Misty Sol: Other Ways of Knowing & Churchyard Dance
Friday, September 24, 2021 – Sunday, October 31, 2021
Presented as Part of Future Ecologies
About the Artworks
Other Ways of Knowing, 2020-21 (Work in Progress)
Film & Installation, Run Time: 10min
Credits
Misty Sol – Writer, Director, Actor, Installation Artist
Rahnda Rize – Actor
Christian Hayden – Cinematographer
Muthi Reed – Editor, Film Artist
Other Ways of Knowing takes place in a liminality. The setting is not realistic; it is spiritualistic; a border space. It is a space of possibility and magic; an inner space of meditation. It is a type of Eden or paradise that we have access to through prayer and ritual. A space that we create to commune with the ancestors, care for and love, nurture each other, and create possibilities that they can carry back into our lives (the real world). It is a space where we process what we have experienced in the real world (sickness, uprisings, racism, violence, doubt).
In this space, we wash all of that away. It is a return to Africa and a reconnection with Indigenous America. The sounds are natural sounds. Bees, rivers, rain, wind, hymnal moaning, and ecstatic vocals. Sometimes sirens invade this dream space, that is the sound of our doubt, stress, and confusion. The two women in the video are one woman, in speaking to each other, we are speaking to ourselves, remembering our magic.
In the end, will we transition from relying on our phones and outer noise, to relying on our ancestors, our rituals, and inner spaces?
Churchyard Dance, 2020
Film & Installation, Run Time: 10min
Credits
Misty Sol – Director, Film Editor, Installation Artist
Rahnda Rize – Dancer, Choreographer
Visions Video – Cinematographer
Music by Nina Simone
ChurchYard Dance
ver·nac·u·lar
/vərˈnakyələr/
adjective
1. spoken as one’s mother tongue; not learned or imposed as a second language.
The purpose of the events is to identify, contextualize, and validate some of Black people’s ways of being, knowing, and creating in order to explore how that knowledge guided Black people through birth, revolution, and liberation. We seek to explore how our ‘magic’ can empower and heal us in the present and future. These events are composed of prayer, song, testimony, dream, story, idea, breath, feeling, thought, and imagination. And more…
“As a political weapon, it has helped me defend the rights of American blacks and third-world people all over the world, to defend them with protest songs. To move the audience, to make them conscious of what has been done to my people around the world.”
— Nina Simone
About the Artist
Misty Sol is an interdisciplinary artist and director of Tiny Farm Wagon, a local arts organization. Misty creates art that explores Black people’s connections to nature, wellness, and speculation. Currently you can visit her earthworks project at Bartram Gardens created as a resident in the Lenapehoking Watershed Project.
More Info: mistysol.com / @mamamistysol