A River Called Us, 2022
A River Called Us is a movement meditation filmed at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where the James River meets the Chesapeake Bay.
"It's a certain dance... the threat hasn't been eliminated... the terror, the violence, the threat of enclosure... and we continue to make and to create space because that's all we can do." -Saidiya Hartman
Ft. Monroe carries histories of enslavement and escape. It was the site where the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia in 1619. During the Civil War, Ft. Monroe was a Union fort where hundreds of enslaved Black folks escaped to, forming encampments that, at one point, numbered 900 people. It was there that the term “contraband” was first used to refer to Black folks who were claimed by the Union Army as property of war in order to evade the Fugitive Slave Laws. Contraband camps existed throughout the South and the Mid-Atlantic region. The phrase that is repeated in the soundscape is an incantation derived from the quote above, and references a quotidian radicality. Quotidian radicality means the mundane, everyday practices that we engage to refuse systems of oppression, and return to our truth. It is a term used by scholar, Deborah Thomas, to describe the ways that Black women (who were more severely punished when attempting to escape, and who were more bound to enslavement because of gendered familial expectations) practiced liberatory ways of being through language, dance, foodways, gardening, child-rearing, and other seemingly small radical acts. Through ritual-based movement, repetitive incantation and vocal distortion, A River Called Us references themes of quotidian radicality, refusal, disruption, refuge, and space-making.
Director and Sound Design: Jessica Valoris
Cinematographer: Carre Adams
