There is no how-to-survive-the-end-of-the-world pamphlet. There are no guidelines on the right or wrong way to struggle, to seek, and to attempt to maintain balance when everything is falling apart. Today, my heart feels like a weighted blanket in my chest. Each heartbeat feels like a lethargic, resounding thud underneath my skin.
As I dream of building a home and an extended queer family, I feel a sense of dread in the midst of hopeful visioning: how do I describe this moment—specifically the past four years— to my children? What words are useful or adequate to describe the live-streamed quick and slow death of millions? How can we measure the amount of suffering we are witnessing on the phones that are the source of so much pain and oppression? How do we preserve, archive, and construct the feeling of this moment? Will I remember?
To be sane in this moment is to be numb. To combat desensitization to the suffering of others, I look to art to remind me of the depth of feeling that makes me human. Last week, while in the library, I stumbled across this book, Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement, about Carrie Mae Weems’ 2008 multimedia project Constructing History.
The project includes staged photographs and a video essay in which Weems examines the construction of history. In the video, she points to key points of violence in American history—the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima—that have shaped American history. Weems acts as an omniscient narrator as the video oscillates between staged re-enactments of the past and vignettes featuring students learning about the past. The students themselves are the actors within these re-enactments, inhabiting the posture and personalities of historical figures.
In the essay titled “Screened Memories, A Choreography of Grace: The Video Art of Carrie Mae Weems,” Stephen Pfohl writes:
Film and videos also carry viewers beyond the lonely limits of egotistic subjectivity into enchanting circuits of imaginary identification and contagious affect. This is to enter a suggestive visual web, a dreamy twilight zone of images in excess of everyday consciousness and the confines of language. The video art of Carrie Mae Weems operates in both realms at once. As critical visual texts, Weems’ videos raise profound questions about the politics of memory-making and memory-loss." p. 33
Throughout the film, Weems uplifts the names of those killed due to their desire to fight for liberation. The assassinations of key political leaders and it brought up complicated feelings. Who gets to be remembered, and who does not? Why are people put on pedestals over others who also fight for liberation? How do we remember and venerate the heroes of Gaza, Sudan, Congo, and Haiti who have been assassinated? Constructing history outside of idealized leaders requires a ritual of remembering by leaving evidence of this moment and of our lives.
Constructing history requires an archive of the present. Archiving moments throughout my life has been a life-saving practice, sometimes sobering. Social media has been a way to do that, to share moments from my life; however, I grow weary of that illusionary space (more on that another time). When I feel lost and numb and tired and cranky, I come back to my favorite quote from Mia Mingus:
“We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have been. Evidence for each other that there are other ways to live--past survival; past isolation.” — Mia Mingus
Liberation feels hard to conceptualize right now. Siloed in my specific bubble of survival, I feel numb and tired and cranky and discordant anxiety. Most of all, I feel angry. Dread. Nothing feels right, and yet, for me, it’s still—
Free Palestine.
Free Gaza.
Free Sudan.
Free Congo.
Free Haiti.
Free the Global South.
❤️