If we can see it, smell it, hear it, taste it, touch it; we can feel it; if we can feel it, we can become it. If we can become it, it can be real,
For 25 years I worked as a community organizer, movement builder and network weaver. Then suddenly one day, I woke up and decided to be an artist.
Okay. It was not at all sudden. In reality it was after deep reflection, experiencing Ferguson October after the killing of Mike Brown (and the beginning of the Movement for Black Lives), envisioning the future I desired for Black folks beyond the killing, beyond the brutality, beyond the senseless hatred, and cultivating an embodied practice for myself that would allow me to meet that desired future with an offering so core to who I really was that I could no longer deny it. Art called to me and I answered. I chose wheat paste murals firstly because I just love them. Secondly, my community asked for them. They asked to see the images I make taking up space, affirming and reminding them of the many alternatives that exist to the systems that are harming us. And also, specifically, I chose wheat paste murals because as a world builder, analog collage feels most accessible as a means to convey visions of a new world emerging from the good and bad of the current one. Analog collage is most easily translated to murals by simply scaling them, printing them and pasting them up on a (smooth) wall of choice.
I also want to share my collages in public places. I share them mostly on instagram and I want folks in my neighborhood to have the same experience that our IG followers do. I want the images and world building prompts to resonate with people whose dreams echo mine.
My goal is to install murals at businesses and organizations throughout Black neighborhoods and communities to inspire and remind my people of the more beautiful worlds their hearts know is possible. And to invite us all into dreaming and world building and remembering. I want my murals to help bring us together to share our dreams together and help to build the power to make those dreams real.
See you in the streets.
In our beautiful future we, the people, have the power to define the rules that shape our lives and our livelihoods. We determine our hours, the kinds of jobs we will do, our relationship to technology, how the fruits of our collective labor will be distributed and more. Our work is a beautiful offering to our collective thriving through which we are each empowered. Our work reflects our gifts and skills.
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In this future our labor cannot be extracted instead, it nourishes our communities, our bodies and our spirit. We express deep gratitude to each other for our labor and recognize each others’ contribution. We each are asked to work in our sacred calling and also to work to sustain our communities. And even so, work is not the center of our lives.
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To make this, or any other vision, real, we will need to cultivate the collective power now to redefine the terms of our labor. We must adopt a power orientation.
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What if we cultivated the power to redefine the terms upon which we will live and work?
What if we articulated bold visions of the future we want and then did everything in our power to move towards it?
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If you want to cultivate a vision of a beautiful future, grounded in hope and connection, CONNECT with us at the linkinbio
In The Uses of the Erotic, Audre Lorde says, “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.”
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If we can connect with that feeling, and give it expression, this power will be unleashed. I’m thinking about what happens when we do this together. When we all locate and express our deepest desires for a more beautiful world. When we name what we don’t want, sure, but are unequivocal about what we DO want so badly we can almost taste it.
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What is everything that lies unexpressed inside of our demands. What are the palpable, detailed contours of our dreams? Have we located our feeling, beyond the pain, beyond the fear, beyond the despair, what do we really, truly want? Say it! Scream it. Sing it. Don’t be afraid to be called delusional. It’s time for us to call for what might be deemed impossible. Not what is viable but what is so improbable it might just transform the world.
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If what you want is to move freely and unrestricted and feel belonging wherever you might go, then say that. If you want sovereignty for your people, say that. If you want matriarchy say that. If you want the end of empire and the birth of archipelago, say that. Say it loud. Don’t worry about convincing anyone. Reclaim power to shape the common sense.
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Another world is possible. And we are speaking her into being.
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From, “The Uses of Power”, by Intelligent Mischief, forthcoming.
I finally finished this dreamscape after working on it in and off for the past few months. It’s not that it needed to take that long but my consciousness was deeply burdened and it became harder to find that liminal space of dreaming that usually allows me to connect with these visions. It seemed to only come in spurts. Not only did there seem to be a block but also a new expression was starting to come through for another dreamscape.
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It reminded me that there are so many ways in which the system seeks to interrupt us from dreaming, from imagining otherwise, from deeply knowing and tasting and feeling and smelling the contours of the new reality that is emerging through us collectively. And so, we must cultivate the space and time to dream and imagine. Without it we cannot create the more beautiful world. Instead we will just keep recreating the one that is hurting us. And how devastating would that be?
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What if the world we desire has been here all along, just waiting for the right time to emerge? I can almost smell it.
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What if? shared by @malilabee 🙏🏾
If you’ve been feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, dispersed, take a breath and try to turn away from the screens and connect with something organic (soil, tree, body). Close your eyes and reconnect with yourself. Just notice your breath if that is available to you.
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We are processing too much horrible information combined with too much useless information combined with too much information on productivity and efficiency. Combined with avoidable inflation, violence, cruelty and harm. And we are suffering in many ways. Important to be gentle with ourselves and others, to be strategic with our attention and use of time, to connect to what clarifies and discerns.
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Some mornings I have been waking up with no choice but to repeat softly to myself, “Another world is possible. Another world is possible. Another world is possible.”
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It helps to take some time to imagine her incapable detail. To know her intimately so that as she emerges you can recognize and nurture her into being.
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Do you ever think about the way music makes you feel? How it conveys and carries certain emotions across time and place?
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These will@be up on the street soon. Because we could all use the reminder,
Art is for the people and ever shall be. A new era. Louder than words.
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Daydreaming and I’m thinking of you. Beauty is a human right. Another world is possible.
Slow releasing this 9 page essay on power via memes and reels over the next 2 months.
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The Uses of Power: A Manifesto for Collectively Shaping the World We Desire.
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Inspired and informed by Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic.
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Commissioned by Creative Wildfire, a collaboration between @_artcoop@cjaourpower@movementgeneration@neweconomycoalition
