Jennifer Harge & Taylor Aldridge discuss their project Fly | Drown and how performance art aids in the empowerment and elevation of the bodies and voices of black womxn. The Living X podcast is hosted by Ryan Myers-Johnson, executive director of Sidewalk Detroit, and edited/mixed by Wayne Ramocan of Red Carpet Lounge. This episode features music by Pamela Wise. The Living X podcast is a product of rootoftwo and made possible with support from The Kresge Foundation.
This episode was recorded prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
About "Fly | Drown"
FLY | DROWN is a month-long installation at the Detroit Artists Market that includes a series of performances, workshops, salon talks, and meals showcasing the ways Black domestic spaces provide sites for Black womxn to exercise acts of pleasure and self-sovereignty. The exhibition simulates Harge’s grandparents’ home in Highland Park, MI where they landed after traveling north during the Great Migration. Audiences sit in a living room on household furniture installed throughout the gallery to witness Harge’s choreography, becoming participants in the space and invited guests into the home. FLY | DROWN uses historical Black migration routes as points of departure from which to invoke the lineages of Black domestic spaces in the Midwest and gesture toward practices that both honor and queer our ancestral legacies. Aldridge and Harge invite scholars, friends, family members, and other artists to illuminate the personal and communal vernaculars of historical Black interiors.
About Jennifer Harge
Jennifer Harge is a Detroit-based educator and movement artist. Her physical syntax embodies an ever-changing relationship to gravity, Blackness, and a teetering between surviving and thriving. Her creative research is committed to Black and queer vernacular gestures, codes, and rituals as ways of writing from and exploring histories that have been misnamed or gone unnoticed. In 2014, she founded Harge Dance Stories to create a movement and performance platform centering Black subjectivity. Harge has been recognized by various institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Washington National Cathedral, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Queer|Art, the University of Michigan, Duke University, and Wayne State University.
About Taylor Aldridge
Taylor Renee Aldridge is a writer and independent curator. In 2015, she co-founded ARTS.BLACK, a journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Taylor has held a curatorial position at the Detroit Institute of Arts and has worked with the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, and The National Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution). She is a 2016 recipient of The Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing. Taylor has written for Art21, ARTNews, Contemporary And, Detroit MetroTimes, SFMoMA’s Open Space, and Hyperallergic. She received her MLA from Harvard University with a concentration in Museum Studies and her BA from Howard University with a concentration in Art History.
Want to know more. Visit artxdetroit.com
https://www.instagram.com/artxdetroit/
https://www.facebook.com/artxdetroit/
https://www.twitter.com/rootoftwo/
INTRO (00:08):
In this episode, Ryan engages Jennifer Harge and Taylor Aldridge in a discussion about their project Fly Drown. Specifically discussing the way that black domestic spaces provide sites for black women to exercise. Self-Sovereignty and embodiment that honors ancestral legacies. This episode was recorded late in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (00:38):
I want to ask the two of you particularly about your work together on Fly Drown. And I want to zero in on a scene within the show that really resonated with me. That was sort of the placing of the crown on your head. Taylor, there's a moment in which you place this very beautiful crown on Harge's head. And it did evoke all of these memories of sitting between my mother's legs in the kitchen, usually. Only particular set of people, know what that is, you know, but just being very carefully handled by her.
Taylor Aldridge (01:16):
I just, in my mind right now, I'm thinking about the first time I saw Jennifer Harge perform. I write about this in the brochure, but I saw her perform at a dance space that used to be a church space that is located not too far from new Bethel church, where Aretha was brought up, where CL Franklin was, was preaching. And I saw her perform in this church. There were still like prayer hands, like in the, you know, yeah. You know, this space. I barely knew Jennifer at the time. And I was curious to like, see what she'd been working on, obviously, but I get in the space and it's just, it's just, it looks like church, you know, so I'm like, "what was going to happen in here?"
Taylor Aldridge (02:03):
You know, I saw her perform for, I think it was like a 90 minute performance. It was pretty long, there were just specific like specific movement codes and gestures that Harge and the dancers and Harge stories carried out that made me feel exposed. Just like you were saying, you remember sitting between your grandmother or your mother's legs in the kitchen. When we were performing that specific part of the piece, I was having many moments like that in this particular piece, which I think it was in 2016 and it, you know, to, to be specific like Harge would say play a Lil Wayne song and twerk ferociously while looking back at a white audience member or an audience member in general. Or in another, she would run for 20 minutes while naming the people who have been murdered by police officers in the past several years. Or She and a group of dancers would get together as Rick Ross is playing and twerk and dress each other and fix each other's hair and, you know, prepare to go to the club.
Taylor Aldridge (03:23):
You know? So there were these like little vignettes that I saw her and her team carry out throughout this 90 minutes. And I just felt like so much of my own life was on display. And I hope this doesn't sound selfish or like self centered, but like, it was just like extreme exposure, but in a way that was also very like coated and not didactic. Like she's not explaining to you why I'm twerking and looking at you, she's not explaining to you why she's joyously gathering with her friends and fixing each other's hair. You know what I mean? It's just, there were these really intimate moments that were not explained, you know, even she just dropped into them. I say all that to say, Harge has encouraged this practice of being self reverential. You know, we've, we've learned from Tony Morrison, how productive that could be, but what does it mean to, to just have an intersubjective dialogue, even when there's like, even when we're in front of mixed company, like, what does it mean to have an inner subjective dialogue about blackness on our own terms without filtering it through, you know, another lens or through a specific type of language so that everybody gets it right.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (04:43):
Yeah. I love that. And that I'm just going to jump in what you're saying about Harge's work really resonates. There are so many pieces that feel where I have this question, is it okay to show that part of our lives? And also that question of like, even now I'm thinking, I said, I sat between my mother's legs. People know what that mean? Do I need to explain it? So I'm just not going to explain it. People who know what that means, know what that means. I'm going to take a pill, I'll take a page out of your book. But yeah, I resonate with you and that's also the part that I feel when I said that some of it feels dangerous, you know? Cause there are these sacred moments that you hold up about sort of our, our past life that I don't know if I realized before how sacred they are until you kind of pull these precious moments out in sort of lifted them up with your practice anyway, back to you.
Taylor Aldridge (05:40):
No, that's an awesome segue, right? Like thinking about like so much of flight drawn, I think is fantastical, right? Like it's, it's dreamlike and there's many moments that harken back to say a beloved type of narrative, right. And thinking the home space as this, like other worldly Omni present figure like the house as a figure within it, of itself. But then at the same time, like we're in a living room, like that's very like tangible and tactile and materialize in a way that doesn't feel so extra ordinary. But you know, there's just this completion of making the mundane extraordinary and special. Right. And I think Jennifer, this is the brilliance of Jennifer Harge is just like, we got to make it in the home space, but we're going to talk about all these like macro larger than life things, spiritual things, other worldly things. But because the home space is so charged with ritual with this quotidian way of working, these materials are gonna allow us to reference that extra ordinary way of doing that thing on Tuesday, every Tuesday that she's supposed to do. You know what I mean?
Ryan Myers-Johnson (07:09):
You both mentioned Detroit. I find sometimes that Detroit has this this really strong pool on me I'm from here. But I, I found myself asking, is this a codependent relationship that I have city? You know, what is beautiful? Like, is this a healthy relationship? This amount of need that I feel from Detroit, this is kind of pull to, to, to love and to serve and, and, and for lack of a better terms sometimes I think to save and I don't mean save from anyone else, but I mean, save and preserve for myself
Jennifer Harge (07:47):
In, I hadn't even considered if I think it is. I think it is Detroit, just for again, it just requires you to know the lands, to do the research, to know the lineage on which the land has been cultivated and nurtured. Yes. And these are acquirements in these, these systems of accountability exists through friendship, exists through family, exists through elders, exists through the institutions and the organizations that surround us. I, you know, I've been to incredible academic institutions and I did great work there, but coming here has been like a second coming of age. And I felt like I developed a level of rigor that I hadn't had an opportunity to develop before. And that I'm just as rigorous and making work as I am building relationship. And with folks, I think often about Adrian Marie Brown's work and specifically this line where she says, moving at this at this pace or speed of trust, right.
Taylor Aldridge (09:07):
And Jennifer knows as well. And Ryan, you know, this as well being in New York, you can be in a city like New York, like LA like a DC and just dive into your work, be technical, do the research, you know, create this really brilliant thing. I think here in the tray, you can't just do that. Like, that's not enough. You have to do that thing. And then on top of that, you have to figure out how the work relates to the land that you're on, how to translate it, if need be how to make it relevant. There's a certain level of I don't know, a certain level of stewardship and care that I think is also like tacked onto the work that's required. You know, like how you present the thing, who you invite into those spaces, how you take care of them when they're in those spaces, like
Ryan Myers-Johnson (10:06):
You said, you have to do this. The work requires this, that actually, you don't have to do that. You want to do this and you have required it of yourself. So, Well, I'm bringing it up because not everyone is doing this. You think you have to though.
Taylor Aldridge (10:26):
Yeah. Maybe, maybe I'm a critic I'm just as critical of myself, probably more than I am of others, but I still, I still think there is something in the weather of this place outside of like literal weather. The tension here is thick. The history is so pervasive. The traumas are so pervasive. You know, us all, we've been working in this city, you know, for you almost a decade, I would say coming back. Yeah. Jennifer several years, me five, six years. And there's just in that moment, I think we've been in a certain epoch. Like I talk about this all the time. We're in a really radical shift of Detroit history and I don't think we'll be able to fully capture the breadth of this moment. And so we're like retroactively, like looking back, but I feel like the stakes are just higher here in this, in this point in time. I can't say if it was always like this, the stakes are just higher and you can't, you can't bullshit.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (11:36):
Hey, amen.
Taylor Aldridge (11:38):
Yeah, no. So sure. I'm requiring a lot of myself, but also like with care, our communities won't allow us to bullshit. Yeah. You know, we can't do helicopters type projects. We can't come in and out and you use Detroit as a metaphor or,
Taylor Aldridge (11:54):
You know, use it as like a concept without really land down some roots. Yeah. Yeah. People do people do, which is the thing that people do it think that would feel good. Yeah. As a maker to have this kind of meta approach to the work, like in this really rigorous approach to making, like, it just feels like necessary to work in that way in order to like make the project or the work clearer. And so like while I can like feel all these things in my body and like tend to my own interior, like the only way to make that clear and to share that is into like share all these different threads with people, which might look like a lot of work. But it also is like a lot happening inside of our research questions. And I think like if you froze only give you part of it, then I'm going to always like leave being like, Oh, damn I, ain't nothing to know about this one thing. And I'd rather, you know, so we can like talk about it for real versus like mincing anything in the process.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (13:14):
No, I find your work to be incredibly giving. I feel that I'm observing it. You are just exposing yourself in such a vulnerable to me often dangerous way. I I've never seen anything embodied in the way that you embodied your, your history. And I think Detroit and just so many things. So I won't say too much about the piece, but I would like you to sort of talk about fly drown and maybe some of those things that you were revealing about your story and about your life and about your place here.
Jennifer Harge (13:51):
I just have to get that out of my body. So like me holding on to it would have just been me holding on to it. It's like, when you can tell us something to a furnace, that'd be difficult to share, but you only tell part of it. And you never come back to the conversation, like how heavy that weighs on you when you don't, when you aren't transparent with people is how I felt, particularly in this performance of like, I need to be transparent that I need to give birth to this thing in the process of giving birth can be dangerous. We'd know that it's dangerous. For many people, I should acknowledge that there may be people listening who don't know about what he said.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (14:32):
So could you just give us an intro
Taylor Aldridge (14:35):
Fly Drown was a installation. What we call a social sculpture series of dance performances, salon talks and workshops. So it had many, many moving parts. It took place in Detroit at the Detroit Artist Market from September 13th to October 19 and throughout each week, except one week Harge did a incredible performance where she is investigating or she investigated journeys toward self sovereignty within a black female embodiment. And specifically a big part of the show was this installation, which was a simulated room of her grandmother's living room space loosely based on the living room space, but particularly based on black living room spaces that we've all encountered growing up in the space, just to paint a picture, we have a very particular pink colored carpet that is super comfortable and invites you to just sit and lay on it. We had a plastic streamline, and, but that was not at all the runner that will run out the door. These two like beautifully embroidered couches, super comfortable that were in the front room space. And then you more sprinkled throughout the dance space and living room space.
Taylor Aldridge (16:00):
You know, we just had TVs and stuff. It's just, it really just was created to sort of honor the domestic, the black domestic space and thinking about the black domestic space as a site where we can learn how to endure certain traumas that are just inevitable where we can learn how to locate pleasure in our bodies and in these spaces where we can learn how to reclaim our bodies be free and locate a specific type of freedom within the home. And I think we were thinking about the home spaces is, is something that, you know, it's not completely immune to violence is perpetuated by the state or even perpetuated by your family, right? Yeah. But it is a space where you can go inward to be free, you know, this sort of Oxy, moronic practice, right. Thinking about going to liberate yourself.
Jennifer Harge (17:13):
Like what I'm reading. Like I get so stuck on 10 pages. Like I will read 10 pages now I have like eight movement scores. Like I can't move. I just can't move through words that quickly without being like, Oh, that particular paragraph, like I could imagine that as this sounding or whatever. Wow. So I think the way I make is very similar of like, I just get caught up in one piece of a world. And so I'm like, Oh, I need to talk about the other 10 pages now, which can be like the next dance so that it can, things can move at like at a more manageable pace.
Jennifer Harge (17:51):
So Fly Drown. The title came from thinking about liberation practices in black communities historically, which is like a lot of my work has been thinking about that for the past five years. And so I think Fly Drown is just, again, a continuation of that thinking. And so thinking about flying and drowning as like actions, black folks have taken either literally or figuratively as a way in which to emancipate themselves, thinking about like people could fly, think about folk tills, or thinking about flight during enslavement or thinking about what is the route that one takes to do either of those actions. And I think that is how I would like located my body in the work. Then it's like, well, what did, what did the body do before someone decided to escape a plantation? Like what was happening then energetically in the body before that action took place, or before you decide to drown yourself at Ebola landed like what is happening to your fascia before you make that decision? I've been trying to think about it. I'm still trying to think about that. Like how, how the body can be responsive so that I'm not trying to like represent moments in anything, but I'm trying to like physicalize what, those kind of energies, how they exist in the body. And then how then can I like, who do I need from that to understand my own freedom right now?
Ryan Myers-Johnson (19:38):
So you're really diving into these really complex histories with black people in life and death and what that means in spirituality and freedom. And so you're, you're, you're referencing liberation by suicide, by physical escape. So many different histories, but you're bringing it into your home or your grandmother's home and my career show or the home that you grew up.
Jennifer Harge (20:08):
So I think the piece itself, it was informed by my grandmother's home. Yeah. I don't think we're like actually in that home. And I think there's like some, I think there's some distance, which is also why I think we turned to this folkloric sense so that it wasn't like Jennifer up there dancing, but it's like, these are characters that we are using to tell a story about black. Fugitivity
Ryan Myers-Johnson (20:38):
Truly interesting black fugitivity. But how does it relate to the domestic space?
Jennifer Harge (20:43):
I'm going to stumble through an answer? And then I'm gonna look to my right
Ryan Myers-Johnson (20:48):
And maybe there isn't like a straightforward answer. I'm just really interested in this, these relationships between ultimate freedom know life and death, how you've brought that together with femininity in your own history and how it's situated within your grandmother's life.
Jennifer Harge (21:05):
Yeah. These are great questions. Sometimes I can like feel it movement wise and I'm just like, I don't actually know what happened. Like I don't know Willy all of what is going on. So I'll say what I do know. And I think there are things that I will discover like in the coming months, years, the next stories. Yeah. And after I was, after I watched the works, I haven't watched it yet. I usually don't watch anything I do for like a long time. But yeah, I think the home site became really important to locate us somewhere. And so it wasn't just like this really broad idea of escape or liberation, but like something about zooming in felt like a way in which to see the possibilities of the work more clearly the living room that Taylor mentioned that I think we all, especially folks in Detroit or like black northerners as my grandmother would call us northerners.
Jennifer Harge (22:12):
Like there's like a post us great migration blackness. Right. They happen in these Northern cities in, so we start thinking a lot about like, how then would you have to make sure your home felt safe after you escaped? So after that flight has happened, now you are tasked with creating a home for perhaps yourself, maybe your family of your children, what, in that space has the residue of that past, like the flight and what you were escaping, like how was that residue entering into the home? And then what about the home? Are you trying to like, ensure is propelling you into some kind of future that is less, I don't want to use the word dangerous, but we're short [inaudible]. Yeah. Insured and yeah. Like what do you need to do that in this new space to like demand a different kind of agency in demand that like, if nothing else, like my house would be in order, even if I can't go outside and like feeling my body, like nothing else.
Jennifer Harge (23:19):
I think I learned from my grandmother about keeping a house in order and like in a super mundane way, like in her younger year, which was like, not that long ago, in her way she was like tending to the house. It was like every Monday was laundry. Every Tuesday, you clean this, every Wednesday. So like, so you don't have to ever get ready. Cause like you, she literally stayed ready to talk her mother. And It was like, well, every, I don't know, September you don't, can't all the peaches. You have a hundred [inaudible] in the pantry. And it's just like, every year you do that. So you, yeah. So you never are like pressed when something shows up because you've planned for things to, you know, to happen. And so something about that, I think too, we tried to think about in the beginning about mundanity. And so it's not all like flying and drowning, but like ritual. Yeah.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (24:16):
I love this sort of exploration into finding safety and security in a black home if, especially if we're linking it to sort of our constant history in this country of, you know, frequent displacement, frequently being moved. And maybe one of the reasons why your piece resonates so much in your work resonates so much is because it is really getting down to the necessity of creating safety for black bodies in Detroit. And right now the fact that so much of that is under threat, you know, with displacement and gentrification. But why is it it's not just economic, there's a larger sense of safety insecurity that is threatened when homes are lost when lineages are lost, especially when some of the people that we're talking about don't have enough agency or power within some systems, at least there's the ability to create a home, you know? Yeah. But right now we're looking at something different. Will that ability stay for us here? Where do you find yourself now, there were a lot of hyphens in what you are a Renaissance woman of creativity and art,
Taylor Aldridge (25:30):
The knowledge that we all have slash slash slash job titles. But yeah, to answer your question like around 2014, 2015, I was in dialogue with this New York based critic and good friend and colleague of mine, Jessica Lynn, and she, and I just, we decided to find a publication for arts criticism from black perspectives. We felt that there was a large group of folks. Many of our peers, black people from around the world who were looking to write more critically and be supported in and writing critically about the contemporary art world, but they just really didn't have many spaces to exhaust that work or be nurtured in that work. And criticism is like a very daring practice. I think of criticism as an act of care as an act of intimacy. I personally don't critique work by artists who I don't feel are compelling, you know? So I think, I think it just takes a lot to just show up to the table and decide like, I'm going to think critically about this artist's work. I'm going to write about their,
Taylor Aldridge (26:44):
So yeah, long story short, we co we co founded this publication called art stop black. So we've been editors of that publication for five years. Um I have a curatorial practice. I have a writing practice because of Jennifer Harge I'm. I have an artistic practice. I feel like developing the beautiful
Ryan Myers-Johnson (27:05):
So bringing it, speaking of Jennifer hose, so you are founder of harvest dance stories. And in my opinion, one of the most important choreographers in Detroit right now your work is amazing. Can you just take us a little bit on a journey of how you came to found Harge dance stories and what are you dealing with right now in your practice?
Jennifer Harge (27:32):
So hard to Dan stories came out of a practice of accountability to a choreographic process. So I was just coming out of grad school in 2013 and I had been living in like very off the beaten path, places like central Illinois, central Texas. Like I just kind of like making my life as a dance educator, which is what I thought I was going to do forever. I was like teaching middle school and high school dance in Texas with my first job out of undergrad. And I remember being in that position and being like, okay, I know I was like, know how to teach, but this doesn't feel good. So I need to shift this a little bit enough with the kid yet. I've been doing that since I was like 15 teaching children dance. And then I got to grad school at Iowa and I think I landed there and the same with Atlanta and most places have like, there's some, like there's a nugget of something in the space that is calling me and I'll get there and figure out why I'm there for real.
Jennifer Harge (28:43):
Which is like, I think also how I got to Detroit. And so like, and then in Iowa was like a very choreography based program or the route that I chose was very like eight dancers in two years. It's part of the curriculum. So then I was like, Oh yeah, no, I do like to make dances. Like, this is part of my process aside from being an educator. And so I remember telling my family I'm gonna come to Detroit just for like six, eight months after I finished grad school. And I like did a visiting professor position in central Illinois after grad school, only for a semester. And I'm sitting for like six to eight months, and then I'm moving to Brooklyn, I'm moving to New York. Cause like, this is like my time to do that dancing thing. Right. And then I remember coming here in January, 2014 and then Harge Dance Stories literally started October, 2014 in Detroit. And it was like, around that time, I was like, I never moved to New York.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (29:42):
You fell in love.
Jennifer Harge (29:50):
At first it was more like, this is what my people are and this is where I need to be to get my feet back on some ground that I recognize.
Taylor Aldridge (30:00):
Detroit also forces you to just slow down. Yeah. I think just you forget about time, right? And plans outside of the city.
Jennifer Harge (30:12):
So much work to be done in. Like I need to know that I need to know my work is and like what my assignments are. And there was something in Detroit that like may harsh Dan stories. The, that was the assignment was like, you need to like have a container to keep practicing your work. And if I didn't create that for myself and I don't know if I would have been disciplined enough to like, to be making regularly how fascinating your discipline was creating more discipline for you, you disciplined yourself by creating a dance company. And without that, that's just so it's, it's just speaking, I'm speaking about my admiration for you, but so you both mentioned Detroit. I'm curious about the life of fly drown. Is this a piece that is for Detroit for now? And I shouldn't say, is this a piece it's a social sculpture complete with lots of other different elements from, from talks to classes, to workshops very robust and full experience. Yeah. What's is there another step for this work or are you on to the next story? I don't have any more stories. [inaudible]
Jennifer Harge (31:36):
I mean, I guess what I'm learning though, this maybe it's true for both of you too. Like we grew up in these really particular kind of arts departments, like art history and dance, and like there's a trajectory that usually happens after that. Or like there's a way in which you the way in which you work when you are in like a really instead of a curriculum, right? And like you take that with you when you leave. Most people do a lot. People do. And I know I did for a long time. And so fly drown is a shift in that. Whereas like there, I'm not trying to make a new dance next year. We're usually just like, you finished your dance and it's like, boom, and now you can make something else. I'm trying to figure out what it's life should be. Like. It felt so specific to Detroit. And even as we have conversations with like other places or institutions that are interested in it, it's like, Oh, but I don't know what to do if it's not how it was. He that's saying it can't happen. Other ways that's like part of the beauty of its construction is that it can do different things beyond its original form.
Jennifer Harge (33:03):
But I just kind of want to live my whole life the way Fly Drown happen. Like in, instead of a practice, I was like, how can we just make that set insight? Just be the side of harsh Dan stories. Like, can that just be how it is? Like we can invite people to come and talk and we can have food, we can kick it. We can like have workshop. We can do some performances. I was like, that sounds like the theme. I was like, that's all you need to do. And then I think there's space in it to like zoom in. And maybe it's all about performances for a little bit. And then maybe it's all about salon tops for whatever this month long thing I don't know. And so I feel like that was like the seed and I kind of feel like I can only see working in that way from here. And also I think the amount of time in like hour spent working on it, like Taylor and I working on it and it wasn't even like it was work. Like we would sit and watch set it off. And then like, as we watched it off, like maybe, maybe some writing come from that. Yeah.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (34:19):
Really illustrated that there's an entire world situated around the social sculpture that is Fly Drown. And your, your way of working is just very different than the linears that we came up from this sort of academic dance background. And so I love the way that you're thinking entirely differently about what it means to have a movement practice and just adding this, this level of depth and possibility, which for you is just your life, which is to me the sign of an amazing great artist. So Harge, will this partnership continue? U
Ryan Myers-Johnson (35:01):
Or is this also a part of just your practice as two individuals who know each other and works together?
Jennifer Harge (35:09):
In my mind so look this thing happened next, you coming, right. We coming forever. Right? We are wedded. We are bound together through Fly Drown.
Taylor Aldridge (35:22):
It's been really interesting talking about Jennifer and my relationship and our relationship. I recently just got back from Minneapolis where I was giving a talk at the Minneapolis School of Art and Design. And you know, I'm talking Fly Drown and I'm talking about Harge as if everyone knows our work relationship. And there was a woman in the audience, she was like, this was a great talk, but like what year late? What do you mean by collaboration? Like, did you curate or did you collaborate? And you know, my response was, you know, something that I had reckoned with maybe like a year ago, like, what am I doing here? Like I'm in dance classes. I was like, I'm going on? The dance I've been dancing. My body has not dance in a long time. And I'm just like implicating myself in the work to better attend to her movement practice.
Taylor Aldridge (36:22):
Like I can't write about it. I can't really curate it if I don't know how it's showing up in her body, I need to try to figure out how to make it show up in my body. You know what I mean? Yeah. But it was really interesting, like just explaining that to this woman, trying to like consolidate or a friendship, a workshop of two years. Cause we worked, we, I feel like we've been working together for two years prior to fly drown. And you know, I come from this a similar background, like you all like a very white patriarchal institutional colonial space where those types of spaces thrive on separation. They thrive on individualism. They thrive on hierarchy and rear accuracy. And so my relationship with hardest sort of undone or reconditioned me to what I've been taught to think a curator is supposed to do, they're supposed to be distanced.
Taylor Aldridge (37:23):
They're supposed to be sort of like stewardship of the work. But at the same time, if we're thinking about the etymology of curation, it means to care for. And so being with the dancer means to care for not some sort of like physical work that they've made, but like their bodies, their minds, the way that they're developing theory and like thinking about moving around objects within their performances. And so, you know, I explained all these things to this person. I just like started rattling off. I'm going to dance class. That's what that means. I'm traveling here and we're hanging out and reading books together and being in study with one another in ways that feel good, you know, like it shouldn't always have to feel uncomfortable for it to be productive.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (38:14):
Wow. So from pleasure to care, to the meaning of a collaboration to evolve in what it means to be a curator and a movement practitioner now in Detroit, this has been amazing. Thank you so much.
Taylor Aldridge (38:30):
Thank you.
Taylor Aldridge (38:42):
I do want one, you know, I'm a moderator, we've got a little time. I just have one question that you sort of posed us early on this sort of codependency on land and space you're implicated or not implicated, but just like invested in this city in ways that harsh and I admire, I think, and desire to be at some point. Yeah. Like just creating space for movers, some move and be supported a sense of codependency. Like after doing many years of this work and creating all of this infrastructure for performers, for people in your neighborhood, do you feel like you're in a codependent?
Ryan Myers-Johnson (39:26):
You know, I, I framed those words to sort of purposely be inflammatory, but it's I feel a deep passion for Detroit because Detroit made me, I think, as an artist, like I spent a lot of time on the streets as a kid and, you know, went to Detroit school of arts. And we were talking about where you spent time in during high school, where are you playing hooky? But, you know, I had the experience of walking to a lot of these performance spaces, a lot of these venues from my school with a gang of kids. So our playing hooky was going out to perform, you know, and that was our thing and dancing in the festivals. And somehow I fell in love with the physical landscape of the city and just had such a beautiful experience here. I just, I'm, I'm hot for Detroit.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (40:17):
I guess I'm just very passionate about it. So I love it. And I love artists, so it's not codependent because I'm not giving too much Detroit nurtures me. I feel dedicated. I feel that we've been married, I guess, you know, like I've been, I've been taken and I belong to Detroit because Detroit belongs to me. So I think in that way, I'm fiercely protective of the city, but I'm so proud and excited. I feel I could just keep going on, but I do. I feel like Detroit is my bride and I'm like a knight sort of protecting her. Okay that was lame. So what I just want to say it is not codependent. It's a very mutually beneficial relationship and I love this place so much. Nothing compares.
OUTRO (41:13):
Thank you for listening. Living X podcast is a production rootoftwo and made possible with support from the Kresge foundation mixed and edited by Red Carpet Lounge. Music for the series is by Pamela Wise. To find out more about the projects artists visit artxdetroit.com and download the companion Living X catalog, featuring all 22 commissioned AXD works.