Areneshuia Nelson photographed by Sierra King at Yes Please bookhouse and carespace

Untitled

is a collaborative dance and photography-based activation of Atlanta’s libraries, archives, and rare bookstores by Anicka Austin and Sierra King. Dance performances and virtual and physical photographs reflect their archival research and speculative storytelling on the lives and work of Lucille Clifton, Carmen de Lavallade, and Katherine Dunham. The project intends to illuminate the archive as a site of meditation on the lives of Black women artists.

From the research conducted at Emory University’s Rose Library to the Group Performance at Auburn Avenue Research Library both Artists and Archivists, Sierra King and Anicka Austin, expanded modalities within their practices that mirrored the memic devices and stream-of-consciousness.

It provided an experience for both the community and performers to express movement in unconventional spaces as a vehicle toward freedom. 

Artists and archivists, Sierra King and Anicka Austin led a community of dancers, musicians, and documentarians to explore an ecstatic dance in the historical district of Auburn Avenue and the third spaces of For Keeps Rare Books, and yes please bookhouse and carespace. 

Over two months, Sierra and Anicka conducted weekly research meetings and readings at Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library. It was there they investigated Lucille Clifton’s journals, Carmen deLavallede’s choreographic drawings of movements, and Kathrine’s extensive documentation of her dance practices that they began to continue to return to the common throughline of repetition as the expression of the passage of time.

The research and discussions led to a speculative narrative of coming together for an ecstatic dance party where their lives, movements, thoughts, and memories collided

Untitled is supported by an Arts and Entertainment Grant from Atlanta Downtown Improvement District and a Nexus Grant from Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center.