JEFFERSON PINDER: FIRE AND MOVEMENT

Fire and Movement is a newly commissioned public performance by interdisciplinary Chicago-based artist Jefferson Pinder. The artist and a trained group of performers will retrace the route and narrative of the 1917 Camp Logan Uprising (also known as the “Houston Riot” or “Camp Logan Mutiny”), one of Houston’s most complicated and often-misrepresented historical events. The uprising saw African American soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the 24th United States Infantry revolt and attempt to march on the city after experiencing abuse from white citizens and the police in Jim Crow-era Houston.

Fire and Movement will take place on July 11, 2019 beginning at 7:00 pm, featuring Pinder and a group of performers who will embark on foot on a four-mile journey across the city that retraces the path of the soldiers’ movements according to transcripts and archival maps. Their journey will begin near the intersection of Detering Street and Washington Avenue, which is in the area of the original location of the 24th Infantry’s camp and was once a predominantly African American community that is currently affected by rising gentrification and cultural displacement.

Through a series of drills and stylized movements using period-specific rifles, the group will maneuver their way from Washington Ave. onto Dallas St. and into the 4th Ward, concluding with a performance inside the African American Library at the Gregory School, 1300 Victor Street, at approximately 9:30 pm.

In his work, Pinder often explores the tangled representations, visual tropes, and myths surrounding historical events. Fire and Movement is part of Pinder’s national tour, Red Summer Road Trip (May-July 2019), that takes its title from a term coined by author and Civil Rights activist James Weldon Johnson to refer to the deadly race riots that took place during the summer of 1919. Red Summer will be enriched through community conversations in Houston, and across the South, as the artist travels from Illinois to Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, presenting performances and events that revisit this significant part of U.S. history.

View Fire and Movement Brochure

View/download full press release (pdf)

Jefferson Pinder’s Fire and Movement is commissioned and presented by DiverseWorks in collaboration with the African American Library at the Gregory School, Buffalo Bayou Partnership, and College Memorial Park Cemetery. The performance is organized by DiverseWorks Assistant Curator, Ashley DeHoyos with accompanying outreach programs organized by Community Engagement and Project Coordinator, M’kina Tapscott. The artist has developed the work in collaboration with Drill Specialist Joseph Lefthand Losinski (United States Marine Corps) and dramaturge Vinod Hopson.

About the Artist

Jefferson Pinder has produced highly praised 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. Focusing primarily with 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’s work has been featured in numerous group and solo shows including exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, Showroom Mama in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and The Phillips Collection and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Pinder was included in the 2016 Shanghai Biennale and his work has been presented at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2016, he was awarded a United States Artist’s Joyce Fellowship Award in the field of performance and was a 2017 John S. Guggenheim Fellow. Currently, Pinder is a Professor of Sculpture and the Dean of Faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.