REVERY ALONE

05/10/20

From Lise Haller Bagessen & Rebirth Poetry Ensemble

REVERY ALONE

From: Lise Ross
Subject: QUARANTINE TIMES SUNDAY MAY 10: REVERY ALONE
Date: May 5, 2020 at 9:43 AM CDT
To: Stella Brown
Cc: Emily Lansana


Dear,

I am sending you this in response to a chain e-mail I have received several times over the last weeks and months. Normally I would have simply ignored it, or procrastinated until it was too embarrassing to continue… but I figured that now as our quarantine days turn to weeks,maybe months, and hours feel like days and vice versa, perhaps time limits and deadlines could be (should be) slack? What a time to be a slacker!

The poem I’ve chosen, I think, is timeless anyway, and has meant different things to me at different times in my life. I first saw it painted in a giant cursive on an Amsterdam gable. I would pass it on my bike on the way to my studio. At that time, I remember finding the verse a little saccharine, but somehow it lingered. Like good poetry, good lyrics, it could reflect many different moods—a poem for all seasons, as it turned out. Later, after moving to the US, I went on a pilgrimage of sorts to the Dickinson homestead in Amherst (MA) where my son is attending college. On that snowy April morning the house was closed, so I instead roamed the garden. I thought about Marx’s truism that “the lowliest of architects is greater than the best of bees,” and wondered if we could build a world with only architects, now that the bee colonies are collapsing—or if we will have to resort to the dream architecture of Dickinson’s pansexual nature lyricism to survive? Recently, in February, I started working on a big textile piece in my studio titled [REVERY ALONE]. I at first imagined this big piece of ersatz nature to be a meditation on the solitude of humans as the 5th mass extinction progresses and the natural world recedes. By the time I finished the piece, Chicago was under lockdown and the idea of [REVERY ALONE] took on new meanings and immediacies.

Today, the sky above Chicago is a misty blue, with a promise of the hazy days of summer. The city quiet and the birds louder; it is easy to imagine the prairie that used to be here. I have attached the poem and a picture of my piece below. The studio now feels like a wild frontier.

I send you this message in the hope that this quarantine will prove an opportunity to roam the prairies of your mind, and I hope that soon we all will get to play in the sunshine again!

Till then, take care,

Lise

www.lisehallerbaggesen.org

To Make A Prairie (1755)

To make a prairie it takes a clover and a bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Lise Haller Baggesen, LIPSTICK BRUTALISM NO. 10 [REVERY ALONE] 2020

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From: Emily Lansana
Subject: Fwd: Reborn video
Date: May 4, 2020 at 9:27:04 PM CDT
To: Lise Ross

Hello:

Please see the zoom video recording of Reborn reading their group poem, Quarantine Academy.

Thanks,

Emily

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pandemic visions

Clippers glide across the unkempt ocean
of my hair, nappy nest sprouting like autumn leaves
Raymond’s precise palms sculpt majesty
from mayhem of no-cut months

Clippers glide across the Staples Center
Searching for the golden orb
Passed thru their building countless times
yet never calling out their names

Class ends & I glide across campus
in my usual daze, blasting DAMN
Daring a hate-filled gaze to look
at me sideways. Don’t mess with my day

Normal don’t exist. Routine my reverie.
Pandemonium gon pass, reveal its brevity.

Nile Lansana, April 2020

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Rebirth Poetry Ensemble was founded in 2008 as a literary organization committed to nurturing artistic development and social justice in young people. They welcome students from across the City of Chicago.
Rebirth has been recognized for their work in venues across the city and nationally. Performance highlights include: the Art Institute of Chicago, the South Side Community Art Center, the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University, and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, and collaboration with Deeply Rooted Dance Theater.

Rebirth has featured an award winning slam team at the high school and middle school level. They were honored to represent Chicago as winners of Louder than a Bomb and on the final stage of Brave New Voices at the Kennedy Center. Rebirth also includes a middle school ensemble, Reborn. Reborn has also performed across Chicago and has won the Half-Pint Poetics elementary poetry slam several times.

Poets coached by Rebirth have received many honors including the Gwendolyn Brooks City Wide Slam Champion and Youth Poetry awards, the Chuck D Lyrical Terrorist award, and scholarships to First Wave at University of Wisconsin Madison, the New School, Oberlin and Stanford University.
Rebirth is coached by Emily Hooper Lansana and avery r young.


Lise Haller Baggesen lives and works in Chicago, and is originally from Denmark. Her hybrid practice includes writing, installation, performative, sartorial, and textile-based work. Baggesen is an alumna of Billedskolen, Copenhagen (1989-91), AKI in Enchede (BFA PTDW 1992-95), the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (1996/97), SAIC (MAVCS 2011-13), and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2017). Her book and multi-media project Mothernism (2013) toured extensively, staking out the “Mother-shaped Hole in Contemporary Art Discourse” at (amongst others) The Poor Farm (WI), The Contemporary Austin (TX), VOX Populi (PA), EFA and A.I.R. Gallery (NY).It was reviewed in Art21, KQED, and Hyperallergic and spawned the international symposia The Mothernists I+II in Rotterdam (2015) and Copenhagen (2017).

Lise Haller Baggesen worked on this piece with Stella Brown, the Quarantine Times Sunday editor for the Co-Prosperity Programming Council. Each week, Stella works with a member of the council to share a commissioned creative response to the pandemic.