Rust College – Doxey Auditorium, Holly Springs, MS
The past is always present in the now, driving communal decisions, policymaking, and stories. Perhaps that fact is nowhere near as pressing as it is in locales recovering from war. The City of Holly Springs boasts over 50 Antebellum sites, inclusive of two HBCUs. We could say that the town itself is a museum. But a museum is curated, organized around storytelling that invites the patron into an almost physical experience of the object. It is performed, lived. This missing context is accidentally turning our beloved objects and buildings into a pile of things and making it difficult to create an inclusive future. Working with my artist collective, Earthseed, we can began to ask ourselves the following questions: When does a hoard become a collection? When does a hoarder become a curator? When does a real estate investment become a time capsule? When does a museum become a closet full of forgotten items? What role can performance inquiry play in stitching together routes of exchange and understanding between objects, between silences?
