The late Sekou Sundiata was artistic director of dance & be still arts. He took on issues of critical citizenship, imagination, creativity, and civic dialogue at several IA campuses under the banner of the America Project. Featured at IA’s 2006 national conference, he described The America Project:
Short version of a very long story. I’ve been building a multimedia work for the past few years that comes out of a personal struggle, a personal place. A struggle to understand the events after 9/11, to understand what I mean when I say I’m American, what about citizenship, identity, security, etc. etc. I found myself being troubled after 9/11 as most people were, but also having a renewed consciousness, but not being clear at all about what that meant. As an artist, I knew I had to respond, but I also had a deep personal basis for the questions I had. I describe it as being caught in a “blind spot.” I wanted to build more in an unconventional way, maybe because I’m an artist. I also work with musicians, so a great deal of this is soul work. Because I was interested in the public dimensions of this response, I wanted to depict the influence of this on others, and I also wanted to “cannibalize” people’s language and ideas…I didn’t have all of the language and vocabulary so I’m researching other people’s. Particularly when I’m doing this, I haven’t talked much about my findings, but one thing I want to say before getting to the panel is that when I went to Ground Zero, I had a certain viewpoint of America after I got politicized, but after that I had a strange feeling. I didn’t know what it meant- I knew it was flag waving, or singing patriotic songs, but through this process, I got reacquainted with my love for the democratic tradition. What I mean by this is showing up like in the civil rights movement, the labor movement, people were struggling to revitalize the ideas around democracy. I love that. My struggle is now to figure out the framework for all of this.
Related Reading
“Chain Reactions” by Julie Ellison in the IA Newsletter, Issue No. 7
