Where Is Your Fire
for Audre Lorde / Angela Davis / Maya Angelou / Sonia Sanchez
Unexpected Lessons - Talking Objects
Akademie der Kunstler, 2021
Akademie der Kunstler, 2021
“Where Is Your Fire”, a mourning ritual drawing on archival material of Black Abolitionist women retracing the story of a lost 19 th century court case of the murder of a Herero Princess and a stolen African German theatre script. The artist follows the multiple routes of Black Feminist writers interlaced through fictions of botanical colonial fictions transmitting testimonies of anti-colonial struggles and warnings in the mythical spirit of Drexciyan uprising.
“Where Is Your Fire?”
what to say to you now in the soft afternoon air as you hold us all in a single death i say “where is your fire?”
i say where is your fire?
you got to fight it and pass it on
you got to find it and pass it on from you to me from me to her from her to him from the son to the
father from the brother to the sister from the daughter to the mother from the mother to the child
i say where is your fire?
i say where is your fire?
can’t you smell it ?
coming out of our past
the fire of living not dying
the fire of loving not killing
the fire blackness not gangster shadows
where is our beautiful fire that gave
light to the world?
*Excerpt from “Catch the Fire” by Sonia Sanchez
what to say to you now in the soft afternoon air as you hold us all in a single death i say “where is your fire?”
i say where is your fire?
you got to fight it and pass it on
you got to find it and pass it on from you to me from me to her from her to him from the son to the
father from the brother to the sister from the daughter to the mother from the mother to the child
i say where is your fire?
i say where is your fire?
can’t you smell it ?
coming out of our past
the fire of living not dying
the fire of loving not killing
the fire blackness not gangster shadows
where is our beautiful fire that gave
light to the world?
*Excerpt from “Catch the Fire” by Sonia Sanchez
Black militant Angela Davis speaks to crowd at Madison Square Garden New York June 29th 1972 during 'An Evening With Angela Davis'
Volume Up Festival 2021 / NRW Duesseldorf curated by Ligia Lewis