The Shed:
Research is central to both of your ways of artmaking. How are you bringing that research into your Open Call commissions?
Le’Andra LeSeur:
I’m excited because I’m moving into new territory creating original soundscapes for this piece. In past works, I’ve often sampled jazz musicians’ pieces, and I’d begun to notice that there was a constant through line of the rhythm instruments they used. In particular Pharoah Sanders stood out as an artist working in this vein. I started to do research into the instruments and realized they were coming from ceremonies in Gnawa tradition. This was an eye-opening experience for me to find out more about how these different instruments, rhythms, and sounds have come over to America from West Africa to contribute to what we know in the States as jazz and the blues, but also Black house music, and even Black gospel.
With this project, I want to see what I can do to respond to this connection I’ve made. In Gnawa tradition, a lot of the ceremonies are started by men. They were the ones generating and creating these kinds of convening circles. But what does it feel like and look like to have someone who identifies, like myself, as a woman in this space of creation? That’s where I have been going with it. It’s been an interesting process, thinking about how my body responds to the rhythm and sounds as I’m creating the videos and visuals, as another kind of response to it.
AnAkA:
Le’Andra, that sounds so cool. My research process started when I was in college. As I was studying anthropology, I began to learn about past historians like Katherine Dunham and Zora Neale Hurston, and the ways Black Americans specifically have used research to reclaim our identity and to have control over how our story is told, in particular with photography and film. Photography and the camera were first used kind of as a way to dominate over people of color and Indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and beyond. I was interested in using the camera from my perspective. Because I grew up in Oregon, which is a very white space, I didn’t get to see representation of myself in anything around me.
When I was living in Los Angeles from 2012 to 2016, I found myself documenting musicians backstage or on set or during shows. They tended to be musicians that were either about to become famous or they were really impactful in the underground community. I just happened to be there, but I know it was meant to be. I realized I was creating a project that at first was about fame as a social construction. This is an eight-year long project. It’s been through a lot of different phases.
I was first interested in using photography to document our process as Black artists, specifically musicians, because I’ve always been really fascinated with the process of making music. At first this project was about how an artist chooses to share their identity, whether or not their persona as an artist is transparent.
Then, the project transitioned when I was able to take it to South Africa while I was in school. There, I began to focus on archiving the art movements that were happening in the moment. This generation is living in an important time because we have the technology to create our own platforms. I’ve been on this mission to document movements happening right now in terms of reclaiming, how we’re pushing the culture while also creating reverence for our Ancestors in that process. I’ve been calling it an archive because I want it to be a space where our children and people in the future will be able to experience it.
I also have a lot of photographs and videos in AKTIV8 Archive that I feel are too sacred for the internet. And I’ve been dealing with how to share them properly in a way that I feel would actually cultivate cultural representation that isn’t meant to be commodified or exoticized or romanticized. As artists, we can’t control how these images are taken in and received, but we can control how we share them.
LeSeur:
AnAkA, I love the idea of thinking about what’s happening right now in this time and how we as artists are really processing and pushing forward with creation as a framework for healing. And I’m also interested to hear you talk about this kind of collective movement. I think right now, in this time, it’s not necessarily about self, it’s about we and community, how we’re doing things not just for now but for the future. Even if we don’t have the opportunity to celebrate what we’re reclaiming, we’re creating a space for the future to have this opportunity to celebrate. And the beauty in that is really profound.
AnAkA:
I’m the first person in my lineage to have the chance to even conceptualize a foundation for what sovereignty means to me and to my community, especially in terms of reclaiming a culture. I’m Black, white, and Native American…the most American person you’ll ever meet. It’s like I don’t know who I am, but I do know, very well. I’m also the first person in my family with an African name, probably since slavery. I’ve been the first to go to Africa, probably since slavery. Physically, I’m a representation of the sovereignty that is possible. For me, it’s just about embodying that through the work, while also letting it be about my elders, other people my age, and even children.
LeSeur:
That’s amazing, AnAkA. I’m thinking about space too, and how to create space that allows me to showcase my work so that it’s taken in a certain way by the audience, and how the space that I create will mold that experience. I’m working on a five-channel video installation with monitors that will be vertically staged on the floor in a circle that you can walk into, to embody this space with its visual and sound elements. Even though you will be in the larger gallery, the framework of the space I’m creating will allow you to feel like you’re actually taking part in a ceremony of healing.
I’m hoping that everyone who has a chance to experience the work feels the embodiment of what I’m trying to portray, which is this idea of pushing through the process of confronting darkness. But also in that pushing through, asking yourself what beauty can come out of it and how can you connect with both sides simultaneously.
There will also be a live performance as part of my commission. I want to think about and collaborate with other Black women and Black non-binary folks, a way to come together so they can have a hand in this process of creating the sounds, rhythms, and movements that make up the gestural work we must do to go through this process of healing.
AnAkA:
I love that you’re talking about creating healing within the space, because that’s a priority for me, as well. This is the time to focus on healing the collective. I was very inspired by Malidoma Patrice Somé’s work on the concept of healing in a ceremonial practice. He splits the process into four different parts in a typical ceremony in specifically Afro-Indigenous cultures: First, it’s good to prepare. And then you invoke the Ancestors, or the inspiration or intention. And then the healing happens within the ceremony. And then you resolve it, or you close the door.
That was kind of the structure that I started with when conceptualizing how to share the AKTIV8 Archive. I have work from America, from parts of South, East, and West Africa, and also the Caribbean that I’ll be showing. I wanted to create a space that would be able to not only encompass all of the places that the work is from but also encompass all the places that I’m from. I want to cultivate a space where all of our Ancestors can just come chill, breathe, release grief, and then hopefully elevate and have a great time.
I’m excited to bring in my father to the performance, because he’s a musician, too. I’ll also have my elder Baba Mpho Shanto, who’s been my drum teacher for the past few years here in Brooklyn. He’s also a medicine man who is impactful in our community here. I’ve also invited one of my mentors, Rachael[3] Serket, who is an herbalist, to bless the space and my spirit sister, India Sky Davis, who is a performance artist who has pole danced for years and has an important group for queer and trans performance art in Oakland, Topsy Turvy Queer Circus.
LeSeur:
That sounds amazing.
AnAkA:
It’s going to be the perfect amount of sexy, but also cultural. And sexy is cultural!
LeSeur:
It’s really interesting to hear you talk about the layering of the performance and how it will flow. For my performance, I’m thinking of an introduction where I create this repetitive sound with my voice that leads into a drum and cymbal sound before breaking out into the rest of the performance.
AnAkA:
After you cleanse, you must release. I’m starting off with a similar pattern. I’m going to be coming out and only doing vocal layering on this looper that I have. So, I’m also starting by setting a tone, with the basics of how we’re bringing ourselves into the world and how we’re bringing the people together.
LeSeur:
I love it. I can’t wait to experience that.
AnAkA:
I hope that this sets the tone for the rest of the world. We don’t have to drink spirits to be spirited. We can trust that the spirits are here and express ourselves.
LeSeur:
That makes me think of a sentence in Art on My Mind: Visual Politics by bell hooks. In discussing Alison Saar’s work, she says the spirit is an ever-present witness. It’s like no matter what we’re doing, even if we’re activating or trying to activate the spirit, it’s always already there. I love that you’re saying that, too. It’s totally in line.
AnAkA:
I love that you said “activate,” because that’s what my archive is called, of course. We are activating the portals.
The Shed:
What has existing in the digital world meant for how you work over the past year and a half?
LeSeur:
For me, it brought about a sense of stillness. I’ve been trying to figure out how to activate this creativity and power within by being still and allowing that stillness and silence to speak. It’s been a profound process that I’ve taken on as a meditative one. It’s interesting now to be in this flow of getting back to whatever we thought of as “normal,” because I want to stay in this stillness, and I want to honor it. It’s been transformative to say the least.
AnAkA:
Le’Andra that reminds me of my great aunt in Augusta, Georgia, who always says, “I’m on God time, because only the devil be rushing.”
LeSeur:
That’s a good quote.
AnAkA:
Even in the beginning of quarantine, I was getting offers for video work, and I was still being rushed. I just needed to say no to them. My grandmother also passed away the month before the pandemic started. It was almost as if she called me home right before everything went down. She was the medicine woman of the family. When she passed away, I received all the herbs from her because I’m the only grandchild right now who’s making medicine. I went through an initiation into being the matriarch of the family. I was getting to the root of all the child’s things I needed to heal, all the elder things I want to heal. The basics. In this digital world, it’s so easy to be quick to refresh everything all the time and zip through people’s stories. Having the gift of really sitting with someone and taking that time and not rushing, or even sitting with yourself and not rushing, it’s a way to balance ourselves mentally.
LeSeur:
I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother, but I thought it was beautiful that you said she called you home in a sort of initiation process. Sometimes there’s a disruption needed in our flow in order to really push us to process what is happening to us. And that’s what everything has felt like to me, this kind of disruption/initiation into truly figuring out what is needed for us to be whole with who we are.
AnAkA:
We’ve all been able to see that we’re subscribed to a certain way of organizing time that is very much structured on slavery. Understanding that and seeing who’s choosing which hierarchies that make them feel comfortable has also been eye-opening to me—seeing what liberation really means to people has given me insight.
Also, because I was able to be in one stable place for the first time in years, this has been the first time I really started making music. I bought myself a loop pedal as a quarantine gift and started to hear what I sound like and to play with that. It’s been healing.
LeSeur:
The mention of your loop pedal makes me think of my own experimentation and process in sound. I always think, I can’t do that. But then as I explore something new, a process develops of becoming more and more of who I am, which is so beautiful.
The Shed:
You both weave the African diaspora and worldwide movements of culture into your work. What does it mean to you to be making work in this specific place that is New York?
LeSeur:
I’ve always hoped to travel to Africa, but I haven’t yet.
AnAkA:
It’s home.
LeSeur:
I know. I need to be in your backpack next time you go. [laughs]
AnAkA:
Absolutely. Just tell me when you want to go.
LeSeur:
I’m always thinking about this connection I have to the land and how profound that is and how it really speaks through the work I’m creating. And then people ask me, “Have you been?” When I say no they ask, “Well, then how is this coming about?” I think it’s because there’s a collective memory that lives within all of us. Sometimes we unlock it, and sometimes we don’t. Being in New York and being able to meet so many people who have this energy about them, has allowed me to really unlock the energy within me and push to allow it to be free, and to allow myself to speak freely about the things that feel very familiar, even though I don’t have a familiarity with them in a physical sense. The creative energy, or just energy in general, that I get from the people here has really helped me to process this work as I’m creating it.
AnAkA:
You do have a physical connection, though. You remember it. Visiting is the best feeling ever. It’s the first place I went where the people I met said, “Welcome home.” And I thought, You actually mean it!
I see AKTIV8 as a portal, a way for people to access a higher realm of cultural exchange or a more intentional space for sharing culture. So, it makes sense to premiere this body of work in a city that has always been at the forefront of cultural change. This work is my call out to my people. I’m excited because there are so many people of faith in New York. This is the place where I have the strongest herbalist and farmer communities—which is hilarious because where are the farms? I’m honored to get to meet other artists on higher vibrations. We’re living in a time when institutions are falling; we know they’re not working. But, we can drum together. We can sing together. We can cultivate the healing together. It’s the only way it’s going to happen.