Autumn Knight: “Find Out Where They At”
Thursday, March 28th, 6:30PM
Find Out Where They Atuses text, sound, and sculpture to think about exodus as it exists in the psyche and the residue this type of departure leaves in those left behind. What is revealed in the trail of slime in a drawn out departure or in the particles of dust from a hasty escape? This performance is curious about the mechanisms or vehicles of both forced and autonomous exodus -from vast bodies of water to deadened eyes. Find Out Where They At is considering these questions: How do we, in secret, communicate the moment of exodus? How do we keep the forces of oppression and violation from following us into the space of exodus? How will they know that we are gone? The title is derived from a line within Douglas Turner Ward’s play Day of Absence wherein a town wakes up to find that all the black people have disappeared without a trace.
Autumn Knight is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, video and text. Her performance work has been on view at various institutions including DiverseWorks, Project Row Houses, Blaffer Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Crystal Bridges Museum, and Krannert Art Museum. Knight has been an artist in residence with Denniston Hill (2017) and most recently Triangle Arts Association (2019).
About Denniston Hill
Situated in the Southern Catskills on a 200-acre campus, Denniston Hill (DH) was established on the conviction that it is imperative for artists of all disciplines, backgrounds and career stages to have time and space for reflection and research. The organization was founded in 2004 by a group of primarily LGBTQ artists, architects, and writers of color. We are an artist-centered interdisciplinary arts organization that fosters an inclusive, practical discourse about the aesthetics, function, ethics andmeaning of contemporary artistic practice. Our mission is guided by the principle that creative and critical voices are important in shaping a just, equitable society.
About the Thematic Program, Exodus
While the narration of the Exodus often calls to mind the utopic moment of fulfillment upon reaching the Promised Land, the real protagonists of the story are the first generation of ex-slaves who made the imaginative leap to reject bondage and then spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. The Exodus story finds new resonance today in a world defined by homelessness, both literal and existential, on an epic scale. Every day we witness scenes of mass dispossession as millions around the globe flee war, natural calamity, ethnic cleansing, and economic hardship. In the current moment of sensory overload we are reminded that the Exodus was never simply a geographic journey, it was always ontological – a journey to liberate human consciousness – and this has been ongoing for millennia. For the next four years, Denniston Hill dedicates its program to the Exodus and the exit from the fantasy of security into the reality of the mirage. In particular, DH seeks to investigate the legacy of slavery and the politics of race and gender in relation to the current wave of cognitive confusion. At stake is a full appreciation of the agency of the enslaved as an aesthetic and philosophical resource for the journey ahead. Exodus calls on artists, writers, architects, intellectuals, and activists to take advantage of this moment to interweave work, action, and intellect to re-imagine an engaged withdrawal through disobedience, intemperance, the right of resistance, and miracle.