Join CAMHLAB artist-in-residence Marlon Hall as he gives insight into his process and what he has planned for his week at CAMH sharing Cultural Amnesia Therapy. Culture is the sum total of the rituals, practices, and values of a people. Amnesia is a partial or complete memory loss due to physical, emotional, or mental trauma. The trauma of life can dismember the mind from the body and the body from the soul of a people. There is an amnesia of a culture that domesticates dreams and deafens the inner voice. This type of amnesia limits an otherwise daring life of reasonable risks and unreasonable hope that can evolve what it means to be human. In this manner, the cultural trauma of COVID-19 can create cultural amnesia that makes us forget why, what, and who we are.
In the midst of a pandemic’s trauma and on the campus of the newly renovated Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Artist, Fulbright Specialist, and Visual Anthropologist Marlon Hall will develop a three-part cultural architecture with multi sensory room for a triangular shaped series of healing labs for the mind, body, and soul with: the rituals of music on November 30th featuring an improvisational music performance conducted by Grammy Award Winning Drummer Chris Dave that remembers mind to body, the practice of movement on December 1st with a yoga class scored by a micro-orchestra and taught by Robert Boustany and Nancy Sheridan Perry that remembers the body to soul, and the values of a meal featuring The Black Man Project that remembers the soul back to the body through an intentionally designed and socially distanced right of passage.
Filmed by an all woman cohort of filmmakers and photographers, we will grow to remember who we are at the core through music, reimagine what we can contribute to the whole through movement, and learn how we can deepen our values at a curated salon meal.
About the Artist
Marlon Hall is a visual anthropologist, U.S. Department of Cultural Affairs Fulbright Specialist, a Tulsa Arts Fellow, and the Greenwood Art Project Anthropologist in residence studying the 1921 Massacre of Black Wallstreet with lead artist Rick Lowe. He has 20+ years’ experience in community film-making, cultural architecture, and visual anthropology with a proven track record of leading organizations, teams, and creative projects from end-to-end to include: films, creative learning ecologies, social sculptures, and community art projects. His life intention is to cultivate human potential in ways that are whimsically beautiful and positively willful.