How to Build a Fire: Freedom
August 30, 2019
8pm
STORYTELLERS:
TBA
What is freedom? How do you win it? How do you hold it? Do you dream it for all of humanity or only for you and yours? What does it mean at its most small and personal? What does it mean for the world? Are we watching its possibly-irreparable loss? Are we supporting or fighting that loss? Do we need to be this serious? Maybe we just want to talk about that free mezcal and ginger drink we were given in Kensington last week. What’s your freedom?
August 20th 1619 is the day enslaved Africans were first brought to the colonies that would eventually become the United States. More than 20 kidnapped individuals were brought to Jamestown that day, making August 20th 1619 the start of the American system of slavery, the system which enabled this country to build itself, to build its wealth, to become a global power.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Journalism, proposed and developed The 1619 Project, a New York Times Magazine examination of the legacy of African enslavement in the United States.
This anniversary inspired many possible themes for the launch of How to Build a Fire, Season 6. We could have gone with: Bondage, Possessions, Foundations, Ancestors, Passages. In the end, we chose “Freedom,” for all the possible reasons. We didn’t ask our beautiful, full-hearted storytellers to tell stories directly related to the birth of chattel slavery in the US, but we did let them know it was that particular suppurating wound that inspired our theme selection. Just as the impact of slavery underlies every seemingly beautiful, innocent, un-slavery-like moment in this country, we ask our August audience to hold the reminder of this 400-year anniversary as undercurrent/context for every story told.
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Created five years ago, How to Build a Fire is a storytelling series. Each month, a diverse group of individuals share personal narratives centered around a theme. Their stories weave together an illustration of the human experience. How to Build a Fire takes place at Open Source Gallery — a welcoming, nurturing, intimate, safe environment a participant-driven art initiative that provides space, community and conceptual context for creative play and critical commentary.
Every year, poet and event founder Terence Degnan partners with Open Source Gallery to select two new co-hosts of HTBAF. This year’s hosts are Christina Marks and Stacie Evans.
Stacie dreams big and takes up every inch of her space even when so many external forces are determined to make her smaller, quieter, less visible. She was born only eight short years after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. She met James Baldwin in Paris … which is an embarrassing story she may tell at HTBAF one day. She writes a lot. She loves fruit. That’s maybe enough to know for now.
Christina Marks is always trying to grow stuff. Arts funding, tomatoes, friends in new places, and a healthy distance from capitalism and self doubt. Her great joys are sharing good food with better people, and making big messes in pursuit of beautiful substantial things. One day she will meet a corgi and move to a commune to become the true Birkenstock wearing Permaculture queen she was born to be. In the meantime, she’ll be trying to figure out how to fit more into a 4×4 raised garden bed and proudly hosting HTBAF.
