BLACK CARNATION

The “Black Carnation'' video documents a collaboration between Jahslyn Chen-See and myself, for Jahslyn’s senior capstone project at Mills College in Oakland California, in which she was graduating as one of two Black dancers in the department. I recorded an audio track of my spoken work and gave it to Jahslyn, who then choreographed a dance interpreting my words. In the piece, we are noting the existing world of police violence where I have to prepare my mom for my imminent death due to structural racism. In moving out of the world we are taking flight from--the world where we write letters to our Mother's, saying, "one day Ma, they may make my body a dead thing, with no longer a fast mouth and loud skin.", where police hold power and the Black folk feel powerless. We one day, years after this performance, found ourselves in a world, otherwise, where of course, blackness exists eternally.