Juicy, intensity, and here you are with us and we hope to keep that energy going. If that'll be good, you know, even as we have all this beautiful, high-energy music and we're about to bring you into a kind of delightful experience, trajectory of calling us by, it's always good to start. If you are able, I would suggest you stand. If you feel more comfortable staying where you are, please feel free to stay where you are. And in fact, the ethos of this whole experience is to take care of yourself and do what feels good. And so if there's a limitation to do something and that feels good to you, do it, and if it doesn't feel good to you, do what feels good. And right now, as it feels good, I'm about to close your eyes, feel grounded with your feet on the floor, and take that big, beautiful breath that you've been waiting to take. And we're going to take another breath, and then this time we're going to really allow ourselves to hear that breath come up through our lungs and out of our mouths. And this last breath, we're going to really feel that breath swirl through our body and it makes our body vibrate and move or shake, do what feels good. And even as that air comes out of your mouth, the sound emerges, allow yourself to really vocalize and make whatever sound you need. Maybe it's for the love, whatever you need. Just we're going to take this last starting breath. Yeah, thank you, Jager, for helping us out. Thank you so much. And if we can throw a full screen, that would be great. And you're invited to sit or do what feels good. Why don't you feel like you don't want to stand or stretch or move. You're invited to do that. So I think we're going to start with calling ourselves into the space and letting us know, letting you know, and reminding each other who we are. Who wants to start? I'm Rosemont, guys. Hi, I'm Vick Bailey. Crystal, breath back. Melissa, boom, boom, to break. Boom, boom, to break. Alex, minute. Daniel Banks. Nicole Gernel. Jay Ruby. Miss Kuma. Adia Ali. Sabrina Hamilton. Jugo Zequinoa. Stanley Belvin. Jimmy. Mae Antio. Mike Estamela. Kibria. Will. And I'm Gabrielle Seville. I'm Marie Reyes. Marie Reyes. What are you all? Oh, wait, who's behind the camera? Adam Woomey from HowlRound. All right. Now's a good moment to tell us a little bit more, each of us, say a little bit more about who we are. Rosemont Estame, performance artist who's working with Curated at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the Access to Performance Art Biennale, the Inquiry Performance Art Festival, and elsewhere. I'm also a critical and creative writer of my manuscript. Unfortunately, I managed to score it coming from my book books. And I'm an associate professor at Brooklyn College. And I wrote a scholarly book called, I Have a Beautiful Room, or Are We Doing? I think maybe for now, just the collective, just the ensemble, just the presenters in this session, just so you have a sense of feeling. I Love Bodies. Look at it. And in one of the stages, just practice. OK. Keep going. Mama's Boy. I see aimless wonders, longing for direction. I hear the joyful laughing of a child at play. I want liberatory, loving creation. I wonder how we get free. I am an assistant dean for the Office of Black Student Affairs, former residence life coordinator, charged with creating an arts engagement program. I am make love survey. Traditional theater, dance, and some kind of information about art there. I have an undergraduate degree from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. And my focus was an independent concentration combined with American civilization, sociology, and political science. So I thank you too much. I have spent 20 years sort of in the food industry, food and beverage specifically focusing in my heart, from my heart on the ways that food and beverage are an opportunity for understanding what you put in your belly, chemically alters your ability to understand what you've got to, and what you want to see in health. And... So what did you say? I don't want to end here. I don't want to end here. Please ask. You said you make art, why? Because if I don't, I might die. Oh, wow. And I am mother to a nine-year-old boy, so ultimately I shouldn't make art. My name is Jeryl E. Harris. I'm a poet, performer, and sound artist. I am the author of three poetry collections, including the 2015 Night Book Poetry Prize, winning volume No Dictionary of a Living Tongue. Wow. Woo! And I come out in 2017 with as well. So we're going to have a good time. Current undertakings include the conceptual work Blood Labyrinth, and a solo performance project called Thingification, which has been seen in part or in full in several different nations, including Nigeria, Ghana, Berlin, Canada, the United States of America. And I am also the co-founder of the Black to Collective and an associate professor of English at the Illinois State University and the editor of Obsidian Literature and History Act. There is a juicy double issue. There is. It's a call-and-response and period splatter issue, in fact. I'm Gabrielle Seville. I'm a Black feminist poet, conceptual artist, and performance artist originally from Detroit, Michigan. You try it. Woo! Thank you. Thank you. So, I created over 40 solo original performance art works nationally and internationally. And I guess the thing that's relevant here is that I was the lead organizer of call-and-response. And so I was the beginning of something that ended up becoming much larger. And I'm happy to talk to you about that today. The aim of all of my work is to open up space. And what I'd like to do, hopefully, with all of you is to kind of open up some space to think about ensemble and particularly think about Black feminist performance practice and the ways in which Black feminist performance practice might change our understanding of what ensemble is or what it can be or how it can work. So that's one of the things I feel like this gathering together can help us maybe think about. So I think that the next step is to just do a very brief overview. Am I forgetting anything before we get into the overview? Are we cool? Ah! Thank you. Actually, that is important because there are some other members of our call-and-response kind of beautiful ensemble convening brand trust who are not here. There are three other artists. Kenyatta A. C. Pinko is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, and performer. A mantra for her practice is the historical present as she examines the residue of history and its effect on our contemporary world perspective. She is just returning from a full-brought fellowship to make art in Lagos, Nigeria, and normally she resides or is based in California. Wartatasha Gunji is another one of our call-and-response artists. She's a visual artist and performer. Her works include videos of what she engages her body and explorations of movement and art making across water, land, and air. When we first came together, she was based in Austin, Texas, and now resides or is part-time in Austin and sometimes in Lagos, Nigeria, and right now she currently lives full-time in Lagos, Nigeria. And then Awilda Rodriguez-Laura is a performance artist, curator, and creative facilitator committed to the creation and production of experimental art projects that ignite progressive conversations around gender, sexuality, and race. And Awilda is based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Yeah. Do you know her? Yeah. She's dope. Okay. And I guess maybe take one minute, each of you, and kind of close your eyes and really maybe it'll be kind of 10 seconds and just think about who else is missing. Who else isn't here in this room? Great. Can you just give us the next slide? I feel like a little teacher now. Can someone please read this slide for me? Without a discourse of their own, black women artists remain fixed in the trajectory of displacement, hardly moving beyond the defensive posture of merely responding to their objectification and misrepresentation by others. Frida, Kai, W, Tessa. Tessa and Georgia. In search of a discourse and critiques that center the art of black women artists. Without a discourse of our own, black women artists remain fixed in the trajectory of displacement, hardly moving beyond the defensive posture of merely responding to their objectification, our objectification and misrepresentation by others. Next slide, please. What happens when you replace discourse with ensemble? Next slide, please. This is one thing that happens. Okay. So, when we get to an ensemble, how about as an ensemble, we always read that together? Without an ensemble of their own, black women artists remain fixed in the trajectory of displacement, hardly moving beyond the defensive posture of merely responding to their objectification and misrepresentation by others. When you replace discourse with ensemble, you get calling response. Next slide, please. That's us. What is calling response? I encourage you, as you hear from all of us, to think about calling response as a forging and manifestation of ensemble, a dynamic and practice of ensemble, a new framework or paradigm for thinking about ensemble, a black feminist intersection, specifically an intersection of ensemble and university. Next slide, please. So, as some photos are behind me, I'm just going to give you some basic information about calling response. Calling response was a historic dynamic of black women in performance that premiered at Annette College in summer of 2014. It was a convening, a symposium, a campus phenomenon, a festival, and it produced through its magic, its black girl magic, a performance ensemble. Call response emerged from my deep need as a black feminist performance artist to preserve and maintain my context. I received an extraordinary offer to help build and lead a performance program in Yellow Springs, Ohio, population 3,500, and it was a wonderful opportunity but I was very concerned about what it would mean for me as a black feminist artist to go there and in exchange with the person at the president of Annette College, I was just straight up, I confessed. I said, my biggest fear is to lose my context. But you know what would help me allay that fear? What if we have a gathering of convening of black women performers from all around the nation and they could come and we could work together and we could work in a way that I had no idea that I would suggest that until boom, the moment that I did. It just came as a flash. Here was this person saying, where are we going? Well, maybe. But what would you think if I came and then these other people also could come? And his enthusiasm for that idea ultimately sort of the impetus to push to make the leap then to go to Annette College and then from that was born, called and response.  The key there is to really dream and then name what it is that you want. That was the thing that happened and I feel so lucky that the universe allowed me to have that happen because because I did and because I was lucky enough, fortunate enough, that the person in the university heard what I was saying and said, I think that's a great idea to Gabrielle. Writing that moment because it was a pivotal moment in the university, we were able to make something happen. So specifically what happened just a couple of paragraphs here from the call and response special issue, what I was saying in that thing. Okay, so call and response included seven lead artists. Myself, Jury L. E. Harris, Kenyatta A. C. Hinkel from Los Angeles, Rosa Minas came from Brooklyn, New York, Marie Reagulis from Minneapolis, Warnatash Ogogy, that based in Austin and in Lagos, and a will to Rodriguez store from San Juan. Our practice represented a full gamut of performance from multimedia performance art, live art actions, performance installation, theater, dance, music, conceptual art, spoken word poetry, and more. We were seven black women performers with very different relationships to the words black, women, and performance. We each also had significant experience with more than one performance form. We also had various diasporic connections to Africa and the Caribbean and represented a range of ages, academic backgrounds, sexual orientations, familial situations, gender experiences, languages spoken, and more. Even more significant than me. None of the artists, myself included, had met all of the other ones. So you really had a structure where you had people coming together for the purpose of making art, exploring notions around art-making, race, gender performance, or at least were connected in some way through those concepts, but we were not identical and we didn't know each other beforehand. The structure of the project was then to come in, it was summer 2014, to come and then play, talk, discuss, build work, and work to create what we call the call, which was a collective prompt for artistic action. That was a call for ourselves and also a call for other people in the community. And we wanted to ask ourselves, what do we call ourselves and others to do? Then we left Yellow Springs, Ohio, we took some time, and then we returned with our own responses to the call. And so both, and that was one month later, so in July, we sort of presented work to the community and then in August we premiered new work that was based on the call that we had collectively presented. And the call that we came up with was to conduct experiments in joy. What you're doing is sorry, I didn't know I had one of your stuff, I sort of things come in, but that doesn't always come out. So we are actually loving you all to sort of be a part of the process and witness experiments in joy. One of the things that has been really powerful for me about the work and I think just the moment of looking at ensemble versus discourse is powerful. And I think in the opening plenary when the discussions of where all those places and all those spaces and what the possibilities of ensemble came into being, there was something that I couldn't articulate, but I think we're inviting you to be in this art practice, our ensemble practice, which is to be together to make experiments in joy. And I want to try to articulate that now. I think part of what I'm sensing is that this group is trying to figure out ensemble in a very specific context. We will get ensemble, I'm going to phrase it a little bit, we look at ensemble in terms of the way that that term is used in music. Ensembles are groups of people that get together. One saxophonist can be in eight ensembles. And they may have practice now and they may come together. They're not together constantly. You may have a lot of places and spaces at home. For ensemble. And I think that historically really does come out of what we commonly refer to as jazz. It's also called creative musical. We really, that really comes out of jazz. And when we think about what that space is, that space is about African diasporic culture. True. And African diasporic culture, particularly on this side of the planet, manifests out of sleep. The possibilities, the disconnections, the requirement that to survive, you have to connect, build family, and make a way with whoever is there. Whether you truly belong to them or they truly belong to you, there is no choice. And so, at some moment, and I appreciate that person's reality, at some moment, someone spoke to really feeling not understanding how being from all these different places, we can be ensemble. It's because it's what we come from. It's because it's the only way. We can talk about not being together. We can talk about a lot of knots. But this is the only way we know how to be. And so what we're coming in. And so what we're going to do for the next, what, 35, 40 minutes? Actually, click the slide. That's a nice time keeper for us. And so, one of the beautiful things is some of this will be specifically talking about our personal responses to the process that we came through. Some of this will be opportunities to see or participate in some of the bits of work that we created that we're just going to talk about. No?  But I want to create a structure or help help build a structure. So, I was an administrator at Antioch College during the call and response time. Antioch College will give you a short history, closed in 2008, reopened in 2011 with 35 students. When I got there, there were 100 students. Summer 2014, there were 170. And so, very small campus, running on very few funds. A culture of fear, of closing. Fear of not getting accredited. Fear of being outside. Fear of becoming what it was that caused it to close. It was a small population. It was a lot of hard work. And it was a community that was teetering on despair. When I got there, I continued to teeter on despair. And then the call and response ensemble showed up. It's a 12 month counter as well. So, students are always on campus. So, the call and response ensemble showed up crew. Showed up on Summer 2014.  I am an agenda marky black man. Ah, crew members, what's going on? We're out of the park of the street team.  We were small on top of the group. We're basically a back and call for the eight days that the call and response were around. We made sure that people had food. Made sure that teeters was present. Made sure that there was like ever-plentiful line kind of dealt with some of the logistics behind it. It was beneficial because in that time in between, I could continue to support the call. I could encourage the students to participate in the call. And experiment in joy in this community that was teering on this fair.  Whatever that means, we are telling you that the scope of it was so audacious that it radically shifted the energy on that campus. It was courageous in the practice. The practice of you all going down to the steps. One of the steps is tell the truth. And just that tell the truth. What does that mean? How do you tell the truth when you're afraid of being vulnerable? When you're afraid of losing what you've worked for for the last five, two, one years? And it fundamentally changed the way that the community works together. Throughout the day, so we were tasked with coming together and asking each other questions on the panel and I had a question and then I had a new question because I had two in session and then I had a new question and so I'm interested in when thinking about call and response and thinking about experience and joy, I'm interested in asking the question how does anger become a generative place? Does anger become a generative place? I mean, I guess I'll hear about it. It reminds me of an experience at AWP in which I admitted to being very angry. AWP is the national comment that's for writers in the United States of America and I had just gotten tenure and I said tenure needed to be good for something and that I had, you know, real righteous indignation and I was going to embrace that and move from that place in my presentation and it was really great for me and apparently it was for other people to be able to inhabit that space and it was very real for them very often that there was a lot to be angry about when we look around at the injustice and poverty that is just not necessary. So to be able to say yes that pisses me off and it hurts my feelings and then moving to argue more and think of the uses of anger and how then we can take that instead of denying that pushing it back, turning it inward into depression to take that would paralyze us to take that and to use that to produce and to inhabit the spaces the spaces that we need in order to survive. Right? I did not rehearse any of that. It is one way of responding to next question. What I was thinking about and it goes along with that because this is something, you know, there's a rage, there's a sadness, there's a fear that I contend with on a daily basis that I find call and response helps me be able to contend with and move through the world and inhabit my body even as I have to contend with my existential luck of being born a black, queer woman with a hidden disability and other things, right? And also being an impad. So I care deeply about people who are not me have always done that since I was a child and so when I say it hurts my feelings to see the things that we do to one another it truly does. Right? It really, really does and so sometimes I am just not sure that we should continue as species because of the atrocities that we enact upon one another and upon the earth on all the things that live because I truly believe in intervening that we impact one another even as we're like, you know walking around without consciousness right? So I'm really there other people that I work with give me give me the reason to have faith enough to continue faith being the evidence of things not seeing not being reasonable or rational So when I look at things rationally as a materialist a scientist I'm strange to be and I look good but then I come back into my body with these people here with you and I say okay because I know that even some of the small things we do they make a difference and those small things that make a difference make possible joy and that joy makes possible more joy and more joy and it kind of grows So that existential moving through time space is a body that is rational as racialized sexually and sexualized racially in the society and consequently a society that has managed to export this particular brand of its white supremacy, patriarchy racism, capitalism, all these enemies of the indigenous people they're enemies of everyone but we don't all understand the degree to which we are dehumanized by these oppressions that are leaked and to say particularly as a black woman to be presumed incompetent to be presumed dangerous I supposedly birth without any degree of awareness multiple criminal children that run the streets that I don't know how to feed or raise or clothe I do this because it is somehow in my bestial nature reasonable and morally impoverished sexually, ravenous impervious to pain I am the perfect work horse inclined to abuse substances, people, systems and then specifically being here as a Chicagoan having returned to Chicago in August in my city where you know when I moved to the north side in the U-Haul the guys were moving me we're like okay well you know Mr. Harris you can follow us since she's driving the truck she can't drive unless you're a driver and I live in Rogers Park and it's really right next to the lake so that makes the most sense we can all just drive together unless you're a driver and we'll just need her there and my father said no my child is driving a truck stopped I don't know what's going to happen now my father is 83 years old you know it's not like he has his guns and he's going to do anything but he's like all I can do is drive behind my baby now I'm a grown woman I'm 46 years old but he said I'm going to drive behind my baby to make sure she gets there now he shouldn't have to do that he shouldn't have to I have a PhD I'm a professor I'm always thinking about love but he has to because we're in the city of Chicago we're not fools okay I'm just trying to get through some of these little things on my list right president for fair treatment under the law okay and even more specifically this walking, driving, being wild black okay there's all of that and that takes me to Thinkification, my performance project and how Paula responds as an extension of my work with Thinkification and gives a context and a generative space additionally for that work that I do by myself and seeing how that work can impact others and feeds me, pushes me to do it maybe I'm not getting the grant reaching some pushback and Thinkification I'll quickly tell you MS is there saying that colonization equals Thinkification that it not only dehumanizes the targets of colonization it dehumanizes the colonizer as well so we all lose because our humanity is annihilated in that force so I really see very much the work that we do together to create a world where we can be I'm not even talking about doing nothing yet just be right and breathing is really cute and there's something I just want to share with you we heard some music as it came in and then there's a little music that I kind of wanted to play while I talked about this real quickly I don't know if you can get that there to the iTunes we yeah there's a little just play that Y-V-T-A-Y-G-J I'm in round two show music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music And I know that if I were to wed for the half-right and show her what, right, I'd still marry her. But also, there's so much more important to do, to move into the state where I could be. And if you wish for a revolution, you've got to live and do. And, uh, go and find your way. It's the fight of any fear that can be physical, and you'll make me a target of life. If possible, you'll need to move toward a revolution like you live for, to a point as high as the fear that can be physical. You'll make me a target of life. And so, again, I'll be the pride of what is for you. Your business. Remember when I tell you two to four minutes? And so, I invite you, I've already been said in this room, and also maybe this feels good, or whatever you feel you need to do in the four minutes that exist, between when Rosamund kind of starts the clock, now, and the end. Now, only Dorfes Yakubu, Juliana, who rejoiced, Moosa, Mary Palm, Soraya Palm, Roda Peter, Nomi Filma, Sagumi Po, rejoiced on a girl who was snatched, a girl who was... When we talk about joy, it is such a serious opportunity to claim, what does that look like? What does that mean? What can you do with your body, with your voice? What happened in that first July session of the convening? What did Natasha Obunji ask the question that I had really thought about so many times? What would happen with daily oppression? If we did not have... What would that look like to try to manifest? Like Duria, his ear is visible. I wanted to just say a little something since I was the person who kind of called into the space the reality that we are seven, who live in seven different cities in three different countries and actually have connections to these.  But you're still thinking about the work, right? And there's still work that happens in your head, if not also in your body. And then you come back to your ensemble with those ideas. So I don't think that what we're doing is all that unusual. Gavin often calls, call and response, a dynamic. We all use the ensemble, and I like that word, a dynamic. And I think as a dynamic of black women performance artists, that reality requires us to be persistently apart and provisionally together. I don't think that actually this will work with work if we're all in the same place. I think we have to be persistently apart and provisionally together. And I think that that's required because if we take seriously the expansiveness of the terms black women performance artists, in particular, if we consider the reality that black and African-American are not synonymous, right? Then we're talking about Carrivenos, and we're talking about Les Antilles, and we're talking about people in Africa, and we're talking about people in different parts of the United States, not just New York. And so we have to be in all of these places and then come together when we can. And I can talk a little bit more about that later, but I'm going to think about a lot of this idea about kind of thinking about joy and how we can get to joy and also how we can get to our work. I think we got too much stuff. I think we carry around too much stuff. With us we have to give some of that stuff up, leave some of it behind in order to be able to do our work, in order to kind of be whole people. I also think we physically carry too much stuff. Can people just hold up their bags? My mother is not in New York. She comes from New York. She says people in New York carry bags that are so big it is as though... Look at that, look at that! I have these, you look at that.  What is it that you're carrying in that bag, right? Can you take something out of your bag and bring it up? Anything right now? Yeah, give something up to me that you don't need. What is it? The envelope. This is the envelope, right? And what would this symbolize to you that you're giving this up? Nothing. Well, yes, in this moment now. In this moment now. Right, but it could be the excess, right? That you were giving this and you didn't really need it or that it has served its purpose and now it's gone. Something like this. I created a piece called Leave It Behind that was performed at Paul in response. And it was similar to this except I asked people to give up a piece of themselves, literally. I asked them to leave fingernails or hair or spit or urine, something that neither was attached to them was a part of them or came out of their body. And then I asked them to tell me the story of what that symbolized for them. Why was this something that they needed to give up? And if you could click on the RSK slides, please go to the first slide. And then I live tweeted their stories with their permission. Not everybody was interested in that but wanted to engage in media, right? So, leaving behind earwax to stop being stuck, right? People have all kinds of different things that they wanted to leave behind and move forward with their life. And this was a very involved, sometimes I get a little crazy with details, very involved piece, right? So, these are literally medical samples, scientific samples, and I treated them as such. We had all the health protocols, so we had gloves and we had sticks for the blood and all kinds of things. I still have the samples. I was dressed, you saw it in the slideshow, in a nurses uniform, and they also had on the white head wrap. So, I was representing potentially both medical healing, right, and spiritual healing, right? So, this was something that if you want later on they can talk about how this affected some of the students on campus who participated in it. But this was, leaving behind, this piece was a direct result of the thinking and the planning. I don't call it work because I don't feel like work. And the being with the woman of call and response. And that's why I think that for us, ensemble is more about process than it is about product. As we come together and we're able to have an experience together that we can't have a part, but then that goes with us. We go back to create our own work and it makes our own work different and I think stronger. Okay, I'm good. But girls, taste life.  Black girls taste like those hard bits of sugar and something deep fried. We have the video. Right, when you have something that you love but by embracing it, you're worried that you're not sure where and when it's acceptable or how it's going to be noted to that question. You don't? No. This is going to be difficult. Keep going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. But when I'm beautiful, I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. I'm going. But all the questions, or most of the questions that we ask, are actually part of the call. So this call was sent out to the entire MTI College campus, including staff and faculty, and also to the Yellow Springs community. And people started to talk about joy all the time. So it really became a part of this. I'm just going to highlight one thing. We spoke today. What is your system a lot to us? How can we undermine the decline? How can we be playing joy? And how does our work change when we create from a place of freedom? So we knew that this was going to be a little strange for another community to follow us. So we gave them instructions. And I'm just going to give them instructions, and then we're going to do two. Yeah. I'm going to read the instructions, and we're going to give you just two minutes to try to bring one or two people next to you and say something that this may, that what we've shared with you made you think, or a question that you have, and then we'll come back together for a larger conversation. So the instructions were pretty simple. Tell the truth. Make something new. Put someone in. Document. Hello. Hello. We'll put you on. Happy to be a symbol of this holiday. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay everybody. Thank you all so much. I'm going to ask Paul to finish up your sentences. We're going to do it together. We're doing this as a family. Thank you all so much. Alright everybody. We're going to meet some real men and bring them together. Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much for participating in this. We are now going to move into a Q&A or a call and a response. In fact there's some Q&A slides there. Section. I have some notes about this portion. I'm going to be moderating it. Please be sustained in your calls and your responses. We're excited about this Q&A and we're honored that you all chose to spend this time with us. And also please consider the steps of the call in your call or your question or your response. Tell the truth. Make something new. Invite someone in. Document it. So if you want to tweet, now's the time. That's an invention. That's an experimental drug. So if anybody has anything that they would like to call or respond to, I welcome you all to bring your voice into the room. I give myself permission. Yes. And I'm just feeling that from today. I give myself permission. Thank you. Thank you. Six sessions.  Why? That much awesomeness in one place is honestly a little overwhelming. I'm not going to rush. No, yeah, I didn't say that. Or write your response. I feel called to share. We just share in the invitation to experiment and not know if joy would be out. I think what you just said really moves me because I mean, even though that the act of just the four minutes of the action that I just showed there. It's called Say My Name. An action between 1778 and 1780 girls. So that was something I showed in the arts presentation before we made the call. But I think of it as an experiment in joy in a very strange way. In the sense that it's an experiment trying to bear witness in something difficult. But something I've heard you say, that's not my pain. That didn't happen to me. What happened to them? So in doing that, I'm not trying to claim that it's happening to me, but there's something that I'm trying to hold. There's an experiment there trying to figure out what should we do with it. And that kind of experiment is scary because you don't know what's going to happen. But that's what makes it the experiment. I'm thinking about if I would be able to recognize joy without its antithesis. I'm thinking about the relationship, the causal relationship between emotions. The worst most of us don't have that privilege. So in a way that's what it means. I've been thinking so much about capitalism and the effects on our bodies. And the effects of our language. When you think of what am I going to get out of the session? What am I giving enough education to my students that is worth the huge price tag? Did I get enough from my education? I've been thinking a lot about that space. And trying to look at what I say. How do I value things? I value my worth. Should I put myself as worth? What is that? How do I know my worth? While not diminishing myself to worth.  And I was like, no, it's way more than that. And the brief front I go, no, there is a spiritual wealth. Do I want to use the word wealth? Sure. There is a spirit. There is a huge, like, you know, I'm just trying to figure out, like what is the language that is also revolutionary to what you are doing to be most accurate and not sort of like put it into underneath some other framework that we're trying to sort of break through. So I guess what I'm saying is it's making me challenge those notions as well as receive so much spirit and fullness of you knowing who you are in these moments and inviting us in to see you. And thank you for saying that. I know what you might see. But don't do that. Because that's great. Then like, oh, that's why someone might see because they are not in this culture. And so it's so great for us to sort of open our lenses that we are imprisoned with. Sometimes that's what they are. And I'm just very grateful for all of you. And I think that's the point. This time and space has been and felt very polyrhythmic just in the sense that even as you all share, you all share your own rhythm and multiple rhythms and share space and invited us to join in that rhythm. So I'm thinking about polyrhythm and plurality of joy, even though I did an experiment. You're not saying experiment, enjoy the experiment. And just that it's going to take multiple things, multiple moments and multiple people to achieve rather than move this thing of joy, that the polyrhythm is necessary. And polyrhythm is a part of politics. So I'm just thinking about how all of it, it requires all of it and all of us. One of the things that's really fantastic and a little bit is not here, a little bit is in Puerto Rico, and coming out of this work that she did and you all think was incredible. I figure out how to transpose that if she can't be here. It's a piece that I really wish could have been real. But she left that. So simple, huh? No, simple. She left and she started bailar todos los días, 2015 and her commitment with herself was to dance every day and usually record it and it just pops up in my feet. And so what does it mean to do an experiment and enjoy? Is it I'm doing a month, I'm going to put it away and draw and do it in a year.  And I don't know because I don't see what comes through the food, even if it's only 15 seconds. The way it looks, it looks like there's something before that and something after that. But it could be only 15 seconds. And she's not always there. She's almost always there. Her heart is right there. Since I'm with you guys in here, I can bring a little of her voice from what she wrote about her experience. And this is from the long-awaited special issue that we were less than enough to be able to have an opportunity to do your materialistic initiative. It's always there. It's always there. It's always there. Yeah, it's always there. I'm going to have her voice in the room and I really like it. I could write her in parentheses, E, parentheses here in these pages, a narrative of my journey, my experience, my reactions, my inspirations, being part of such an appointment and relevant meeting in Criagoras. Black women performers. I think of the possibility and then doubt myself as to what are the specific words that could best describe my lived experience. Line, line, line, line, line. They counter, tiempo, cuerpo, espacia that we all share, share. How can something that happen, happen and that lives in the body can be transplanted to words on a page that is static? I want to go into the page and move my words, move them because what took place at Antioch College moved me, my work, my intention, my process. 12 hours in an experimental theater. Several passes by one title line that we can't part of PIA projects or life projects or life projects dance every day. Many questions, doubtful, transformation, unknown. I want to say, to connect with what a little better to say, being a part of call and response however tangential or central? Central. I love AMs. You get central. Thank you. Central. Central. It changed my whole life trajectory. I was a residence life coordinator at Antioch College. I did diversity work and worked in residence halls and charted, made people have fun. Then I was a part of call and response. Then I began to see the ways that arts engagement impacts students' lived experiences and I did development. And now, 40% of my job is to do that. And I'm a assistant dean at 26. But seriously, the tangible ways in which me being a part of the call and response team is collective, dynamic. It genuinely changed the way that I think about my work, the way that I think about the way that I live and how I do my work. Not only the way that I think about it, but also how I do it. And so, I think that the way that call and response came together, we're trying to imagine call and response a second time in a new place. And we're trying to imagine it and trying to also figure out budgets. And while doing that, there was the idea of bringing call and response by having it being kind of individuals and people, different offices sponsoring individual people. But the thing about call and response was the togetherness and was the completeness. It was the overtaking. It was the occupying of space or the repositioning of space. And also the plenitude. And I think, I guess, just to throw a couple more turnips into the stew. Let's think of more. There's a lot. We made a decision because there's a lot because a lot, a lot, a lot of things happen. Really? I mean, there have been 14 to 18 performances, local performance kind of all. There's community workshops at the round table. We had a short film festival. We had a lot to do. There was a lot, a lot, a lot to happen. So what we couldn't do is giving you a timeline. But what we wanted instead to do was give you a sense of the experience of what it was, what we were, what we are, what we did in terms of why we did it, how it happened, and what it means for us to come together and do this work. And I think for me, just the impact of that on the campus was really quite significant and tremendous on faculty students, what faculty student staff. And I guess I just want to make sure while we're here, if anyone has any specific logistical questions, we can answer them in terms of the intersections with the university and the fact that we got those, I mean, it is sort of wild that we got them to do it. But really, it's about abundance. Yes, abundance. That was the thing. Why was any of our teetering on despair because it had this tremendous deprivation mentality? Okay? So how do you combat deprivation mentality of abundance? And that was one of the things at the Plenary session that it was sort of like, when you don't have anything, well, why not ask for everything then? So, I mean, you don't have anything, so try to get a transportation voucher to get the people to come. Try to get a shower kit.  So it's like, well, they're trying to get one black woman, so I'm like, what the? What does that mean? All right! That's what it means. Just for a little while.  So that doubled the cost and whatever it was they were going to do. And, you know, they did it. That, I have to say, is really kind of extraordinary, except that maybe it isn't extraordinary. It shouldn't be extraordinary. Oh, we don't know when we have permission to ask. We've also come from a culture of like, you don't have the way to ask. People probably are just like, I heard this and every right to ask. Then, you know, who's going to say no? Or how many people will say yes? Well, just because that won't tell the truth. Yeah. What do you want? Or what are you afraid of? Why are you not sure you want to come? Because I'm afraid of this. But then they can't be so afraid you could help me by doing this. So even if they had said no, something really special did happen for me just by being able to articulate what it is that I want. And I think that articulation, collective articulation was a big thing for us in call and response. What is the thing that we actually are calling for from each other and from the world and really to be able to name that? That was a process. I just wanted to say one more thing to give another example. The ways in which the ensemble were being dynamic was really good. Wonderful for me. In thing of occasion I had a character, sorry, eight characters, nine characters, but in the beginning of the show there's a Mammy figure that emerges having been conjured by a pop star's song and then a formerly enslaved woman, her ghost comes and pushes through the Mammy figure and has the DJ Sean, the DJ Department call and response. And for some time I had some difficulty being able to move into the experience that Sarah would have had.  Bad. Yes. And I said, well, but I need to know, she has a right for me to move toward her specific experience and how can Sean do his work if I don't give him the opportunity to experience the embodiment of that mountain. Because that's what happens, right? When she comes through his body he then experiences in his body what her body had to experience. And part of what happened with call and response is that it gave me permission in all these different ways, right? I was at this Fire Inc. conference and I met some woman was talking to them and they started telling me that they had done some characterization workshops for somebody. Well, I said, what could you do that for me? I have this character and you know, you are a center and you do this, can you do that for me? And they said yes. Right. And then I said to the people at my university, can you pay for part of this? I said, I'm on sabbatical but I have rights. Can you? And they said yes. Right. You know? And I didn't explain it but I didn't tell them I'm on sabbatical part of this. Right? But it gave me that that permission to bring that to the fore and also to know that I could experience that and still emerge whole that I would not be devastated by the experience because I have you who is going to help keep me alive. Right? And so it's like both, you know, both the permission to ask for it and then to be able to walk into it. Yeah. Thank you. And I would say that part of what happens in here for me too, having you all come to this session. Yeah. Right? Is a part of that for me too. Because if this room was empty, it would be too. Thank you all so much for coming. We're going to go around for a little bit afterwards with you all to talk but please follow me.


So I'm gonna take a page from xp to level 3's book and just say counter spell is dumb.  And as a DM, it makes me never want to bring spellcasters into my game. A situation usually goes like this. Players walk into a dungeon, spellcaster gives off a maniacal laugh, starts to cast a spell, and before I can even get through the description of what's happening, I get cut off with an uncast counter spell. Or the players will be in a tough bind, the cleric will triumphantly announce that they're casting a heal to bring the party back from the brink, and boop. Nope. It's gone. Your spell's gone. Better luck next time.  There should never be a spell that wincast basically ruins a player's entire turn no barrier required. It's the no fun allowed button that you don't want to admit is busted when your party is using it, and then feel completely screwed over on when it ends up happening to you. And I'm the DM. It happens to me a lot. Like wizards are supposed to be the ultimate powers in the history of the cosmos, weaving the fabric of reality together to accomplish their goals. But because this showed with a blue pointy hat made it to 5th level, suddenly Morkadeth, the Grand Master of Evil, can't cast spells anymore. The only recourse is for both wizards to take counter spell, but then they're just burning reactions and spell slots for nothing. And if you're playing a class that doesn't have counter spell, or you just don't want counter spell, then sorry bud, you just don't get to play D&D. I can't have just a random wizard in a group of bad guys, even though they're supposed to be rare, because the whole game becomes about who stacked the most wizards on their team at once. If I have two casters and the adventuring party only has one counter-speller, then the spellcaster in that group doesn't get to play. They may as well just flip on their phone and check out mentally because whenever it gets to their turn, they'll just look up from their screen, open their mouth, and I'll shove a counter spell right in there so they can go back to watching their YouTube video. Now, there's three main arguments that I see about why counter spell is all good and bound and should allow it to be the shield against any and all magical consequences that you run into during your adventure. So let me just address them. First, counter spell requires a spellcasting ability check if you cast it at a lower level than the spell that you're countering. This is the most amount of restraint that the spell has, and it's the most reasonable argument.  A lot of the spells that players cast will be lower levels because they just don't know right away when they're gonna need to whip out the big cock. Or, more often, the spell that they want to cast just happens to be a lower level spell that either is impossible or isn't feasible to scale. It's almost a safe bet to just cast counter spell at base to fifth level and call it a day, especially when the party is at lower levels and can't cast higher level spells, because even if you're wrong, you just have to make an ability check and you might just get lucky and pop the spell anyway. This is especially true against half-casters or multi-class players because they're not gonna cast at a high level anyway. They're just not built for it.  Cool, let me just see if I can change mine real quick. Yeah, it's something, but most of the time it's not a big enough factor and a lot of the time it doesn't happen. The second argument is the caster can just counter spell the counter spell.  It burns spell slots, it takes away both caster's reactions and for what? To guarantee a stop to something that guarantees a stop, effectively making counter spell as it was meant to be used, completely spur of luis as you're stuck constantly casting an extra spell just to be able to play the game. Casters will run out of spells astonishingly quickly, although that doesn't mean much since they're cantrips ensure that they'll always play on par with the rest of the team at bare minimum, but whatever. And if either side happens to have two people with counter spells then it's game over. Suddenly not only will your counter spell not counter the actual spell, but it won't even be able to save you from losing your place in the game because the other guy's friend will just have an uno reverse card as well. Welcome to the game of oh shit, there are two guys in robes and wizard hats, gotcha, I'll go make lunch. Third, the caster can just stand 60 feet away and this is totally true until it's not because sometimes you don't get the luxury of where a fight breaks out or how or win or even who gets to be in it because the truth is a lot of dungeons don't like to respect the wizard's personal space and if it does then you can bet that the other guy is taking advantage of being far away too and at that point the spell just becomes useless. This is the prime example of my gripe with the spell which is that it either works too well or it does not work at all, like me when I'm trying to write a video. If you and your opponent both have counter spells then you're either using it to drain each other's spell slots or you're minding each other's privacy because both of you would like to play the game. If one of you does not have counter spell then the other caster gets to just push you away as far as they'd like or else you run the serious case of no fun allowed and if you're a caster that prefers to get in physical like a ranger, a paladin, an eldritch knight, half of the cleric subclasses, half of the bard subclasses, or the blade lock then you don't get the luxury of falling back anyway. You have to charge forward and kill that wizard who has if they're following basic party combat structure annoyingly placed themselves behind all the things that would love for you to distance yourself from the rest of the party. Effectively the world revolves around counter spell and all of you versions without counter spell are powerless to stop it but it doesn't have to be that way. Using the dangerous and volatile powers of homebrew you can change the way that counter spell operates mechanically so that you give more of a chance to the target. My fix is when counter spell is cast you can have both players roll a d20 and add their spellcasting mod. If the caster wins then spell goes off, if the target wins then they manage to harness their focus and push the offending mages magic away from their spell. Alternatively you can have the caster roll against the target save dc or if you really want to change the spell as little as possible just remove the note about counter spell being an insta win completely and make the caster roll every time and as a thing that you can add to any of these options if you want to make the spell even more flavorful you can give the caster a modifier equal to the difference in spell level so if the counter spell is level three and the spell is only level one then the caster would get a plus two bonus on the roll on account of the counter spell being an inherently stronger spell but if the spell is level five and the counter spell is only level three then they would get a minus two because they're trying to use weaker magics to try and unweave a more complicated one. These changes to counter spell help evoke the feeling of opposing mages using inner strength and understandings of the flow of magic to defeat another skilled spell caster. They help weaker or less practice mages stand a chance against mages who have the benefit of long bouts of training and I hope that this video gives you a new perspective on the dangers of adding a fail knot mechanic in a system where random chance and dice rolling make up the cornerstone of the game but that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video be sure to leave a like comment subscribe bring the bell check out my social media in the description below and maybe support me on patreon so that I can continue complaining about things that I don't like with the benefit of hindsight to make it seem like I have a good understanding of game mechanics when really I'm just a loud voice on the internet. But yeah, Davy out.


Our honoree, His Excellency Ashiwaju Bola Amei Tinubu, Jagaban Bogu, Jagaban Africa, etc., etc., etc., and his wife, Her Excellency Senator Mrs. Remy Tinubu. Let me say first that just before I go on to what my role is here, to say that we started this colloquium now about 10 years ago, and I'm sure that most of us have heard the story. Many of those who started the colloquium, the idea of the colloquium with us are probably here today. Most of us had worked with the then governor of Lagos State, Governor Bola Amei Tinubu, for several years, some for four years, some for eight years, and we decided that it was important to ensure that every year on the occasion of his birthday, we will take time to discuss matters of national importance. Part of the reason why we did so was because Ashiwaju Bola Amei Tinubu ran an unusual government in Lagos State, and let me say why it was unusual. The reason why it was unusual was because it was a government where there was a great deal of argument, and he as the leader of that government allowed so much argument and so many different shades of ideas. I recall a particular occasion when we started talking about the land use charge. Some of it is, I mean today where also I know that there are issues around the land use charge, but when the land use charge, when the whole concept developed around the land use charge, there were so many arguments. One group felt that we shouldn't even introduce a charge. Another group felt it was important to do so. I remember that in Ikeja, where this argument was taking place in the governor's guest house, we were in a small room and Ashiwaju was there. Lai Mohamed was there. Wali Adu, Yemeka Adoso, I think Delia Laki and a few others, and we all gathered there arguing on both sides. At some point, when Ashiwaju was losing the argument, he said, ah, shayi no di bofuni, and I'm like, freeing what that means. He said, ah, were you the people who were voted for? Then he stormed out of the room and left. Then we all waited. Nobody left. We just waited and waited there. Then he came back a few minutes later and said, ah, eh, shayi no di, meaning are you people still here? Then he continued the argument. Now he came back with more facts and figures. So we suspected that when he stormed out of the room, he actually went to go and bring some more facts and figures. In the end, we instituted a charge and so many other, so many other different ways by which the foundation for what we see in Lagos State today was developed. And I want to just commend Ashiwaju Bola Adu Netinobu again for ensuring that not only did he develop a whole generation of persons who have become, in various respects, leaders, but also that he allowed that group of people to develop ideas, to contradict him many times, to controvert his own ideas many times. And many times, ah, he given to, to those ideas and we've seen the results of it. My role here is to tie the knots and link the philosophy to governance and commitment of our social investment program. I want to thank his excellence to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Mohammad Ibuwari, for giving me the opportunity to coordinate this program and also for giving me a free hand to run the program. The way the program is structured, as you probably heard, is that in order to ensure transparency, we left all of the issues around procurement and finance to the Ministry of Budget and National Planning. And we have a steering committee of ministers, an interministerial group about six or seven ministers, I think, who decide what to do and what the direction will be. I chair that group of ministers, that interministerial team. I must again say and pay my deep respects to the man in whose honor we are gathered here and for whom we gather practically every year to talk and advance ideas that we hope will shape our nation for the better. And I must say again that the Bola Tinubu Colloquium still draws its thematic priority from the main focus of Bola Tinubu's life, the people. Not only is Ajiwaju Bola Tinubu a man of the people, his life story in both public and private affairs tells of a fighter and a champion of people-oriented causes. Let me say that when we began this journey in 2014, and when I say this journey I refer to our government, our party, the APC, was determined to change the dominant narrative about our country. We were determined to ensure that the notion of a country rich in natural resources, but even richer in human capital, for being destroyed daily by grand corruption and the impunity in the looting of public resources, we had to change that narrative. We saw a nation where a few in office had so privatized the commonwealth that while all prices were at their highest, and we were getting growth figures as high as 70%, the majority of the people remained extremely poor. On one of our campaign trips in Zamfara State, Mr. President said, look at the eyes of these people, and of course we saw the poverty and desperation in their eyes, and then he said, they expect us to fix the problem of their poverty as soon as we get into office. So the President on the campaign trail emphasized three things, security, the economy, and by the economy here, in particular the welfare of the people and corruption. To address the question of the welfare of the people, we realized that if we waited for the economy to pick up and then provide jobs for the people, especially young people, many would have given up hope, and many would have ended up in all manner of illegal activities. So we decided on two things, to want to invest heavily in agriculture, to create jobs in the hinterland, provide enough food locally and for all of the urban areas. And in our agriculture program, I'm sure that many would already agree that this has been a tremendous success. Several millions of Nigerians have been employed in agriculture. Some who had abandoned their farms, in fact, Mr. President tells a story of his own village where people used to let out farms, they used to lease out their farms to farmers from Kano. But now nobody is leasing out their farms anymore. Everybody is on his own farm. The more interesting part of that story is that not only are more people now going to hatch, they are also taking more wives. We also decided to put in place an audacious social investment program to the tune of 500 billion Naira, the largest pro-poor program in our nation's history, and the largest social safety net, at least in sub-Saharan Africa. This was despite the fact that by 2015 all prices fell by over 50 percent and our production also fell from over 2 million barrels a day to less than 700,000 barrels a day, sometimes even 500,000 barrels in 2016. We have seen today the empirical evidence of the successes of the program and all of that is evidence for us to see and listen to several of the testimonies and stories. 200 jobs for undergraduates employed under the MPAR program, 300,000 more waiting to be employed, they've been pre-selected, 7 million children being fed daily in 22 states so far. Beneficiaries of microcredit loans going to about 300,000, almost 700,000 households benefiting from conditional cash transfers.  Corruption is an existential problem for Nigeria. Let me pause here to reiterate that from all I have seen in government in the past three years, the corruption of the previous five years is what destroyed the Nigerian economy. Every time we talk about this, every time we talk about corruption, our opponents say, don't talk about it, just do your own, don't talk about it. The Europas have an urge, they say, talk about the Oroiru or Kuala Nika for, and I'll translate that. When the conversation comes to the matter of tales, the frog will say, let us keep that, don't talk about it. We will talk about it and if for us or for us, because and the reason why we will talk about it is because we first, we must let our people know that we cannot afford to go this way again. Never again should we allow a system where people take the resources of this country and steal the resources of this country, use the resources against the people, and at the same time, they want to continue in rulership. The second is that we as a party and your government, we as a party and your government must show the difference between us and the party and government that impoverished our nation. We must show that difference. Let me give you an example. In 2014, when oil was between $100 and $114 a barrel, the actual releases for capital for three ministries, power, works, and housing, then there were three separate ministries, was in total $99 billion. While transportation got $14 billion and agriculture got $15 billion, I'm talking about actual releases, not budgeted, actual releases, what they actually got. Now let's compare that with capital releases to the same ministries in 2017, when all prices were between $50 and $60 a barrel, $415 billion for power, works, and housing, $415 billion, $80 billion for transportation, $65 billion for agriculture, totaling $560 billion in a time when we are earning at least 50% less than we were earning in 2014. What is the reason why this is possible? This is possible because if you do not steal the resources of the people, you can spend it on the projects that concern the people. It's as simple as that. If you are not stealing the money, you will spend it on the right things. And this is what we have seen. This is what we have seen. When the president introduced it, when he insisted that the TSA must be done, we suddenly discovered that we actually could see for ourselves how much money was available in the system and so much money was available. We dug up the money from everywhere and we found that this money was available. I want to say that this same government that spent $139 billion, $139 billion only on all of the, on a Greek power, works, and housing, transport, etc. Between January 2015 and the elections, the sum of $100 billion in cash and $289 million altogether, about $100 billion, $289 million in cash was released and spent, shared. This sum of money was in excess of the amount of money that was spent on power, works, and housing, on transport. And this is the point we are making, that there is no country in the world and we must know this, there is no country in the world that will allow its resources to be plundered in the way our own resources are plundered and expect to be economically and expect to be economically viable. It's not possible. Nigeria is unlike any other country because of the level of corruption that was perpetrated. We must stop that corruption. And that is why, that's why we are so committed. When you fight corruption the way we are fighting corruption, corruption is going to fight back. The system will fight back. You will find the fight back is taking place everywhere. It's taking place on social media. It's taking place everywhere. But we are determined. And this is the reason why you listen to the stories of these young people. When you listen to the stories of the vulnerable, the disabled, and all of these people, these are the people for whom we are responsible. These are the people that we have, who voted for us. We must ensure that we defend their rights. It is in defense of their rights. It is in the defense of the rights of these people that we will put everything out to make sure that those who have been taking the resources of this country are made to pay for it. I'll just give you one last example. Three billion US dollars was lost to something called the Strategic Alliance Contracts in NNPC. Three billion US dollars. The people simply took the oil and never paid back. Now, the same three billion dollars, the Minister of Finance sat with us at a meeting of the economic management team. And we're proposing, in fact, right now that has already been, because three billion dollars is about a trillion Naira. We are now proposing the following roads for the same three billion Naira. Abuja Kaduna Kano Road, Second Niger Bridge, Enugu Potakot Road, East Wed Road, Shagamo Rebini Road, Kano Maiduguri Road, Abuja Lafia Akuanga Kefi Road, and Lagos Abel Kuta, the old road. All for the same three billion. That is why the criminal looting of this country cannot be allowed to continue. And those who did it must be held to account. Today, we earned 50 percent less than five years ago, and we're investing several times more. In 2017, we spent 1.3 trillion on capital, the largest in the history of this country, despite earning 50 percent less. The majority of our people depend on the integrity of those who govern them, because they don't have a voice. They are far too poor, in many cases far too vulnerable to be able to see anything for themselves. It's a historic duty as a party and as a government to provide for all of them, to be a voice for them, to make the sacrifices that are necessary, even where those sacrifices are costly. We must make those sacrifices for them. That is why I'm so pleased that the government of President Buhari has chosen the path of the people, to stand with the people, to be with the people. We are not an elite government. We have chosen to take the side of the people and we'll remain taking the side of the people of this country. Again, let me commend the man for whom we are gathered, Ashwajubola Metsinugu, a man who has been known time and time again for his battles for the people of this country, beginning here in Lagos State, all over the southwest and for the entire nation. I want to commend him for his resilience and for sticking to his principles as a fighter for the people of this country. On our part as a government and for the rest of us, I believe that the best times for our country are here to come, the future of our country is bright. Day by day, step by step, we're going in the right direction. Our country is getting better and better every day. Thank you very much. God bless you.