Black, queer, HIV+, director, producer and choreographer of the Philadelphia based production company TNMOT AZTRO Performance Art & Dance Installation LLC, in partnership with Vox Populi and IIcebox Project Space presents EQUATORS a visual performance exploration on the effects of climate change In Philadelphia, seen through the lens of racist social and historical practices that have displaced communities of color, such as segregation, re-zoning, gentrification, and redlining.
EQUATORS Performance installation: is propulsive, and pugnacious revealing how our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well being is affected by our environment, the deaths that take place in those environments or climates and how we react to human made boundaries due to environmental unawareness. The work harnesses anthropomorphism, so If a hurricane knew it was killing thousands of people, if wildfires knew it was destroying homes, If earthquakes knew when they were going to plummet people into the ground would they still do it? Could they control it?
Made in collaboration with Installation artist David Borawski and Lighting designer Jon-Paul LaRocco, EQUATORS is an electrifying display of powerful historical concepts infused with performance and stripped of any didacticism. The work is equally rooted in intersectional politics and deep-dive journalism. Of the piece’s primary sources was an Economic Policy Institute study called “The Making of Ferguson: Public Policy at the Root of Its Troubles” by the academic Richard Rothstein, which traces the police murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 from an individual act of racism to a long history of segregationist legislation.
EQUATORS argues that environmental justice is a major form of racial injustice targeting how climate structures influence expectations for quality of life, order, territory and how racial divides are manifested in homes, neighborhoods, and geography due to social and racial impacts such as police brutality. Audience members who attend this work will be asked to interrogate their expectations of climate, human-made boundaries, police violence, bodies living on top of one another, queer ecology and environmental waste. EQUATORS forces you to remember toxic air quality, removal of land by redlining, slum clearance, eminent domain by giant re-construction, Philadelphia’s flooding, and the way poverty is penalized through environmental means, like leaded water and buses that still use diesel fuel.
An award winning collaborative multidisciplinary Philadelphia performance installation company, TNMOT AZTRO believes art and its complexities derive from the alienation of objects, identities, the body, sounds and humans, among many things. As an entity the artistic practice in making performance, sculpture, experimental film, photography and dance is rooted in repurposing or redefining meanings of “fine art” and its attachments to colonialism, white supremacy, and institutionalized racism. Wilkerson was recently awarded funding from The Graham Foundation for advanced studies in fine arts (20-21), The Velocity Fund (21), In 2020 the Sachs Program for arts & Innovation at Upenn, 2019 The Greater New Haven Arts Council & Connecticut office of the arts – Artist Workforce Initiative Sponsorship (2019), The Connecticut office of the arts Artist Fellow (2019). The Connecticut office of the arts project grant (2018), two New England Dance Fund Grants (2017) (2018), The spirit of Juneteenth award from the Amistad Center for Art and Culture(2017), The National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” Grant (2018), The Director’s Discretionary Fund Award from the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund (2018) and was selected as NEFA’S 2018 Rebecca Blunk Fund Awardee.
EQUATORS
December 17th & 18th, 7pm and 9pm each night
Crane Arts, 1400 N. American St Philadelphia, Pa 19122
Tickets: http://www.tnmotaztro.com/tickets
Installation made in collaboration w/ David Borawski and Lighting designer Jon-Paul LaRocco
EQUATORS Performance installation: is propulsive, and pugnacious revealing how our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well being is affected by our environment, the deaths that take place in those environments or climates and how we react to human made boundaries due to environmental unawareness. The work harnesses anthropomorphism, so If a hurricane knew it was killing thousands of people, if wildfires knew it was destroying homes, If earthquakes knew when they were going to plummet people into the ground would they still do it? Could they control it?
Made in collaboration with Installation artist David Borawski and Lighting designer Jon-Paul LaRocco, EQUATORS is an electrifying display of powerful historical concepts infused with performance and stripped of any didacticism. The work is equally rooted in intersectional politics and deep-dive journalism. Of the piece’s primary sources was an Economic Policy Institute study called “The Making of Ferguson: Public Policy at the Root of Its Troubles” by the academic Richard Rothstein, which traces the police murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 from an individual act of racism to a long history of segregationist legislation.
EQUATORS argues that environmental justice is a major form of racial injustice targeting how climate structures influence expectations for quality of life, order, territory and how racial divides are manifested in homes, neighborhoods, and geography due to social and racial impacts such as police brutality. Audience members who attend this work will be asked to interrogate their expectations of climate, human-made boundaries, police violence, bodies living on top of one another, queer ecology and environmental waste. EQUATORS forces you to remember toxic air quality, removal of land by redlining, slum clearance, eminent domain by giant re-construction, Philadelphia’s flooding, and the way poverty is penalized through environmental means, like leaded water and buses that still use diesel fuel.
An award winning collaborative multidisciplinary Philadelphia performance installation company, TNMOT AZTRO believes art and its complexities derive from the alienation of objects, identities, the body, sounds and humans, among many things. As an entity the artistic practice in making performance, sculpture, experimental film, photography and dance is rooted in repurposing or redefining meanings of “fine art” and its attachments to colonialism, white supremacy, and institutionalized racism. Wilkerson was recently awarded funding from The Graham Foundation for advanced studies in fine arts (20-21), The Velocity Fund (21), In 2020 the Sachs Program for arts & Innovation at Upenn, 2019 The Greater New Haven Arts Council & Connecticut office of the arts – Artist Workforce Initiative Sponsorship (2019), The Connecticut office of the arts Artist Fellow (2019). The Connecticut office of the arts project grant (2018), two New England Dance Fund Grants (2017) (2018), The spirit of Juneteenth award from the Amistad Center for Art and Culture(2017), The National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” Grant (2018), The Director’s Discretionary Fund Award from the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund (2018) and was selected as NEFA’S 2018 Rebecca Blunk Fund Awardee.
EQUATORS
December 17th & 18th, 7pm and 9pm each night
Crane Arts, 1400 N. American St Philadelphia, Pa 19122
Tickets: http://www.tnmotaztro.com/tickets
Installation made in collaboration w/ David Borawski and Lighting designer Jon-Paul LaRocco
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