Retellings, or repurposings, of Ovidian myth offer the opportunity to examine and cross boundaries between people and things.
This essay tells a story about blackness and being, black durational performance, black power and the powers that cohere in the blackness of Now.
We owe others our language, our history, our art, our survival, our neighborhood, our relationships, … our ability to defy social conventions as well as support these conventions. All of this we learn from others. None of us is alone; each of us is dependent on others.
The challenge was...
Toni Morrison began to formulate her engagement with the black past early in her career, in a project for which she served as editor and makeshift curator of objects. In 1974 Random House brought out a book that Morrison had spent 18 months assembling with four collectors of black memorabilia: a 200-page, oversized compendium that conveys the story of African and African-descended people in the New World.