Impulsive Acts: The Art of Community Healing

On the Continued Relevance of Audre Lorde's NEED

We NEED….to live with our lives

The UBUNTU artistic response group has chosen Audre Lorde’s NEED: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices as a performance and teaching tool to enter the ongoing conversation about silence, body, and the systemic infrastructure that creates and maintains violence against Black women.

Our collective reasoning for using NEED and our vision for its impact on our communities follows:

We NEED because Audre Lorde’s spirit empowers us to speak and affect change in our homes, neighborhoods and communities.

We NEED because our communities must engage in direct action that stops violence against women.

We NEED because women must stand in solidarity and sisterhood voicing our collective trauma.

We NEED because we must end the silence of violence.

We NEED because the idea of Black on Black violence is not relegated to knives, guns, and sometimes does not leave visible scars.

We NEED because Black communities can not flourish and thrive when Black women are victimized by the Black men we trust and love.

We NEED because we must create a world that is free of sexual violence and full of community accountability and a sustaining, transformative love.

We NEED because community can bridge the gap between victim and victor.

We NEED because we can empower and heal our communities.

We NEED because WE CAN NOT LIVE WITHOUT OUR LIVES!

So we challenge you as you participate in this workshop to see yourself, your own fears and your own responsibility. NEED was written and performed about the intimate and violent relationships between Black women and men. NEED examines the manifestations of sexual assault in Black women’s lives, but it calls all of us to recognize our own survival, our own silence, our own complicity, our own violence and our shared responsibility to create a world that honors us.

In solidarity,

UBUNTU Artistic Response Group

posted by lex @ 1:49 PM