FIRE AND MOVEMENT REVISITED
WITH JEFFERSON PINDER, VINOD HOPSON, MEKEVA MCNEIL, MICH S, AND ANTHONY SUBER
In honor of the upcoming 103rd anniversary of the 1917 Camp Logan Uprising, DiverseWorks Curator Ashley DeHoyos reunites with Chicago-artist Jefferson Pinder and Houston artists Vinod Hopson, Mekeva McNeil, Mich S, and Anthony Suber for a conversation and second look at the 2019 presentation of Fire and Movement on the streets of Houston.
Fire and Movement, 2019, 2 channel HD video, 9:24 (view full credits)
Fire and Movement is a public performance that was commissioned by DiverseWorks and presented on the streets of Houston and the African American Library at the Gregory School on July 11, 2019. The work is part of Jefferson Pinder’s Red Summer Road Trip and DW’s 2019-2020 History is Contemporary programming. In Fire and Movement, Pinder and a trained group of 13 artists marched the route and performed the narrative of the 1917 Camp Logan Uprising (also known as the “Houston Riot” or “Camp Logan Mutiny”). The Uprising was a response by African American soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the 24th United States Infantry who revolted and attempted to march on the city after experiencing abuse from white citizens and the police in Jim Crow-era Houston.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Jefferson Pinder has produced performance-based and multidisciplinary work for over a decade. He received a BA in Theatre and MFA in Mixed Media from the University of Maryland and studied at the Asolo Theatre Conservatory in Sarasota, FL. Pinder’s work provokes commentary about race and struggle. Primarily using neon, found objects, and video, he investigates identity through the most dynamic circumstances and materials. From uncanny video portraits associated with popular music to durational work that puts the black body in motion, his work examines physical conditioning that reveals an emotional response. Pinder currently serves as a Professor of Sculpture and the Dean of Faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Vinod Hopson is an artist, storyteller, and non-profit arts administrator. His project, Those Who Desire, explores the lost, often difficult histories of the city of Houston through performance and cartography. This takes the form of bus and walking tours. While the civic and tourist industries take great pleasure in touting the city’s diversity, the stories of those diverse communities and their importance to the city are overlooked, or worse, willfully ignored. Hopson researches and engages those stories, stitching them together to form a more fully understood and appreciated Houston. Hopson was the recipient of a 2016 Idea Fund Grant for Those Who Desire. He was born in New Jersey and has lived in Houston since 1996.
Mekeva McNeil is a theatre artist and educator. Born and raised in Houston, Mekeva began her studies in theatre at The High School for Performing and Visual Arts where she is now a theatre instructor. She went on to study theatre at the University of Houston and later moved to New York where she received her MFA in Directing from The Actor’s Studio Drama School at Pace University. She is intrigued by creating work that explores the language, movement, and beauty of what it means to traverse this sentient existence through space and time.
Mich S is a native Houstonian, who began his career as a Community Facilitator at Ecclesia Church in the Montrose Community in 2009. It was there he learned the value of community impact as well as ways to mobilize community in support of one another. As an artist and curator, S has co-curated and produced There Is Enough For Everyone, A Lot A Land, Everyone at Blaffer, and most recently, Pardon Me, which seeks to unite local perspectives for the future to call and pardon our ancestors on either side of the history of the Camp Logan Uprising/Mutiny of 1917.
Anthony Suber is a Texas native working and living in the South. Suber studied art at an early age graduating from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Houston, receiving a BFA in painting. As a painter, sculptor, and educator, his work focuses on historical references, spirituality, and the contemporary African American experience through the lens of his personal experiences of religion and social relationships in a post-modern society. Channeling his love for history and art historical reference, Suber works primarily with emblematic connections, chronological references, and narrative “stills”. In doing so, Suber seeks to capture a part of the human experience that allows the viewer to participate in the compositional construct.