Announcing AGITATE! Vol. 3 “Stories, Bodies, Movements” coming May 2021: Selections from Dreams as R-evolution by Coral Bijoux
When you want to enslave a people,
You steal the ability to dream.
And when you want to enslave a people,
You destroy the ability to dream.
And still, when you want slaves,
The master has to remember his place.
And the slave, hers.
And the slave, his.
And when you want to enslave a people,
You introduce a fear that is embedded in our darkest hours.
– Coral Bijoux, Dreams as R-evolution Artbook
In just a few weeks, AGITATE! will launch its third volume, Stories, Bodies, Movements, which explores storytelling as a praxis for justice. Collectively, the fifteen pieces that comprise this volume refuse any eagerness to predict the meanings and purposes of stories; they yearn, instead, to breathe beyond the suffocation of stale languages and frameworks of storytelling. The volume at once includes and troubles multiple genres including photography, visual art, essays, film, poetry, theater and scripts, interviews, letter exchanges, musical performance, and creative writing. In so doing, the stories, bodies, and movements whose energies infuse this volume insist on claiming a radical praxis of retelling.
In advance of the launch of Vol. 3, we share a sample of one of our pieces as a preview of the volume. We are thrilled to be sharing the entirety of the third volume with you soon! But in the meantime, we hope that this ‘teaser’ helps you get excited as we anticipate the release of Stories, Bodies, Movements.
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AGITATE!’s “Stories, Bodies, Movements” volume opens with Dreams as R-evolution by Coral Bijoux. Dreams as R-evolution—a visual art and single-use plastic installation of sculpture, drawings, and found objects—is an installation originally created in the University of KwaZulu Natal’s Westville campus plant nursery that now speaks to dreaming as a r-evolutionary act in an old colonial gallery, the IZIKO National Gallery in Cape Town. The project’s evolution gained momentum despite rain, wind, heat, storms, a tornado, lack of resources, and unrest until it finally erupted into a dream of Coral’s making—created from the relics of refuse sites filled to capacity with discarded single-use plastic. Through Dreams as R-evolution, Bijoux asks: Is it possible to imagine a different humanity—beyond the Colonial, Apartheid, Capitalist, Patriarchal mind? Is it possible to transform ourselves proactively or do we rely on pressure from external elements? (Unprecedented natural phenomena as a result of global warming, pandemics, extreme poverty as a result of war, greed and power struggles to access resources, for instance.) Who decides? Are we able to manage our own transformation? And to transform…from what to what? All of these questions reverberate through the ‘dreams’ space of Dreams as R-evolution. Bijoux reminds us that nothing should halt the ability to dream, as dreaming projects one into the future and is owned by the dreamer. The dreamscape is a place of power and possibility.
