Artist Statement on ‘HIGH SCIENCE’

We doh ‘fraid no stick man

We doh ‘fraid no demon

Tell them we doh ‘fraid no body.

And is so the lavway is chanted outside in the gayelle.

A place where fear exists only to be transformed. A place that some have called demonic ground. 

A place where women dwell, as women and warrior fighter, chanter, nurturer, healer, leader, priestess of order and balance, and women as women. A place where women know how to be with other women, where women are the community and the community understands themselves through the blood of women. A place where the women who begat men dance while beating drum and men- for wholistic sport, for love, for the sanctity of tradition. A place where such a woman is not violent but valiant. A place where such a woman is ‘muntu’ , specialized and skilled. Such a woman understands that she is man and man is she and when she calls  her own name she also calls man forward and to her side. Such a woman only dwells on grounds that can cradle her subtle fury, smooth deadliness and ferocious love for freedom. 

It is from this place that Kathrine McKittrick’s learnings through Sylvia Wynter teach me that every demonic ground makes me (and those women of Gayelle livingness)  an immortel, an alchemist of fear and free to fly above and below such ground. 

It is the epitome of freedom as expressed by Dr. Nina Simone,  having no fear is to be free. It is with and beyond this liberation I embark through the work of ‘High Science’.

I walk head in heart with Wynter and McKittrick’s words guiding my giddiness as these thoughts that surround this multi media choreographic  excursion hit and land in places that request, “Does one have to be a demon to inhabit demonic ground ?” 

Kalinda, sacred martial tradition of Trinidad and Tobago is the gift that gives me ample space to my monster (my ability to reveal), my demon, (a guardian angel of refuge, my jumbie (my shadow as a higher self). So you must understand that when a bomb is dropped like “black women inhabit demonic ground” it leaves a wreckage of possible ways to access the “interiority of sound” (Ong. Orality and literacy. 1982) from these sacred grounds of Kalinda. 

Why am I walking in a ⭕️ circle? Before I answer, I want you to answer for yourself why you might have walked in circles. Have you ever walked in circles literally or metaphorically to build on a feeling, to raise prayers from your feet, to regroup, to get your balance? If you’ve answered yes to any of these then you have an idea of why I’m deliberately walking in what appears to be circles. However they aren’t simply circles yet expanding and contracting spirals. In High Science, my repetitive circles are multiplying into spirals that open space and swell prayers that only the people they’re meant for can hear, they construct a mothership that only its passengers can see the doorway. I am building a multiverse for everyone knowing that everyone is not of, from or towards this space. Not everyone will come. And that’s ok. Everyone doesn’t need to. Only those it is for. I am calling those that belong to this space. 

What else is happening in the work? Simple answer: Every thing. And nothingness which according to Bakongo cosmological thought is mbûngi, the emptiness, the nothingness. I know I said that was the simple answer and it is. Think about it, an empty vessel can always be filled but one may also neglect that there is an invisibility, like natural gases (which help us breathe or can be simultaneously deadly) that already fill that vessel. See? Simple.  In this whole experience there might only be simple and complex moments- none of this will be easy. There is a discomfort you will have to find comfort in. And there is no rush. If the intention is to build something sustainable sacred powerful, time must be respected as its own dimension and in thus, I take my time. I take time as time and wade through the anxiety that someone might think this is too slow. Sometimes victory is slow. Sometimes manifesting is slow. Sometimes revolution is slow. Sometimes conjuring the right jumbie is slow. The ancestors, the work, you and I all deserve for things to be deliberately slow so every sensuality can cipher the possibilities of what else is going on - not just in the visuals, or McKittrick’s words- or the lavway but inside of you while you’re watching. I’m deliberately slowing us all down so we can remember that we are sacred slowly melting universes of humanity. 

I am also very plainly viewing the high science of Kalinda but that would be too easy. A privileged place we often take with Caribbean culture  (there’s a part of the globe that does -a large part) that prefers for our forms to just be easy. Kalinda is not that and likewise nor is this multi media work of ‘High Science’. 

I have adopted the habit of naming all things that spawn from Kalinda as ‘her children’ . This work is no different. I have to admit that if Kalinda is the mother of this work then I am only a sibling to the work as Kalinda is also my mother. It is as if I didn’t make it rather the work and I share the same blood. This is a new understanding so bear with me while I flesh it out.  - Jamie J. Philbert