BLOC
Chapel Hill, North Carolina USA
A trans-disciplinary social practice and community-centered project linking poetry, movement, soundscape, and visual installation.
In partnership with the Marian Cheek Jackson Center and UNC’s Department of Geography and Environment, Culture Mill worked with UNC faculty and students to examine oral history archives from Chapel Hill’s historically Black Northside neighborhood. Drawing on voices articulating community flourishing and imaginations past, present and future, artists rendered archival fragments into an artistic map of a single city block at the threshold of Northside, downtown Chapel Hill, and Carrboro.
Installation artist: R Stein Wexler
Commissioning agency: Carolina Performing Arts, North Carolina Arts Council, and Durham Arts Council
Collaborators: Marion Cheek Jackson Center (community organizing and
oral histories), Tommy Noonan (Culture Mill, initiator and choreography), Dr.
Betsy Olson (UNC Geography), Cortland Gilliam (poetry), Caitlyn Swett
(sound).
