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Dear Friends,
Each year, we get closer to recognizing Juneteenth (June 19) as a federal holiday - as of 2021, almost all U.S. states recognize this day celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people as a holiday. Several states have now designated it a paid leave holiday. Juneteenth, originating in the city of Galveston, commemorates the 1865 emancipation of enslaved people in Texas.
On Saturday, June 19, Baltimore-based multimedia artist and Shaping the Past fellow Ada Pinkston will be in Emancipation Square Park at Lincoln Park Drive NE, for her new public participatory performance Empty Pedestals. Pinkston and two other artists - Alisha B. Wormsley of Pittsburgh and Free Egunfemi Bangura of Richmond - will have their work in the scope of Shaping the Past featured in the bay window of The Corner at Whitman-Walker along R Street. Throughout the month of June, we are collaborating with are partners there to spotlight these three fellows from the North America-wide project, which features works by activists, artists, and collectives from across the USA, Canada, Mexico, and Germany.
Between June 21 and July 4, we also present the film program Past as Process, curated by Berlin-based filmmaker and scholar Karina Griffith for Shaping the Past. Past as Process is a program of nine films that trouble the notion of fixed histories. The series explores how the Gestalt of history is not a figure, it is a process of configuration. This process of shaping the past is sculptural, artistic, and creative, which is why film lends itself so well to our understanding of time and memory.
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