Flux Projects produces temporary public art projects that connect Atlanta artists and audiences through the creative power of place. Their next event begins Saturday, Juneteenth, with Charmaine Minifield’s “Remembrance as Resistance: Preserving Black Narratives.” This project honors the more than 800 recently discovered unmarked graves in the African American Burial Grounds of Atlanta’s Historic Oakland Cemetery. It also celebrates the Ring Shout, a traditional African American worship, and gathering practice. Artist and activist Charmaine Minniefield joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes to talk about the project and how it was delayed a year due to the pandemic.
Interview Highlights:
About the Ring Shout ritual:
“A Ring Shout was the gathering of Africans, on this side of the water during enslavement. We would gather in a circle and would do call-and-response, singing and uplifting our voices together. We used the floors of our gathering spaces, which were called ‘Praise Houses’ as our collective and communitive drum,” said Minnifield. She continued, “So despite of this effort to dismantle community, we found community together and despite the differences of our cultural origins, we found a way to communicate through rhythm and movement and it unified us.”
How “Remembrance as Resistance” demonstrates African cultural memory:
“We retained our African identity through our cultural expression as ancestral memory, that alone was resistance. The resistance that we are demonstrating is against the erasure of the memory of an entire generation of our citizens in the city. And that erasure is being corrected by remembering them,” said Minnifield.
