February 2021
SITES OF POWER is the latest Black Imagination exhibition-slash-experience co-created in community to center and amplify the resonance of our intersectional Black voices. Viral conceptual artist, Natasha Marin, led this evocative iteration of this on-going project with award-winning director, Jay O’Leary Woods.
SIS Productions is pleased to co-present Natasha Marin’s online multimedia project along with a number of multidisciplinary arts organizations in the Seattle area. Sites of Power reveals how imagination and collective power can lead to transformational stories that highlight Black Brilliance.
Black Imagination: Sites of Power
Video 1 – My Name is Empire Red . . .
Black Imagination Conceived by Natasha Marin
Adapted and Directed by Jay O’Leary Woods
Composed by Porscha Shaw
Edited by Dante Barger
Featuring Allyson Lee Brown
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
As a whole, the on-going Black Imagination project exists to make space— space for intersectionality, nuance, and the full range of humanity that is Blackness. Now, from the safety of our devices, anywhere in the world, we can create our own Black Imagination experiences online at www.black-imagination.com.
Sites of Power is about validation– being seen and heard. Sites of Power is about healing from generations of invalidation and erasure. Sites of Power is about community. And community is true power. Curator, Natasha Marin & Director, Jay O’Leary Woods collaborated with artists across disciplines to create new works based on original audio and text centering our Black creative communities, dynamic adaptations from the Black Imagination book, vulnerable and meditative performances, and musical compositions that move from playful, to soulful, to haunting, and back to playful again.
This Black Imagination project began around the simple act of listening. Visitors to the Sites of Power exhibition can experience these living testimonies however they choose, but everyone is encouraged to find a playlist among the 6 available on the site (with over 100 tracks), turn off the lights, or close their eyes, and just listen. If that sounds too relaxing, exhibition visitors may also curate their own viewing-slash-listening experiences by playing one or more of the 20+ videos on the site … at the same time if you’re feeling adventurous … and on more than one device if available. Sites of Power exists to amplify our collective voices around themes that amplify nuance and challenge delusions.
<<<SUBMISSIONS FOR BLACK IMAGINATION BOOK 2 ARE NOW OPEN>>>
Special thanks to 4Culture, ArtsWA, ArtsFund’s MAP Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, and Scandiuzzi Krebs for their support.
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