Quantum Negress Tantras (QNT)

 Quantum Negress Tantras (QNT) is a Negress witchery opus in progress embedding movement based ritual technologies with video processing, a-capella vocalization with electronic processing, channeling a poetic grimoire and other techniques to transmute Black intersectional trauma into the energy of radical freedom—love. 

 QNT began as a desire to heal my Black baby grandmother from the trauma of having been left by her white mother--whose husband also happened to have been white-- in a shoebox in a dark closet, later rescued by the Black family housekeeper.  I have been conducing solo performance research for the past 4 years.  So far I’ve taken audiences through the interactive process of using garments to cover their faces while being led through a guided visualization of my baby grandmother’s experience, dancing a journey through time to join and comfort her, inviting audience to write themselves life permission slips after reminders of their mortality, and looped acapella compositions sending tantric reiki through time to comfort the child.  As a way to transcend my lived experiences with the vestiges of slavery & colonization I have been writing spells to compile a grimoire.  

I will evolve the material into a live time based ensemble performance ritual that incorporates all the previous methods-- audience interaction, truth telling, polyphonic grimoire singing, chanting, dance, live video and sound processing--for healing and transcending anti-Blackness, colonization and Earth disrespect.  Artifacts from the performance will also stand on their own.  The grimoire will grow into a manuscript for publication.  The video and sound that is processed live will be recorded and edited for multi channel installation in gallery and other settings.  We will archive the process and various iterations of the performance in order to historicize it and make it a part of the canon.

This page is dedicated to performance research process for birthing Quantum Negress Tantras.  It has two Sections--Video Processes & Time Based Live Art.  Some of the performance research for this piece took place in ritual environments which were not recorded.