Pappyshow in the Dark Time, My Love

“pappyshow in the dark time, my love” is a braided essay that asks participants about their relationships to concepts of revenge and justice. The accompanying soundscape and interludes investigates the potentiality of the call and response nature of Black sound for destruction and regeneration. Consisting of an admixture of soca, noise, techno and poetry, these sounds accompany the video and makes clear a confluence of sonic alliances across time and geographic specificity within Black diasporas. These interludes punctuate the essay as a reminder of our histories of resistance that have been syncretized into cultural festivals, namely J’ouvert in Trinidad and Tobago. Looking specifically at the social function of these genres and their use in public space to incite chaos within the context of pleasure, I highlight a lineage of Black musical provocation as an analogy for flattening existing hegemony and the commons. How can song conjure the sublime, necessary, and oft resisted work of deconstruction? Here, a desire for revenge and restitution can function like a bassline on J’ouvert morning: a scaffold for channeling body memory and a hope for something-somewhere-better than here; loose and freeing under the cover of night. The soundscape’s droning bassline plays throughout the video and materializes itself in the viewer’s body: dread made tactile.

Film Stills

Image Caption: Featured image for ‘Pappyshow in the Dark Time, My Love’.

Pappyshow in the Dark Time, My Love (2022)

Short (26mins) Art / Experimental

Region:

Trinidad and Tobago

Language:

English

Rating:

No Rating

Producer(s):

Shinelle Ambris

Director(s):

Kearra Amaya Gopee


Kearra Amaya Gopee

Kearra Amaya Gopee

Kearra Amaya Gopee is an anti-disciplinary visual artist from Carapichaima, Kairi (the larger of the twin-island nation known as Trinidad and Tobago), living on Lenape land (New York). Previously, they participated in residencies at Skowhegan, Red Bull Arts Detroit and NLS Kingston in Jamaica. Their work has been hosted at venues such as documenta15, Flux Factory, White Columns and at film festivals internationally. They hold an MFA from UCLA with a concentration in Interdisciplinary Studio and a BFA in Photography and Imaging from New York University. Currently, they live and work between Trinidad and Tobago and New York City.

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