Artist-In-residency Highlights II
Communities Co-creating What Access Looks Like.
these residencies were Made possible by generous support through the Pfund Prism Fund program
1. BakiBakiBaki: Artist-In-Residence 2023
Other people’s interpretation of Spirit been saying to hide. To see insight to mean you are lucky. You are dangerous. You are special. Folks been saying to give up. Stop trying to tell folks the power and magic of the very land beneath our feet. And they speak of caution for good reason. For longer than you or mine’s grandparents have lived, loved, and gone on stewards of this land, of Gaia have been hunted and killed for their insight, for their knowledge.
Entire corporations and governments are built on objectification, oppression, and destruction of our soil, our water, our people. Even more money and energy is spent keeping people away and unaware of their connection to our soil, our water, our people.
AND AND AND
Bloodlines come together. Insight and inspiration manifest through people’s dreams and hard work. Emphasis on hard work. Philly Farm and the lovely stewards of that land are proof of this. So I hope this reflection on my time there as a part of their art residency program can honor all those dreams, efforts, and bravery. Because to tend to soil, is to tend to self…and to tend and tend and tend is to be both lucky and dangerous. And and and it shouldn’t have to be either. Speaking truth to power shouldn’t be afforded to the lucky and shouldn’t not be a threat to our entire status quo.
I be BakiBakiBaki. Born by way of determination and love grown despite soil steeped in low self esteem. That is to say, Louis Porter II and Ea McMillan Porter had to pray and plot and save up for my creation and I am quite grateful and upset. Ah, to be born with an inherited task to heal and help others heal!
Such is my understanding to be born Black, Native, a womb holder, queer and trans. Such is my understanding of being born Black in America’s late stage capitalism.
For those who don’t know, my father is a writer and my mother was an actress and model in New York’s 90’s. So I come by processing emotion through art easily. Thank Gaia! I am a poet, zine artists and shadow puppeteer. Which is a fancy way of saying I remember my first duty is to breathe, feel, express, and repeat.
Being on the farm, getting to spend 6 plus hours a day listening to the rush of the creek, the song of the waterfall and feeling the softness of the soil has watered my memory.
I’ve remembered divine freedom. I’ve been reminded of divine protection. I believe in divine love again!
This is to the thanks of the forest and everyone loving up on her.
See I wasn’t just tenderly held by the forest, I got to restore her labyrinth and cook with some of the finest earth benders. Because truly that’s what farmers do, bend with our Earth!
Ah! How do I honor my bloodline and perspective being validated for a month by earth benders?!
Artists, we gotta move grief and fear of the unknown through our body DRAMATICALLY! We all do. And Philly Farm is a place to remember it is all our duty and birthright to connect with our soil, our water, our people.
“Artists, we gotta move grief and fear of the unknown through our body DRAMATICALLY!”
— BakiBaiBaki, Artist-in-Residence
BakiBakiBaki (all pronouns): Artist-in-Residence Spring 2023
2. Xochi de la Luna; Artist-In-Residence 2023
I, Xochi de la Luna, am an event Producer, Curator, and Multi-disciplinary artist (she/they). A TRANSplant from Texas, I fell in love with the Twin Cities performance worlds in my teens. I believed there weren’t enough brown folks in the experimental entertainment world producing shows, so I began producing shows in 2017 with two variety shows a month. I then moved on to start Uproar Performing Arts with Co-Founder Devohn Bland in 2019. A Comedy first arts collective. Together, with Comrade Tripp and Madi RT we managed to make Uproar Mondays a multi-award winning comedy open mic and landed us an indefinite residency with Bryant Lake Bowl. Always a part of Uproar, but now solely as a founder/resource. Lately, I dedicate every other Monday to hosting showcases of experimental/avant-garde music at White Squirrel Bar, a dream of mine.
You can also see me around the Twin Cities and beyond with my band Ice Climber , a collective of musicians I've brought together by love of all kinds of music and collaboration. Our task, to create unique sonic experiences at every show we play. Most of our shows are 1 offs and feature a majority of completely improvised music based on a theme/genre.
I’ve been involved in the Comedy and Improv scene for almost a decade. On occasion you might see me do a set here or there, mostly with Latins an Ice, an all Latine Improv Comedy group. I have held many roles in the theater world since 2017 as well. Have spoken in many artists panels, for The Walker Art Center, U of M, or Government entities, etc. I'm regularly a Master of Ceremonies for my own shows, and others. I have dedicated the last few years and ongoing to helping document/archive live music with UndercurrentMPLS. And I was a 2021 summer and fall fellow with The Weisman Art Museum.
As someone who is in a liminal space of gender, sexuality, identity, immigration, and so on, the most important take away about my work is connection. I love connecting bridges between disciplines, and types of people.
With all my shows I try to find a way to bring balance to representation as best as I can. All this while still delivering a space that allows for exploration, bravery, and joy.
https://www.instagram.com/ice.climber.mpls/
https://www.instagram.com/enter.the.void.mn
https://www.instagram.com/uproar.minneapolis/ https://www.instagram.com/undercurrentmpls/ https://www.instagram.com/latins.on.ice/
Xochi de la Luna (she/they): Artist-in-Residence 2023
3. Taiwana Shambley: Artist-In-Residence 2023
A Black transgender woman with disabilities, Taiwana Shambley is an abolitionist fiction writer & teaching artist based in Minneapolis. She writes, teaches, performs, and shifts stories to empower marginalized youth in Minnesota. A Sunspot Literary Journal semi-finalist, her fiction has been recognized with grants from the Loft Literary Center, the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and her work as an educator was honored with the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Teaching Fellowship.
Author of the zine One Good Argument for Youth Prison Abolition, her writing is published by the Minnesota Women’s Press, Belt Publishing, and the Academy of American Poets. She is also an MFA student at Warren Wilson College and teaches English Language Arts full time at PiM Arts High School. Feel free to book her for community-based performances, workshops, classes, & residencies or to subscribe to updates on her first novel at taiwanashambley.com.
Taiwana Shambley (she/her): Artis-in-Residence 2023