#colon:y

[chukwumaa]

E. Jane, chukwumaa, 2015

 Video Portrait.

[e-janestudio]

Install Shot (Airborne Leaflet Campaign, Colon:y), 2012

(c) E. Jane

[colon-y]

"YOU CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH SLEEP" from the Airborne Leaflet Campaign, new media installation by COLON:Y (Wilmer Wilson IV and chukwumaa)

[e-janestudio]

HURR POEM Analysis

There was something balletic about the way the ratchet strap was flung over chukwumaa's back as he hung the words on his body. As he biked down a hill with three dimensional cardboard letters on his back, he addressed our physical connection with poetry, and language, in general.  He made the concept tangible. Watching him ride on with the words made them stay with us, and linger on long after. 

chukwumaa performed HURR POEM in front of the D.C. Barber Center in Washington, DC. It was language in motion, as the poem was created in the process of performance. The poem constructed through the riding experience was "LEFT HURR IN HURR SO HURR NO HURR."

If "SO HURR" was the penultimate line, then "NO HURR" acts as the end. This end was theatrical in nature; within it, chukwumaa becomes the hero personified and then destroys our notions of the hero, as one who truly saves the day. A description of the scene: the "NO" hangs off chukwumaa's shoulder for a moment, then the letters crash to the ground. He rips them apart and the language dissolves. All that is left in the end is HURR. HURR is kept. The rest is ripped to shreds. Then, he bends over and carries HURR on his back, like a saved body. Like HURR savior, he carries her away on his bike. In the end though, even HURR is left in the pile -- unsalvaged. He pours water onto the cardboard letters, as if putting out a fire or adding to the destruction, and HURR is destroyed with the rest. 

chukwumaa's use of "urban" (as the hegemony says) vernacular via the word "HURR" acts as a way to complicate the poem’s meaning, or create a space for interpretation. "HURR" can refer to "her," "hair," or "here". I would like to believe he was constructing a love poem. Still, it could very well be a poem about the ways we interact with hair, both on our body and after it is cut off (explaining why the performance's home base was a barber shop). The poem could also be about inhabiting a space, the loss of space, non-spaces and existing in general. A written out interpretation or translation of the poem could be, "I left H(ere), I'm in H(ere), I'm so H(ere), there's no H(ere)." 

No matter how the poem is interpreted, its unifying theme is loss, which is enacted in the final scene. chukwumaa destroys the language itself by tearing the cardboard letters apart and pouring water on them to ensure they decompose. 

[mikahli]

My friend Thai and I are going to see Chuk and Wilmer's installation today.