Site-specific installation at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance! (BAAD!) created in collaboration with Alethea Pace
2022
Image credit: Whitney Browne

Here goes the neighborhood… is a multimedia performance installation. Created and directed by Alethea Pace, the performance features Alexander Diaz, Irungu Mutu and Alethea herself as well as the accompanying installation, created in collaboration with Katherine Miranda, which features over 20 people from across New York City expressing their memories through movement. Anchored in the history of the Bronx, the work conjures memories born from both turmoil and resilience and reminds us of the wealth of knowledge we hold in our bodies, memories, and histories. Including movement, text, video, photography and audience interaction, this work is an offering to the Bronx and an incitement to dream of radical visions for the future.

The installation consists of four altars fashioned from a variety of objects such as 3D printed milk crates, faux ivy, votive candles, wooden boxes, statues housed at BAAD! as well as empty Hennessy and Modelo bottles. Featured in these altars are television monitors displaying participants from across NYC leading Alethea on oral history walks through their neighborhoods - sharing place-based stories and memories. Encouraged to consider sites of meaning, memory, ritual, offering or change as part of their sharing, participants were filmed as they performed site-specific movement responses. Each altar was influenced and meticulously created to reflect the memories and stories of the sharers in the videos. Through these altars, we create space to remember and mourn what has been lost. Viewers were encouraged to leave their own memories behind in our ‘confessional booth'.

Bronx participants include Arthur Aviles, Rodrick Bell, Malcolm-x Betts, Joan Bradford, Alexander Diaz, Ana "Rokafella" Garcia, Nic Kay and Richard Rivera.