.break .dance

".break .dance is an ongoing research pocket opened by Marisa Parham, with support from the irLhumanities workgroup.

A pocket is a place. It is also a position. A pocket is a place for experimentation in form and content. It is also a kind of space, a thing behind a thing, the thing you hold on to, just in case. It is the ephemeral non-space between thought and its elaboration or instrumentation, a tiny universe of intellectual possibility.

.break .dance is a time-based web experience opened in response to a prompt for a Small Axe Archipelagos issue, launched by Alex Gil and Kaiama Glover, and guest-edited by Jessica Marie Johnson. In thinking through and against the machineries of commercial interface efficacy, this pocket intentionally shows its material and discursive seams. Rooted in a sense of anarchival play, it is designed for multiple engagements, changes over time, and assumes no one will take the same path through. This pocket is a living document, last updated on 7/04/2019. In its interface and experimental performances, .break .dance begs temporal patience and playful engagement with digital space. Here, touching and playing and looking are important to thinking. [. . .]

In honor of the many ways Black diasporic peoples use memory, performance, and speculative prayer to recode time and space, .break .dance begins with a cosmogram of Kongo origin, tendwa kia nza-n’ Kongo, the four movements of the sun. Cosmograms are two-dimensional figures that tie the cardinal directions to the sky’s map — sun, moon, stars. The tendwa reminds us of how our simplest navigational moments are always multi-dimensional, embodied, spiritual, psychic, affective: one foot in front of the other can also mean face toward the wind, a turn east toward the sun, or following the North Star to freedom." -- from .break .dance, About