Project Row Houses + University of Houston’s Center for Art and Social Engagement Fellowship

I began researching the origins of creativity, but was running into recombinatory theories- that creative things are remixes of existing things, nothing an algorithm can’t perform if fed the right inputs.

I tried searching for artists whose practices came out of dire circumstances, but this approach was frustrated by a celebrity culture in the art world, showing the final work but not the way to get there, or why it was made- if out of a desperate need. This avenue also added confirmation bias, as my question was “Does the greatest creativity come out of the most dire circumstances?” and the results were great creativity that came out of dire circumstances.

Not needing creativity to be attached to a capital A Artist, and specifically interested in how the imagination makes a way out of no way, as influenced by Elaine Scarry, I turned my head from the output- creativity, to the input- trauma.

I was in a cohort of 20 activists after the election, and in response to their validation that my way of thinking was helping them, I compiled a Creative Tactic Toolkit video, showing activist Survival Creativity precedents from a range of struggles. I then organized an artist-activist matchmaking event, where activists in 6 different issue areas at stake in Houston were surrounded by a circle of creative people to help them brainstorm ways forward. This evening was full of laughter even as we were in the midst of a fight for our lives.

It was evident that great creativity doesn’t always come out of suffering. Sometimes it emerges from support.

I polled my friends beyond the art sphere about their experiences of creativity.

I hosted Substructure Timeline workshops for artists to mine the origins of their public facing work- tracing back to where that creativity may have come from.

I began plotting these instances on a wall size drawing, it became a dance as I moved each input around, trying not only to spectrum across support and suffering, but to understand where these two come back around, making the drawing a cylinder.

For me, this fellowship marked a time when I was able to reverse a very old survival contract I’d made with myself: in a context where it was not safe to move or make noise, I’d transferred all my expression into the area of my hands. With this year of support, I began to backchannel that process and move into my body. I read The Body Keeps the Score, continued my somatic training at the in Berlin with Katja Munker, presented at the Queer Tango Salon in London, Bodily Undoing at Bath Spa University, and attended the Dance Movement Therapy Conference in San Antonio.

Now my work is completely intertwined with my movement practice, and my work on Survival Creativity is expanding to an inquiry on re-adaptation. How does a creative imagination, born out of a need for cognitive survival, get reborn to activate in a place of curiosity, play, love? Octavia Butler’s work and Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism are guiding texts.