North Philadelphia History Festival: "it be your own people"

The North Philadelphia History Festival (NPHF) is a cultural celebration of the African American and Puerto Rican communities in North Philadelphia. Across four days, historic sites along Ridge Avenue, North Broad Street and other locales will be transformed into living exhibits created by artists, historians, curators and other cultural workers. These multimedia projects and events will explore the emergence and impact of these communities in the 19th and 20th century.

PROJECTS:

it be your own people
Artist: muthi reed
Category: Video Installation
Location: Sorellina at the Divine Lorraine, 699 N. Broad St
Date & Time: Thursday, July 24th - Sunday, August 3rd

it be your own people is a cinematic assembly of reference materials contextualizing the love needed to thrive particular to people in a city called Philadelphia, and even more particular to Black North Philadelphians. We make a shrine for ourselves as descendants channeling the energy of those millions of Black folx who left the american South, fleeing the predetermined violence of that space. Traveling a calibrating sequencing of images and symbols, we generate a shrine for the lovers- my maternal Grandparents who met in the 1940s as temporary residents and newly immigrated UpSouth workers at the Divine Lorraine Hotel. Media materials are assembled, disassembled and assembled again to articulate the world of its subjects. The calibrating environment is created in collaboration with an ensemble of writers, family members, technicians and rhythm keepers. This work is a meditation of relationship, intervention, devotion, critical fabulation, chromotherapy, ecology, possibility, desire and difficulty.