Reflection on "As if a captive controls conditional logic"

From 2021 to 2025, I talk about being receptive to the world around me and reiterating. ~980 words, 4-5min read

Jan 31, 2025

Beginning in June 2024, I organized five performances at house #17 Nolan Park on Governors Island, New York as a part of my residency with the New York Arts Program. I had never performed before and anyone who knew me would likely say, Derek hates performance and would never do it– they’d be right. Until, I saw the work of Song Aziza Tucker. During an iteration of Tucker’s MFA thesis work, collaborators moved through the now closed U Arts Dorrance Hamilton Hall evoking traditions of radical Black femme artists and scholars that I had never experienced. Dancers or collaborators of Tucker’s bellowed throughout the great hall on multiple floors quoting excerpts and responding to texts stacked throughout the hall’s seating, taking direction from Tucker; culminating in the audience and all the dancers circling around Tucker in what I struggle to describe as ritual-like communal chanting. I was moved unlike any work I’d experienced before, almost in tears with the gratitude to be in proximity to, be challenged by, cared for and implicated through her work. I was asked to grapple with Black existence, womanhood and communalism as my notes further elaborate:

(Black Studies Notes 5/8/24) Sonics- Lil' Kim, 70's r&b, contemporary soul. References- literal books: Lose your mother, Fledgling, Dear Science, The bridge called my back, Black ephemera, Stereo(type), Feenin: R&B music and the materiality of Black fem voices and technology. Black femmes- movement, crawling, reciting text, surrounding each other, yelling, speaking. In an open lecture hall. 30ish minutes, Moving the crowd, calling us into action, using us as witness. Taking us beyond wake work. Transmuting us into creatures, new beings, BEINGS, in the sea. Bbymutha and lil'kim wait for us at the bottom of the ocean- this is a paraphrased quote from the performance. The work was wholly communal, in terror, in relief, in holding your breath and releasing the breath in forcing and asking for action and forcing reflection ( I closed my eyes and refocused my breathing several times during the performance). The work was phenomenal to me. In ways, performances prior have only teased at this, got to the knot and combed through it- gently and sternly.

Image above: As if a captive controls conditional logic #1 (Caretaking) (2024)

That was in April. Now in June, I reviewed literature and began to look at the history of Governor’s Island– originally American native indigenous land then occupied by the Dutch and henceforth by English colonists. The island had mostly been a military base in various capacities through the 80’s then unutilized until the late 90’s when it began to be rented out and now, mainly run by New York City arts organizations.

Initially, I wanted to honor the people whose land was stolen and asked myself “ How can I mark space in honor of subjugated peoples past and present?” My hypothesis was through time and space; time represented through duration and space represented through body and canvas. While continuing to include my interest around quotidian Black experiences, my colloquially known feet paintings from 2021 came to mind initially titled, “Documentation of Exploring Artistic Methods and Physical Activity to Process Various Emotions.” For 30-45 minutes I poured paint onto canvas laid on the ground and walked, jumped, stumbled, slid, marched, and so on, as a method of release and catharsis. These were the beginning of experimentation with my body and paint representing data as well as formal decisions of paintings being designated as intuitive, with the intentions focused on being present in body, mind and immediate environment.

Image above: Untitled (Feet painting #1) (2021)

I wanted to honor the past with anyone willing to watch correlated to a segment of my artist statement read before each performance, “With all my work, I aspire that those who attempt to understand the ubiquity of anti-blackness and its vast impact on this world also attempt to understand my work. I make it to communicate with others and those struggling with “otherness.”

As if a captive controls conditional logic, is a reaction to audio from the gospel group, The Clark Sisters, poet Sonia Sanchez and scholar Dr. Joy James each discussing suffering, captivity and existence while racialized as Black on the canvas and in front of the audience. For twelve weeks, (five performances) I reviewed, and adjusted. This series of work echoed reiteration’s importance throughout my entire practice as an articulation of honor and remembrance as well as a challenge to to deeply listen to those around us transcending space and time; the dead, living and all speculative others.

Image above: As if a captive controls conditional logic #3 (Movement making) (2024)

This work was gut wrenching for me. It forced me to face my fears publicly as I cried during several performances knowing family, friends, loved ones and strangers looked to me on stage. These works forced me to embrace slips, imbalances, heat, wind, rain, and expectations of myself. I decided to focus on where my feet were “here and now,” as I would say to myself before beginning and focus on breathing from my diaphragm. Looking at the paintings now, I see these as both a supplement to my greater interests and their own body of work. In one category, the act of moving on these canvases with paint and sound in front of others is an abstraction of the everyday labor of walking with the past, the context that informs who you are, and how it impacts you, from tightness in your hamstrings, underlying stress of Amtrak fare hikes, to your father seeing you work for the first time. No matter what I said to myself prior these factors are present in the marks made with my feet and the racialized body those feet represent. And in another category, these works are their own speculative epistemology because they pull from the sounds premixed, the energies surrounding me and my psychic and physical state to build evidence that these variables were evoked with intention to implicate and honor. I see each of these paintings as an experimentation toward new ways of knowing, building upon my references.

Image above: As if a captive controls conditional logic #5 (War resisting) (2024)

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Loosening Discipline

Reflection on "As if a captive controls conditional logic"

From 2021 to 2025, I talk about being receptive to the world around me and reiterating. ~980 words, 4-5min read

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