CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Bisa Butler
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City/Place:
Newark, New Jersey
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Country:
United States
Life
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Bio:
In my work I am telling the story— The African American side— of this American life. History is the story of men and women but the narrative is controlled by those who hold the pen.
My community has been marginalized for hundreds of years. While we have been right beside our white counterparts experiencing and creating history our contributions and very perspectives have been ignored, unrecorded and lost. Only a few years ago that it was acknowledged that the white house was built by slaves. Right there in the seat of power of our country, African Americans were creating and contributing but who knew who these people were and what their names were. These unacknowledged African Americans had stories, families although they were not considered or treated as equals.
My subjects are African Americans from ordinary walks of life who who may have sat for a formal family portrait or may have been documented by a passing photographer.
These unknown stories fascinate me. I feel these people; I know these stories because I have grown up with them my whole life. I know about my grandmother’s birth at home in Plaquemine Parish, Louisiana; I know about my Aunt Sheila whose family left Mississippi for Chicago in the 1940s; I know about my own father who left Ghana in 1960 with a scholarship to study in the United States and had a suitcase with one shirt and one pair of pants in it. I know the pride in hard work and the dignity of these people because they are my people. I can imagine their lives because they are me and I am them. I grew up listening to the tales of my elders and I heard about what it felt like to be cold and hungry but we still have love and family.
I have a degree from Howard University, a Historically Black University in Washington D.C that was founded when America was segregated by race. Education was looked at as a pathway to a brighter future . The historically black colleges educated the first doctors, lawyers and professionals in this country and to this day graduate more African American professionals than any of the other colleges in this country. It is at Howard that I was taught by the AfriCOBRA ( The African Commune of Bad and Relevant Artists) founders like Jeff Donaldson who was my Dean of Fine Arts, and Frank Smith and Wadswoth Jarell who were professors. We were taught to be proud of our African Heritage and to always present our people in a positive light. They taught us that we had a responsibility to document and correct the misinformation that had been told about our people, and about Africa. We were to use our art as a tool to tell our side of the story to the masses and the mainstream.
I quilt because this was the technique that was taught to me at home. I could sew before I ever painted on a canvas. My mother and grandmother while not quilters sewed garments almost every day. African Americans have been quilting since we were brought to this country and needed to keep warm. Enslaved people were not given large pieces of fabric and had to make do with the scraps of cloth that were left after clothing wore out. With these bits of cloth African American quilts displayed . My own pieces are reminiscent of this tradition but I use African fabrics from my father’s homeland of Ghana, batiks from Nigeria, and prints from South Africa. My subjects are adorned with and made up of the cloth of our ancestors. If these visages are to be recreated and seen for the first time in a century I want them to have their African ancestry back, I want them to take their rightful place in American history. I want the viewer to see the subjects as I see them.
I feel driven to tell my side of the story---that African Americans have a lot to be proud of; that we take care and love our children; that we believe in family; we value education; we work hard and we belong here. Every human being is equal and I hope people see that when they view my work. A billionaire has no more or no less value than someone who sweeps floors. We are all in this together and until we know both sides of the story, our history will be incomplete.
I hope people view my work and feel the value and equality of all people. By presenting all of my figures with a richness and dignity they deserve whether they are from a humble background or the upper classes. All of my pieces are done in life scale to invite the viewer to engage in a dialogue— the figures all look the viewers directly in their eyes.
I am inviting a reimagining and a contemporary dialogue about age old issues that are still problematic in our culture through the comforting embracing medium of the quilt. I am expressing what I believe; the equal value of all humans.
Clips (more may be added)
Integration is a superpower...
This technological matrix originating in Bahia, Brazil closely integrates creators around the world with each other and the entire planet. It is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram):
Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a brilliant sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.
America is small-world. Mozambique is small-world. Central Asia is small-world. Ukraine is small world...
Human society, the billions of us in all the complexity of our relationships, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world. Neural structures in artificial intelligence are small-world...
In a small world great things are possible. In a small-world matrix they are universal.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
* I renegotiated sync rates for Earl and for The Flamingos. Now when I hear "Speedo" in a movie soundtrack (Goodfellows and others), or "I Only Have Eyes for You" (a million films), I remind myself that the artists (and now their heirs) were/are getting double what they were getting before.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX