COLLAGE BY ChE
#TakinBackSunday: A #DignityInProcess Queer Black Church Series:
“In the midst of oppression remaining awake becomes a powerful resistance tool and a precursor to contemplation.” ~Barbara A. Holmes, excerpt from Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church
#TakinBackSunday is about stayin’ woke. Facilitated by the gender expansive aesc(th)etic duo, Black Moon Monastics, this Trans-denominational service is an artistic act of Queering Black* Church. Celebrating intersectional Queer/Trans/Two-Spirit/Gender-Nonconforming Life, we reconnect with ritual routes of Indigenous/Creole/Afro-Diasporic* origins. A #DignityInProcess Folk-medicine circle series woven with Black Feminist scripture, Indigenous Creatrix storytelling, somatic-centering, Freedom Song ciphers, and ancestor reverence—our meditation is for Liberation! We conjure healing justice by honoring the use of sanctuary as site for both sacred and social movements. We touch Afro-futurities, bending space-time as we rise in the counterclockwise shuffles and claps of Ring Shout processions. Part participatory performance, part Freedom School, part Shout House, we lean into Afro-Indigenous cultural cosmologies where the community process to Create, steward Wisdom, and Conjure are One.
Simply, we embody the Living church of Queer Black* Magik.
Above: #TAKINBACKSUNDAY at Roots Weekend Jackson, Mississippi
About #TakinBackSunday Officiants:
BLACK MOON MONASTICS
Black Moon Monastics are a Queer Black Aesc(th)estic Sonic duo weaving Soul-Folk, roots & rhythms, healing harmonies, and ancestral incantations to Awaken all beings to Freedom F(l)ight. Reflecting soular light, these expansive extraterrestrials cross genre, time, and space, conjuring unapologetic Black Magik with austronomous audacity. Impossible to confine to traditional musical methodologies, these Black Fe Folk play cast iron skillets, gumbo pots, medicine jars with sticks & stones, igniting our bones. These contemplative conjurings subversively inspire prayerful processionals that mobilize the Invisibilized. Descending with Dignity, this interdisciplinary duet brings reverence for Blackness wherever they land. #MoonLanding2018 #RootToRise
Black Moon Monastics is the collective medicine of #DignityinProcess Artivist Director, ChE, and Director of Freedom Freequencies, kei slaughter.
Below: #TAKINBACKSUNDAY collages for #DignityInProcess Queer Black Church series by ChE
