This project is a celebration, an invitation, and a meditation. We live on occupied lands and justice requires we all intentionally shift our relationship to time and space. Or shifts will be forced upon us.

The Detroit trash incinerator has been the site of 30+ years of environmental justice and community struggle. See Courtney Wise Randolph’s story for more context about these struggles. Let’s celebrate what the facility’s closing can mean to a city that has long been overburdened by industrial toxicity.

We invite you to meditate on fresh air — its scarcity, its possibility and its deliciousness. And we celebrate with Detroit’s air — molecules that can vibrate a little freer without having to carry the burden of the smells, sounds and particles of the region’s waste.  In this appreciation, we invite you to slow down and touch down onto other time frames besides the incessant rush that causes our breathing to shallow and our stress to escalate.  While the political victory can be claimed by the community as a whole we translated our celebration to an intimate ceremony as sometimes that which we hold sacred needs to be held closely. We invite you to realign your relationship with the natural world acknowledging however– small or large, old or new– it shows up for you.

Breathing

Inviting the blessings of our ancestors “Find a stone that resonates with you. We invite you to take some deep breaths with a stone family member.

Incinerator

A visual lyrical journey towards fresh air and community power “Remember how it feels when you breathe a sigh of relief.”

CREDITS:

A ceremonial collaboration by Owólabi Aboyade, Giizhigad, Bridget Quinn

Visuals by Giizhigad

The Beast is Dead lyrics by Will See (Man on Fire EP). Original song can be found here.

Thanks to all those humans and spirits who participated in the ritual(s) surrounding the creation of this process/ media.

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***Owólabi Aboyade is a father, poet, MC, essayist and portal hopper. Owólabi crafts portals to holistic liberation, constructing anthems, essays, care circles, and international delegations as mutative forms of exchange. He brings 20 years of cultural facilitation and organization practice focused on environmental justice, disability justice, and New Afrikan sovereignties against material and spiritual modes of colonization.

***Giizhigad [Christy B.] [she/her/they/them] is an Anishinaabe artist, filmmaker & cultural producer based in Detroit. As a storyteller through the main medium of film, she is building a practice of filmmaking that actively embodies liberation by utilizing a creative process that is participatory, organic and emergent in how the stories and people on the other side of the lens are in active engagement, dialogue, dance and solidarity with the creative concepts conveyed.

***Bridget Quinn is an artist, activist and experimental nature therapy guide descended from European settlers. Through earth-centred creative practices that include ritual, object making, and performance she tunes her attention to the sacredness of everyday life within nearby ecologies. She invites friends to sing in stormwater tunnels, share meals on traffic islands and to connect with all that lives below what the cognitive mind can “know” into the fertile ground of imagination and embodied experience.