, how do you, how do spaces make you feel? And what is that psychogeography of a landscape? And I have to just say, like, I kind of chuckle or I feel maybe I chuckle and I feel some kind of way when people talk about the Midwest as a flyover zone. Cuz I’m just like you don't know what you are talking about, at all. And I mean, it's so there's a kind of deep, but there's a deep ignorance there that actually provides a kind of cover for all kinds of thinking and making and working that maybe couldn't happen in the same way…like Prince used to say I love Minnesota, because it's so cold, it keeps all the bad people out. Like there's all this stuff happening that people just feel like they don't even see. So there's a kind of opacity in that that's interesting kind of protection in that, a kind of anonymity, that, that is, that is erasure. I mean, it's invisibilizing, but it also protects in part at times from appropriation or, or theft or extraction. I don't know, I think I'm thinking about that. And I'm also thinking about the relationship between space and landscape. Like the landscapes that we are living in, or that we're trying to investigate or transform actual physical landscapes and the fact that I know during the, the pre-vaccine era of COVID, when I finally found a way to get myself back to my parents and quarantined for two weeks, and I wasn’t sure, there was so much more space in Detroit, than there was in LA. And the way that I felt walking in those middle class Black neighborhoods was like, astonishing and amazing. So those are some things that I felt kind of synergy with in terms of what you were saying, Kat.
KAT REYNOLDS: At times I feel like growing up and even currently, like thinking about flyover of like, please see us like please see me like please see like what I'm doing and actually now like, I'm very much so like, yeah, I don't need, I don't need you to see what I'm doing. I don't I don't want that, like I, I want to be able to give you something that I feel comfortable giving to you. Um And having some type of power in that anonymity. And I just finished reading Tina Post’s Deadpan. And yeah, so like thinking about that like, lack of emotionality that like someone wants you to give to them to authenticate their own experience. And so I think a lot about authenticity, and also preservation or conservation of, of land, but then also thinking about like, Who's, who's to say that this doesn't want to end? And (laughs), um and there's like, a conversation I had with a couple of my friends, it was particularly my friend, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, um who's a Libra and Libras, like, have this thing about, like, and no one come for me. But it's like, not wanting things to end. And I think that it's beautiful. It's very romantic. And I'm a Taurus. And so I'm like, no things have to end (laughs). And so we have this beautiful relationship and friendship around things ending or not ending. And, and so I think a lot about that, especially with, yeah, like, being seen not being seen vanishing, disappearing, and having the option to decide whether or not I want to show up, because that is my option, that is my agency.
TARA WILLIS: I love this thread. That there's something about the Midwest that is the same or parallel to something about Blackness, like, you know, like these questions of opacity and visibility, like, I'm just like, thank you for that. I was like, feeling these things. And it's so hard to kind of, in, in the discourse of flyover and, you know, nothing being here, and the idea of the Midwest, that somehow seems to linger in people's imagination as very, like plaid and white, and some, you know, like, I'm just like, it's actually like, the most Black place like of all the parts of the country to me, you know, but people don't see that. So this point about space feels important. And then like how that connects to place, you know um, landscape, but also place like the specificity of this place, or these places, you know, these cities, these towns, and the flatness. You know, there is a flatness here, but that's a flatness that to me is maybe about like depth, you know, like it is, it is a landscape that also is opaque in a certain way. It's not dramatic mountains and valleys. I mean, there's, there's some, you know, we got some little, little about little rock formations and stuff. But like, but you know, it is, it is there's, but there's something about that, that is settled in a different way, or allows for a certain kind of movement also.
KAT REYNOLDS: It's maybe not like, the grand mountains or whatever. But there's crevices, like there's folds, you know, and like, there's these things that, that happen, that once again, we don't necessarily need to be privy to. And I think that my relationship to, like, I don't feel entitled to anybody's information to be close to them. And that's something that I tell my friends all the time, like, you know, I don't need you to divulge something to me, for me to feel close to you. And I don't know if that's my relationship to the landscape that's doing that or Midwest, it's doing that. But I do think that like just because something is showing everything to you doesn't necessarily make it better. Just thinking about all the histories that have been, you know, erased or even just thinking about you Gabrielle like walking through, like Black suburbia. And like, what that means in Detroit, like, that's interesting to me. And that's something that people don't talk a lot about within, you know, what, not necessarily like within Black conversations, but just walking around and seeing Black space and feeling safe in it. And it not necessarily needing to be something that is like, like you, you feel it, it like, reverberates, like it does something and not necessarily like needing to have it authenticated by somebody else, of you're Black experience with Black space.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: But it's like what first time I went on the African continent, and you're just like looking around, and you're like, Whoa. I mean, obviously, there are colonial traces, they are Imperial traces, there's, you know, like this global, globalization, whatever. So I'm not trying to say that there is no incursion, or try to romanticize what's happening in various nations and cities and countries, you know, but there is something different when you are in Black space, that's real. And I remember crossing over from I think I was flying was like Paris to London, and then London, maybe to Dakar, or maybe the other way, it makes more sense maybe to go Paris to Dakar. And as soon as I was on the plane, the whole thing felt different. You know, and I think about that, because in Detroit, that I always felt like I was given a great gift. And I just, it's like, if you went to the 35th district court, the judge was Black, the, the lawyers on both sides, everybody in the jury was Black, the criminal or the alleged criminal was Black. I mean so there was a way in which actually, some things fell away. And I felt that that the Black people that I grew up with, and this is sort of generational as well. Blackness was very alive and real and every day, but it was not a justification or an excuse for anything. And that actually came into space, more than all of a sudden, when you were in predominantly white institutions, that's when all of a sudden, Blackness started to be the reason for everything. Blackness started to be the charge for everything. It was just like, everybody was coated in Blackness, living in Blackness, the people who were rich were Black, the people who were poor, but you know what I mean? So it was interesting. And that's where you also have a range of Black political opinions that often feel suppressed in more predominantly white or integrated experiences. So I just some of the discourse around the police, what happens if the police officers are Black? It doesn't mean that those systems aren't steeped in white supremacy. Some of that dis, but though some of the language and discourse around that, isn’t working in a place where it's like, well, my uncle is a cop. My dad is a cop, the whole force they're all Black, like so then you got to change the way you're talking about it because of who's in the space, and what kind of space are you in? That, for me was a great gift. I felt like it pushed at an early age. It helped to push some of my political thinking in a way that I felt more accurate to the experiences that I was growing up and living in.
KAT REYNOLDS: Mm. Yes, like I, when you were saying that I was thinking about um god what is her name, why am I blanking on the name, painter, it's the painting of a Black cop. Like he's wearing blue, the blue-Black background. I can't remember what her name is right now. But I was thinking of that piece and the significance of that and like how, like, what does it mean to have like for one a, a painting of a Black cop inside of a white institution. Like and that was curated into Glenn Ligon’s, Black and Blue, or “Blue Black” exhibition, that he did at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. And so just like, the connotations around that, or even just thinking about it um comically like the, like, uh Eddie Murphy (laughs), like, like, you know, just thinking about that, like police, like in our relationship to it, but also, yeah, like, how we are pushed into certain spaces or certain ways of thinking in order to once again, like authenticate our own experiences, so that we are seen not only by white people but by each other. I grew up like in a pretty Black and white place like Belleville, Illinois. There were a lot of like military kids and stuff like that.Um Different socio-economic classes, things like that. So there were rich Black kids, and there were poor white kids, but, and vice versa. And so I think that that kind of relationship to things also kind of like showed me a different way of, of relating to things and, and how I wasn't, I didn't really relate to like the Cosby Show a lot because I didn't grow up in that kind of household. I had a single mother so like, I never really found that like that kind of connection. So, it is interesting the things that we connect with and then how it does like shape the way that we then authenticate ourselves.
TARA WILLIS: I wonder if both of you would just lay out your relationship with the Midwest over time, whatever parts of that you feel might be helpful.
KAT REYNOLDS: I am from like, Southern Illinois, slash St. Louis area. I wasn't born there. But I grew up there, with my aunties, my cousins, my grandparents, my mom, my, my dad, and, yeah, stepmom, and sister, you know, but also a military family. So people also moved away, and stuff like that. So I was used to that kind of transience, once again, within the family, and also traveling to North Carolina. And then in 2019, I moved up to Chicago for grad school. And yeah, stayed in Chicago for four years (laughs). And then now I'm here, in Mexico.
TARA WILLIS: Did you say North Carolina?
KAT REYNOLDS: That's where my family, my mom's side of the family is from.
TARA WILLIS: Okay, got it. And so that's kind of the is that like a great migration route situation, like to the Midwest from there? Or do you know, like, where...
KAT REYNOLDS: Uh well, my grandfather, who was an aeronautical engineer, and so he and my grandma, like Green Booked it, from, like, Concord, North Carolina, to Cali, and then kind of made their way back through Oklahoma. That's where my mom was born, she was the last one. And then to Fairview Heights. And back then, that was what the 70s or maybe, yeah the 70s. That was when the slogan was “keep the view fair” (laughs). And my grandparents like were, I don't want to say that they were the first Black family in Fairview Heights. But they were like one of them to where they had to like stay in a hotel while their house was getting ready. But like with a whole bunch of kids and staying a hotel, and they're like the only Black family like it was very purposeful. Because it was very violent for them to force them to stay in a hotel. While their house was quote, unquote, getting ready. Um, but yeah, so then they found their way to Fairview Heights.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: I should start with the fact that my parents are not Midwesterners and like my father's from Haiti, my mom, well, although, Wait a minute, that's not fair. She was born in Alabama, but she came to Detroit when she was three years old. So she is a true Detroiter. She's a true Detroiter and although she got some Southern in her too though, you know, she spent some significant time there though. But I guess I'm thinking that my sister and I were the first sort of like native born Midwesterners in the family. And I was born and raised in Detroit until I went to college, but I went to college pretty early. Well, I went to college when I was 16, at the University of Michigan, and then that's in Michigan. So I went to Ann Arbor, but that was different. I mean, Ann Arbor is quite different from Detroit, right. Then I went to graduate school and moved to New York Ci- ah, yeah, I moved to New York City. And that started a kind of relationship with that city that I still have to this day. But I got my first academic job was in Minnesota. And so I moved to Minneapolis and lived there for thirteen years, except for a stint for about a year and a half in Mexico. Then I left that job and went to another job in Ohio. And I was living in Yellow Springs, Ohio. So that was, that was a different Midwestern experience. Because I'm used to Midwestern cities, Do you know what I mean? And I'm interested in the Rust Belt. You know I had experienced in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toledo, or whatever, but like living in basically what I thought of as a small town. So I lived there for three years and was going to Dayton, would go into Columbus. Then spent a year in Minneapolis, then came back had a fellowship at Denison University, which is in Granville and I was living in Columbus at the time. I've lived, you know what I've lived in a lot of Ohio because even I after I had a dissertation fellowship, actually before I moved to Minneapolis at, at Ohio University, and so I lived in Athens, Ohio. So I've lived in Athens, I've lived in Dayton, I've lived in Yellow Springs, I've lived in Columbus. Its wild. And then from there after that fellowship at Denison I got, I got this position at CalArts and so I moved to California. So those are the some of the different Midwest experiences that I've had.
KAT REYNOLDS: I have a question like, as far as, cuz, growing up and being very much something like car culture, you and I. I think anybody that's from the Midwest essentially is like, they spend a lot of time their car, regardless of everything is like 15 minutes away from each other (laughs). Well, that's what St. Louis is maybe not everywhere. But, but I do, I am always curious as far as like how people from the Midwest like, take LA and the LA car culture. And if there is anything that's like, that it's different, like how people are in their cars, versus like how people are in their cars or how they relate to their cars in the Midwest?
GABRIELLE CIVIL: That's such an awesome question. Because do you know Shana Redmond? She wrote a book called Anthem, and then she's working on a book right now, just in general about Black people in their cars. And it is amazing, because she talks about how for many Black people, the car is one of the few spaces of freedom and mobility that they have. Also a hyper disciplined space where cops. I mean there is always like, like all of these people who have been killed in altercations with police in their cars like so there's something about the state doesn't like that freedom, the state doesn't like the Green Book. Anyway, I'm kind of unusual in that. Because I went away to college so early, I got my driver's license, and then left, you know, like three, maybe like a week later or something wild. So I didn't have the same experience myself in terms of like driving around. But I definitely had the experience of being in a lot of cars for sure growing up. And because Detroit has been such a disinvested city, that often if you wanted to shop or if you wanted to go to the movies, or if you wanted to do something, you left the city and went to the suburbs to do it. So that's definitely been an experience of having a having a, what I felt growing up was like a strong, vibrant community, like a residential community, but often in terms of commercial things, you needed to get into a car and go to where the white people lived to, for services or for whatever. And they kept not wanting us to be there and then moving out further and having other kinds of shops. And then you're just like kept going. My experience in LA, I, well, I'm a car accident survivor. I had a major car accident when I first moved to Columbus, Ohio that year that I had the fellowship at Denison. And so that really impacted my relationship to car culture everywhere, and especially here in LA, because in LA everything is so spread out, everybody's in their cars, but it doesn't have that same, I don't know, Detroit bounce. Even though there's not the same street culture in Detroit, as there is in New York , I find the people to be very friendly. Or there's a kind of like, Hey, girl, like, what are you doing? What's going on? What you up to? You know what I mean? And I don't find that in LA. So there's that sense of the car, is like a bubble of self that just moves you from one location, zooop, to another location. That's, that wasn't my experience in Detroit or driving through the Midwest, like in Ohio. That wasn’t. The car was a little bit different. It didn't feel like your protection through landscape. Although, I don't know if there's some parts of Detroit that I've driven, driven in that I was that I have been like, okay, let's lock the door now (laughs). Because I don't know this place. I don't have any relatives here. Oh, no. and yeah let’s keep it moving. So, again, to your point, like, let's not romanticize the ruin, you know. But there’s been that too. But I don't know, that's a good question to ask some other folks.
KAT REYNOLDS: Your friend's name is Shana or Shana Redmond. Is that right?
GABRIELLE CIVIL: Mm-hmm. But just a scholar I know, I mean, I wish my friend maybe we get to be friends. She's brilliant. Yeah. But anyway (laugh).
KAT REYNOLDS: I really want to read that because I think a lot about like community, especially with, like, who's in your car with you. And that's something that I am reminded of a lot of just like, being back home and seeing like teenagers or whomever, like needing to, like, get a ride.
TARA WILLIS: It might be like the Southern influence on the Midwest? Like it's just so I mean, I don't know, I'm born and raised in Chicago, and now I live here again, after being in New York, and the Southern influence is so clear. It's like, in people's accents, it's in like, so many small cultural things. And then it's really, it's clear in Chicago, because there's such, like, ingrained segregation in so many ways across the city. And so like, you feel it, and then you don't feel it, you know what I mean? Like, there's parts of the city where you really don't feel that Southern influence, and it's, of course, changing a lot, but I just, I want that thing of like, Hey, girl, you know, like the, that part of the car culture that's not in LA, like, feels like a kind of way of traversing space and being in a place together that is maybe, I don't know, I'm associating it with Southern-ness. I also, my dad is from Mississippi, so I like grew up in a household with that, like, very present and, and I'm, and I'm biracial, so I had like, my little Midwestern white mom, like, like (laughs), very opposite, you know, so that, that the friction of those, those cultures feels really clear to me somehow.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: But just so that the people here don't get mad at me, I do feel like there is a vibe, like when I go to Leimert Park, or if you're talking about like, Crenshaw, or Inglewood, when you talk about Watts, or like Black, when you talk about like Black folks, wherever. That's what I'm saying. Like some of them, like, they came like from Houston, which, to me is also like , the South too or cousin of the South, you know what I mean? Like, I mean. It's just interesting, it is that, I mean, but definitely in the Midwest, because, at least for Detroit, the impact of Ford Motor Company and people getting paid $5 a day in the factory and coming from everywhere, and the great migration, all that stuff. Those people just not wanting to get lynched in the South and getting tired of the foolishness and then right, you know, like, all of that moved those people. But then, but then it's, those were the people that made that culture down there. So yeah.
TARA WILLIS: You were both part of this anthology, this Black Midwest anthology. And so in some ways, maybe the next question I should ask is just like that phrase, since we're inside of it already trying to kind of like, carve out what it might mean in terms of car culture, in terms of the landscape, you know, in space. Like, how did you come to that project or take that phrase and run with it to participate in the convening, and then like the anthology. Like, how are you working with that phrase in your thinking, in your work? Your own history?
GABRIELLE CIVIL: Well, I can say as soon as I saw the call for that anthology, I was like, I need to be in that anthology. Because my friends tease me all the time. They're like, yes, Gabrielle, we know you're from Detroit, like, you know, they’re just like, yeah (laughter). You know and the Anita Baker song comes on, by the way, Anita Baker is from Detroit. You know like whatever, like, yes, we know, Gabrielle, you're from Detroit, you know? Have you ever looked at a bio of mine, the very first thing I would say is Gabrielle Civil, is a Black feminist performance, originally from Detroit, like, that, that seems so central. So as soon as I saw, you know, through Terrion L. Williamson’s incredible leadership and vision that that was happening, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. And I had heard about the symposium in Minneapolis. But I wasn't able to attend the first time. So I felt excited. And I think what I offered for the anthology, was some documentation and writing about the “Call & Response,”um historic dynamic of Black women in performance that I organized and then um helped to flesh out and fill up with these six other kind of like Black women and, femmes with me, in Yellow Springs, Ohio. And it felt important to me to have that documentation, be connected with that phrase in that project. Because again, Yellow Springs, Ohio is not a place necessarily, that people would think about relative to Blackness, or Black women, or maybe even performance. And yet, we were there. And, and the, and the call that we came up with, you know, was “Experiments in Joy.” And for me, there's some relationship there between that call of experiments in joy and being Black in the Midwest, like there's some relationship for me just in terms of how I've lived that and wanting to be in a space that, being in a place, and then trying to open up space in that place to offer possibility for joy. And with that word, experiment, recognizing that you may or may not manifest or reach joy, do you know what I'm saying? So it's not some type of automatic thing that's going to happen. But what happens if you try to move from a space of freedom? What happens if you try to take yourself seriously as, as an agent of, of creativity? You know, so these were some of the questions that together, we came together in the Midwest, as people who were all or have all been called, like Black women artists, Black women performers, Black women performance artists, but all had very different relationships to the words Black, woman, and performance, you know, what I mean? Different ages, different gender orientations, we had a lot of different things going on, which was so rich and beautiful and great. And wanting that to be seen and documented in something called Black in the Midwest was very important to me.
KAT REYNOLDS: 100%. I think a lot about that, as well with just um Black female imagination, and dissociation (laugh) and how they're one in the same (laughs). And so I think a lot about that, especially when I like, start, like the way that joy is depicted. And we look something like one way. But um actually, it's not. It's so many different ways. And it’s so expansive. Yeah, my contribution. Thank you for uh reminding me of that. Because I was like why can't I remember what I contributed to. So it was this a while ago, but “No One Loves me, Like I Love Me.” Thank you. And at the time, I didn't know that the anthology was going to be printed in black and white. So I was like, Oh, wow, this is, this is different. The, the photo is actually a friend that passed away, passed away, shortly after we did um the shoot. I didn't know that. Like, I didn't know what was going to happen and I enjoy a lot of surrealism within my work and also set design and utilizing costuming, and that comes from my performance background. And working with people that don't consider themselves like performers but like or dancers, but working with like what they're willing to give and kind of being a little goofy going into a scrap yard. You know, in St. Louis. And he's wearing this like pink suit that we got that we got from a rental, a costume rental company. And yeah, we just did this shoot in this pink suit. And he was so fantastic to work with.And I don't remember how I came up with the title. But I think it was something probably very personal or like how I was feeling. And just thinking about this idea of this, like, Black man in a pink suit doing whatever he wanted to do. And what does it mean for me to do whatever I want to do as well. And like how it is this, this phrase of like, “no one loves me, like, I love me.” And that's true (laughs). And it's something that I kind of have to hold on to. And whenever I go back to that series, I think a lot about him, and how there's this one, this is a story, but there was this one moment that he showed up at this like opening, and he just goes into this like beautiful, like, monologue, like at an opening and just everyone you know, openings, are like busy or whatever. But then he's just talking to no one. And then all of a sudden he's talking to everyone. And I just was so transfixed with that. And I just couldn't let it go, because it was just something that he just wanted to do. And that natural, like gift of doing that was such a blessing. And just thinking about the things that we can just do. You know, I can just go into the scrapyard with this person in this pink suit. And I can just do this. Why not? So I think that that's why I wanted to put that into the book, or to the anthology, because I think that possibility and promise is very important to also understand within the Black Midwestern landscape. And also the Black Midwestern mindset is kind of this thing of like, well, why not? No one's really watching me anyway. And that goes into like Toni Morrison, you know? Like no one was minding us, so we minded ourselves, I think that's the quote. Yeah. So I think about that a lot, too. That's in Sula, as well as in The Bluest Eye.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: That makes me think of some kind of Detroit heroes of mine, which would be like Derek May and Carl Craig, and like Juan Atkins, and all those who people innovated Detroit Techno when they were in high school, and just you know what I mean, and created this whole new sound, but, but because they could, and they were in this space, and no one was really like watching what they were doing. But they also had the infrastructure from Motown and places where records could be pressed so that they could go and like, press a record for their party that night and all this kind of stuff. I don't know, that makes me think of like, why not?
KAT REYNOLDS: One of the things that I would tell people about St. Louis is like, it's a quiet place to fail (laughs). That's one of my favorite things about it. It's like, you know, well, when I was doing a lot of things there, like, I would tell people, like, you know, if you want to just have like, experiment with something, like, do something new, try something new, like, it's a quiet place to fail. And it's not very expensive to just take yourself there. You know, you don't have to go to New York, or you don't have to go to LA in order to feel like you can make something there, you know, try it out somewhere first, so you can try it out in St. Louis, and you can fail quietly and then skedaddle back home (laughs) if you need to, you know, or, you know, process that failure somewhere.
TARA WILLIS: Is that something that's come up for you, Kat, in like your curatorial work in the Midwest? A lot that Yeah, like that advice to people like St. Louis can be that for you in your practice?
KAT REYNOLDS: Definitely. It is. It was because I, I really enjoyed you know, go big or go home. Why not just try it like, you know, you have this budget in this town, the city, why not just try it? Especially yeah for like larger budget projects and like working with artists that had never had that kind of budget before, why not just try something new? Like, alleviate some pressure off of yourself and just try it. I'm, I'm super down. I love um believing in Black artists and the things that they can do. And it doesn't have to be something that is so expected, you know? Like, what do we have here? And how can we use it in a way that we're seeing something new, we're feeling something new. And I think that that’s how I’ve thought about my curatorial practice is like working with artists is well let’s try something new, let’s do something different.
TARA WILLIS: Okay, so I wanted to expand on this thing about doing like, I love that, like, you can just kind of do it or try it and you're both performance makers among other things, how are you kind of thinking about the doing, um you know, as performance makers there, and what is performance doing for you?
KAT REYNOLDS: I have a dance degree (laughs). I have to say it and like, I have a dance degree, like, that's something that I have, like, it's a thing that that is, that is what I have. I have a dance degree from Webster University in St. Louis, near St. Louis in Webster Groves. And I think for a really long time, my relationship to moving was like, this is dance. And this is this is, this is what this is dance is not like art, like for some reason, like I was like, this is dance. This is like discipline. This is what I do. This is who I am like, I’m a ballet dancer. I'm a modern dancer, like all these things, but then I think in college and kind of just like broke down like when I went, when I transferred from Webster to USF for a year and I started really understanding like for one like what does it mean for me to be in Florida and Tampa in particular. And also like what are the other ways for me to think about my own like background, my own history, my own memories, like through movement and or and also like writing or whatever. And so from there I then went back because I couldn't afford out-of-state tuition so went back to Webster and did a study abroad program in Vienna. And I was kind of over the whole thing of like, oh people like I'm shorter I'm more stocky like I was more like muscular like I have a very like, people look at me they're like you are a Black woman. Like there's no other like if ands or buts about it, like, you know, I could get the leg up trust and believe the leg was up like I need the people to know (laughs). The leg was up and I have documentation. But I really love like choreography and I really loved like architecture, right? And so being over in Vienna where I also just had a camera, I started taking photos of the buildings there. And I came back to America. And I started doing uh portrait photography with people and I was nervous about portrait photography. So then I like started using balloons with that because I needed some, like some type of distraction, I don't know. And through that, like I still kind of wanted movement and I wanted like, not just regular portraits of like glamor shots, like I wanted something different that like, showed a different side of people or whatever. And so I started getting more into like set design and costuming and conceptual portraiture and conceptual photography, which then led me to like doing my own performances that like thought of like when I thought about like the church and being an usher. And what does it mean, and that was a utilizing like, Amiri Baraka’s Dope and doing that at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (laughs). And that's another like, Well, why not like moment, like, what are they gonna do? (laughs) Like I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this anyway. And then getting into film and filmmaking and thinking about architecture, the Black body, emotionality, psycho geographies, like things like that, and still kind of choreographing, like, you know, choreography a little bit. But I think about choreography within my curatorial practice, probably more than I think about it, with like filmmaking, per se. And then I started thinking about the lens and the complications of the camera and how that operates with the Black body, and that made me feel really uncomfortable, to be quite honest. So I started getting into sculpture because of that. And then I kind of got back into filmmaking as of recently, but usually I do a lot of self-portraiture, because I think a lot about exploitation.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: I don't know I'm just enjoying so much thinking about choreography and curatorial practice and thinking about the creation of these crevices and folds, and these fugitive spaces or thinking about the “Call & Response” festival as a fugitive space as a fold inside of this Midwestern space and thinking about performance for me as a fold inside of whatever, is whatever life I'm supposed to have is not the one that I do. And I have to say, performance is quite responsible for that at a base level. Because, I mean, I identify as a performance writer, where those two practices are very deeply entwined. And I was always writing as a kid. But I always knew that I, it was more than just being on the page, it was something about a way of being in the world. But there was a real problem that I had about, like how, I'm so invisible in the world, or the way that I see myself is so different from how it seems like the rest of the world sees me, even in this Black Midwestern space. And that, for me was a lot about gender, and about patriarchy and about sexism, and about the crisis of the boy and all the attention needs to go to the boy because we're losing our Black men and what can we do and all, all of you girls are so successful, we don't need, you don't need us. I mean, I don't know. But at the same time, it was also like, if you get pregnant, you'll ruin your life. So there were, there was a lot of policing and a lot of things or like a lot of compulsory heterosexuality. There's a lot of things that were going on that were complicated for me. And with writing, I was like, oh, with writing, you don't have to have a body. You succeed because you don't have a body (laughs). You know, it's like, Oh, you just be a good girl and you like, you know, write your essays and your poems and you get a scholarship to college and you have good grades and. But you don't have the body. It's something that's very dangerous for you, Black girl, because if you have a body, then you can be trapped. You can, you can fall in with the wrong person. And you and none of your dreams will come true. If you have a body, none of your dreams will come true. None of your dreams will come true. I mean, I don't know if you two had that experience, because the thing is that no one else necessarily even said that directly. That was the water I drank from that was just like the truth. If I have a body, none of your dreams will come true. You won't go to college. You, won't you I mean, it just seems like a disaster. So then I was like, but I have a body I mean, I mean, that's not sustainable at some point. Every day, in fact, you're in a body, you're living in your body. So it was like, Okay, how am I going to mediate and navigate this. All of a sudden, there was this thing called performance. I was like, oh, oh, but see, unlike the two of you, I don't have training in the same way, or the kind of training that I have is very different. I don't have formal training, and I'm a person who is terrible at following choreography. I felt very affirmed when I heard Ishmael Houston-Jones say like, he was like, I'm terrible at following choreography. Like, you're terrible at following choreography, you know, and I doubt that actually is true. But it feels so good just to hear him say that, because I admire him so much. But also like following other people's steps. I'm like a disaster. It throws me right out of my own body, because I'm like, trying to graft on to what somebody else, somebody else's body is doing. But making my own dance, I can do. Making my own movement, I can do. Or coming, like or being, stepping off the stage and coming in to talk to I can do that, I can you know what I mean? And I don't know there was something about performance to get back even to Tara your question like, What do you do in performance? What I do, or what I try to do, is be in my body, that's actually the thing that I'm most trying to do. To be in my body, present, in a particular space and time. And that was such a gift to be like, Oh, if you're in your body, it's not what you look like. It's like what you are. It's not about appearing, it's about doing. And in that doing, you can do anything, you know what I mean? (laughs). And in that, doing anything, it's like, you can be anything and you're allowed to dream. You're like, all of a sudden, it's like, oh, instead of the body being the impediment to the dream, the body is the vehicle for the dream.
KAT REYNOLDS: Uh. Yes, you said so many good things. Like dreaming. Yes. Like, it's so, I, I the fear of, of not being able to actualize your dreams or more so the fear of Black women just like feeling like our dreams literally just like, they don't matter. I just really appreciate what you just said. A lot. Because I think that for me as someone that like, I grew up thinking that everybody just had night terrors (laughs). Like oh, that's common, like everybody, you know, has night terrors as children. No, no, there's people that dream that like hearing someone really care about dreaming and the importance of dreaming. And sometimes night terrors do pop in there. It's not always about a certain depiction of joy, which is also what you've discussed to and the importance of that. I’ve been thinking a lot about daydreaming one of my friends Tasha told me about maladaptive daydreaming, and I was obsessed with it and I Like, like, where you, your life is so like, where you think your life is so terrible, that you basically create a whole other reality. Just thinking about the potency, of like, needing that. Right. And, yeah, it's, it’s fascinating. It's fascinating. It's like, also deeply not concerning. I don't want to say that, but it's just like, to need to escape so badly. And for Black women, especially dark-skinned Black women need to have they need to think that that's real. I just really, I think a lot about dissociation. As I said before, it's like, Black female imagination and dissociation one in the same, you know, but dreaming also kind of operates in a different way than that.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: I wrote that down what you said earlier, because I think that's brilliant in terms of Black female imagination and disassociation and this idea of maladaptive daydreaming, and, but it's also as a survival tool. But then art making is the thing that materializes the dream or makes it or can make it real. Or real is a funny word. I'm maybe I don't want to talk about real. That's, that's, I don’t know. Let’s, lets’ get real. That's got to be real, you know? It gets us to a place I don't know yet. I that's, that's the thing. But ma, but the materialization is interesting. Materialization of disassociation, materialization of imagining, of imagination, materialization of embodiment or embodiment as a kind of materialization. Like, that's where performance comes. There's something there with Black female imagination, dissociation, and then what performance can do at least to expose that or reveal it or, offer some space for it to move , or give it room to, for that whatever the daydream to actually be staged and come alive.
TARA WILLIS: I'm curious what you all feel like, you might add to that list of inheritances, whether that's influences or like actual lineages, aesthetically, or culturally? But then also, are there ways that those are like showing up in specific projects? Are there any examples of like working with histories in that way or working with this like interrogating a specific inheritance?
GABRIELLE CIVIL: Well, I got to talk about Motown, I got to talk about the ladies of Motown, okay. I got to talk about the wigs, you know, I'm sorry, everybody's like, Gabrielle (laughter), we know you're from Detroit. But I need, but I mean, in terms of your specific question, though, and especially this stuff about the body and what the body is supposed to be in the Black female body, like the finishing school, the Motown finishing school and the way that those women looked, and that that was like a, that was armor. And but that was also that was I'm still trying to understand some of what that all was, because that is like, the nice Black lady or some that but it was glamorous, but it was also a little desexualized because you needed to appeal to the White people and sell the records. It was pristine. It was it, I don't know, there's something about the like Black backup singers and who they were and what that is. I'm thinking a lot about Diana Ross and The Supremes. And then Florence Ballard, who was the Supreme that got thrown out and what her legacy is, and what is it to be the rogue one. Like, I'm kind of interested in being the rogue one. But then also, it was a little tragic, but then maybe it wasn't, I don't know. I'm thinking about Martha and the Vandellas. But there really were no Vandellas. It was just Martha, Martha. And some people they hired and I just there's all this stuff that I'm trying to parse through. So I feel like I want to make a show that's just called “Motown.” Because people think they know what that is. And then when you come in, and like Gabrielle's Motown, it'd be like big Black crows that are flying, I mean I don’t even know (laughter). You know what I mean, that would be what it was to grow up with that. You know it would be be a cross between Adrian Kennedy's Funny House of a Negro and like Dream Girls or something, I don’t even, it means just me. Wow. So I'm thinking about that. And of course, I always have to lift up like I talked about the techno, Detroit techno is really important to me. Prince, for me, will always be like a number one profound aesthetic inheritance, something that I received, something that felt very connected to, to Midwestern-ness in terms of the kind of Blackness that he had. That was not New York, that was not LA, you know what I mean? So those are just some of the things I think about for sure.
KAT REYNOLDS: Inheritances and things, I just always come, come back to like, St. Louis houses and like brick in particular, and thinking about sustainability, and also safety and protection a lot. And so I think that those are the things that I am constantly wondering like for myself as well as like, what I like to look at. And I know that that's like very basic, but it's like aesthetics and like who gets to think about a beautiful home and high ceilings and crown molding. And you know, or who cares about that like also like there's, there's homes that you know, have all that they could care less about it hardwood floors that are beautiful. You know, so I think about those things quite often. And I also think a lot about Black glamour, as well. But I think I don't I don't necessarily know if I think about someone specific besides also Josephine Baker, but I think about her home in Mill Creek Valley, and how Mill Creek Valley no longer exists. And, and I think about where she was born, which was the Hospital of Social Evil. And yes (laughs), which was where the sex workers and like women would go to, like, have children and things like that. So that's where she was born. And think about Tina Turner a lot. Yes, like, I think about her, I just think about the proximity that these women had to each other, just like through one city, and also thinking about migration. Yeah, what else. Glamor. And surveillance I think about surveillance quite often. Even you know, like that, we call it flyover. But we're still surveyed or we survey each other. Things like that. I think a lot of my grandparents’ house. It's brown, and it has siding, and the hill that I used to run up, like, from like to go to get to their house when I got off the bus. Those kinds of things, and I, I don't want to forget those things. And I think I, you know, I want to be able to continue telling those kinds of stories. Um, like, I don't want my life to get so busy to where I forget those things.
TARA WILLIS: Ooohf (exhale), yeah. Have either of you worked with, like, archival material in specific ways?
GABRIELLE CIVIL: I have definitely. And I'm still working with archival materials. Um It was very lucky. I happen to be at home in Detroit. It wasn't Christmas. And it was just for whatever reason, I was doing some art thing someplace and just made a little side trip to see my parents. And I walked into my mom's sort of like little office-y room, that used to be my sister's bedroom, and saw this shred pile. And there was there were these like, ripped out photo album like pages from photo albums that she'd ripped out that she was going to shred. And I was like, what are you, I was so distressed. I was like what, there were all of these photos of when she and one of her best friends went to Europe. And they did Europe on $5 a day. There used to be, there was a book called Europe on $5 a day. So they were like, Okay, well, we're going for 12 days. So they saved $60. And they had like, that was exactly how I mean, I can't remember exactly what it, but literally, she told me that they budgeted exactly $5 a day, and they had this book, and then they'd like saved up for the ship or the flight out. I think it was a ship probably that they took maybe because I don't think they could have afford the flight, I gotta ask more questions. But the archival pieces like these images, these images are extraordinary. And so I had a residency at the Automata Theatre in Los Angeles, but it was during what was during quarantine. And so I like dwelled in a way inside this space and then created these window displays with the images and with writing. And I was like inside of this space with these images of my mom and her friend and all of these European people that she couldn't remember and all of these places and all of these things and. And then I brought the photographs like actually performed in Detroit at Room Project. It was a reading, it was a beautiful reading with two, okay, two emerging writers. Shannon, I gotta remember Shannon's last name. And Jasmine from Room Project and then Hanif Abdurraqib was reading that night too. And there were all these beautiful people in the space like Detroit people that were awesome, Mars, the poet was there and Brittany from, anyway. And so as part of what I did is I shuffled those pictures and just like passed those pictures around in the space. So it was like these were Detroit pictures, but they were pictures of Detroit people that were someplace else from the past and also in another place, but then they were back here, like recirculating and reintegrating into this new generation of people. And it felt really important to me. And also my mom and dad, and family were there. So it was like they were seeing things, their own things. Were my mom's things that were almost thrown away, but also now recirculating. Because the thing I've been thinking a lot about the archive is like the archive is not to be stored, or it's not only for storage, the archive has to be used. It needs to be activated.
KAT REYNOLDS: One of my favorite museums is the Katherine Dunham Museum. It's in St. Louis. And they have these amazing, like, archives of hers, or costumes or gifts that she received and stuff like that. And they're just out and for, for them, as well as other people that are very concerned with that. But for me, I just love this idea of like this, like, tangible touch, like residue, once again, like remnants of museum or space before this relationship to conservation and preservation becomes key to you know, storing something, the fragility of something, it's like, you know, I'm thinking about your mom, like, you know, shredding, like, I don't need this, like shredding them, you know, and then you being like, I need this, this is important, which is, which is important. Um Because when you think about like legacy, and like all these other things. But to her, it just wasn't. And both are right. And I think that with seeing and being in like Katherine Dunham's Museum (sniff) and not feeling bad that some of these things were, quote, unquote, not taken care of, or whatever, like, who am I to say. And I think that, yeah, like having albums out and for people to be able to touch stuff. And to feel it, even if it is a photograph, and it's like, you know flat, two dimensional, there is something to be said about being able to touch a photograph today, when like, everything is like on our phones, or like, you know, and so it's important, it's also really beautiful to see other people, like, interact with that, as you know. And like, and I feel like when people invite people with us to invite people, that people will invite people to their house, but like, it means something when you invite someone, a stranger into your home, because they are seeing your things. They're seeing your family, they're seeing, like, photo albums of your life. And I think that that's something that we don't have as much anymore. And so it's really beautiful that you were able to give that experience to the audience, as well as your parents and your mom.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: And myself because I am that person who craved it the most really. But one note, I have to say in terms of my mom, part of the reason why I was like, Why are you throwing this away? And she was like, but I lived it? And that was so, it wasn't that she didn't think it was important. It’s that she felt like she had integrated it. And she didn't need it. But so that to me, I think about the archive, but like, who is the archive for? But I'm like, but actually it's for me.
TARA WILLIS: Kat, you work with forms that often end up in the archive, right? Like, you know, documentary forms, photographs I feel like you've done some projects. I know, you had the Blondell Cummings project, you know, like, there's projects you've done in the past with like, other people's media that then you're working with in media, you know. So I'm curious about how you both think about that in your own work? And like, yeah, are there are there more examples of like the archive showing up that may not be like me literally working with materials from someone else, but also like, how you are, potentially to be archived? How your work, you know, might live in that way?
KAT REYNOLDS: It was really, really, really, really just nice, like to be able to work with that art, with the Kitchen's Archive, and Blondell’s archive, I should more so say. And just thinking about, like, how to see her work. And then also know that all of its important, all it's important, but to try to pick out things that I could relate to. Thinking of it more like through language, and also gesture. And like, as a, almost like a handbook of like, this is what you do in this situation, or this is what this means, and almost like to decipher, like Blondell’s movements, or even choreographies within her practice. And so like, like, this is what it looks like, to be alone or to disappear. And it was just like me standing there and not moving from the camera, because also like Blondell, and like how she just commanded the stage and never disappeared, even if she wasn't supposed to be seen, was incredible. And so to be able to kind of like take the physical like, this is what like this is the archive. And this is, I'm just going to like repurpose it in some kind of way, but like, really to relate it to myself, but also just still honor Blondell and also to work with one of my dear friends in the process who also utilizes performance. So yeah, it was a good experience.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: The archive is something I think about a lot. Because I feel very haunted by people like Model Bass, or Anne Spencer, even Georgia Douglas Johnson, who is a poet who we get to have, and she actually, we have a book of hers, we have plays of hers, she has so much more work, that just got destroyed, or that was lost to time or that nobody valued. And so I do think that for me writing was something about, like the eternal or trying to find some, you know, like some afterlife or some way to preserve something of the creative practice that I'm so obsessed with. Whereas performance is so much about the ephemeral and just being in the moment and understanding that, even if you take pictures of it or, or photographs, or like videotape it or whatever, that's actually not the performance. And it's only you and whoever was there. And if nobody was there, it's only you. And sometimes you don't even know everything that happens. So there's something, but that's the tangible that's the tangible magic of that for me. So I don't know I think that I always say that my main purpose as an artist is to contribute to and create an archive of Black women's creative expression. That's my thing. And recognizing all these lineages. I'm like so lifted up by all the names, the three of us have even just brought into this conversation, because that's how I learned to be an artist, or that's how I learned about people. It wasn't through formal education necessarily. It wasn't through art school, or training or whatever. It was, like listening to people say, who would they were inspired by, and then going and looking those people up. So we've just done a great job I think of, of like, like, lifting up the lineage! Okay.
TARA WILLIS: Okay, I have one last question, which is kind of an extension of the one before. I heard Alexis Pauline Gumbs on a podcast in the fall, talk about her relationship with Audre Lorde. And specifically the feeling of like reading Lorde, and also like other Black feminist writers from that era, and feeling like, feeling loved by them.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: Hmm. That's a big question.
KAT REYNOLDS: It is. (laughs)
TARA WILLIS: And I'll just add that your pieces in the Black Midwest anthology book end the section on love that is titled “Love.” Kat is first and Gabrielle’s last.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: That’s wild.
KAT REYNOLDS: Wow.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: There's gotta be some Black girl or femme or somebody in the future who's really searching and looking for support that they that, that impulse to create is not it's, it's, it's real. It's not some abomination or anomaly. And if it is wayward it's wayward in the best possible way. In the Saidiya Hartman way, you know, and I don't know, I just have to believe that someone in the future. It is really it is future oriented for me. Which is funny because in all of my Gen X-ness, I struggle at times with some of the generation like generationally some of the discourse, I struggle, But, and yet, I believe that I can offer something that will be helpful and inspiring and juicy for someone and I want. I want it to feel like an act of love, like I'm offering this because some of what I'm doing, nobody ever showed me or talked to me about what it was like to do it. And so especially with the books, like that's really what those are for. So yeah, and I mean, I guess I love that reader of the future who stumbles across it and says, like, Oh, this is like a drink of water that I need.
KAT REYNOLDS: This is a hard question for me. Um Like a lot of emotions are coming up. Because I just keep thinking about like me as a little girl. My work is for the Black girls, the Black femmes that are just have too much on their mind. Like they're in their head a lot (laughs) um like creating worlds in their minds. Conquering something, failing at something in their minds. Kind of like a constant grief. Um It's for, it's for them. So I think it's, it's that you know? Yeah. Almost. Yeah. It's for the Black girls that like to burn things (laughs).
TARA WILLIS: Yes.
GABRIELLE CIVIL: That’s amazing. Yes (everyone laughs).
OUTRODUCTION: How People Move People, is brought to you by The National Center of Choreography at The University of Akron, or NCCAkron. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Edwards, James Sleeman is our editor, theme music by Ellis Rovin, sound design by Damon Locks, transcription by Arushi Signh, cover art by Micah Kraus. I’m DeMarcus Akeem Suggs, Director of Development at Mid-America Arts Alliance, Founder & Framework Culturalist at kummbuntu LLC, and an NCCAkron Board Member. Special thanks to The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for their continued support of NCCAkron programming like this. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at nccakron.org and follow us on Instagram or Facebook @nccakron. We hope you enjoyed this episode and encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for How People Move People.