On a warm fall Saturday, about 30 people walked together down Houston Street in the Lower East Side to East River Park. A trumpeter led the way, occasionally sounding notes to mark the way forward. Right behind them, two volunteers held up a banner that read, in handwriting, “The Forest is the Archive of Breath.” A passing car honked its horn, reminding us that this was something out of the ordinary.
It may have looked strange from the outside, but the latest project “being future being‘ has brought us together. Blending art and activism, Johnson’s vast body of work takes viewers into outdoor public spaces and draws our attention to the land below and around us. She makes us aware that this place, popularly called New York, is part of Lenapehoking, home to Manhattan’s first (human) inhabitants, the Lenape tribe. Before densification and concrete, there were forests, or what Johnson sometimes calls “our more-than-human kin.”
An Alaskan Yupik Native artist from the Lower East Side, Johnson was a leader in protests against the planned destruction of 1,000 trees as part of the flood mitigation plan known as East River Park. Side Coastal Resilience Project. (Hundreds of trees have been cut down so far.) In “Being the Future Being,” he unfolded over two weekends in his two parts: Parks and New York Live Arts. Method. Trees are also allies in a way, essential to Johnson’s envisioning a more just future in which the land is returned to its people and people live reciprocally with it.
Walking through the city in Land/Celestial, the first part of Being Future Being, I see a bulldozed section of the park where hundreds of trees have already been cut down, and a section that extends north. I reached the threshold in between. , for now, as is. At the chain link fence that separates the two, we were greeted by guides known as Land Defenders who divided us into three groups to witness three brief performances.
My group followed our guide along the glistening river bank to the shady grove. There, a colorful handcrafted quilt designed by Maggie Thompson, the signature of the Johnson Gathering, awaited us on the ground. was cool. We sat and watched the two performers slowly walk away. Kilt her being (Jasmine Shorty) walking towards the water, Stacey Lynn her Smith dancing restlessly among the fallen leaves.
“Remember the story I told you about trees? Back at the chain link fence, she talked about the tree again, but this time she was the only one in the audience. Johnson then stepped away and linked up with dancer Sugar Bendil in a duet while listeners told the story to the rest of the group. Even if the details were a little blurry, the message about the intelligence of trees came through. they can hear
That idea was extended to the third vignette, where dancer Ashley-Pierre-Louis introduced me to a tree with which she “formed a very strong connection” called the Fire Tree. The branch, she pointed out, arched away from the demolition to the south.
A week later, on Friday night, Johnson climbed onto a car parked on West 19th Street outside New York Live Arts. The audience for part two, “Being Future Her Being: Inside/Outward,” gathered on the sidewalk, and at one point she shuddered with anger as she spoke into a megaphone. “If now,” she suggested in a moment of calm.
When entering the theater, it was a backstage route that approached the stage space from below, not from above. This roundabout approach felt emblematic of Johnson’s method. It tackles seemingly immobile problems a little obliquely, from scratch, and thus brings us to their attention.
Imagery resurfaced from “Land/Celestial” in subsequent performances. Three quilted beings roamed among the audience invited to sit on stage. A tall mound of dirt was in one corner and a bed of leaves in another. A black-and-white projection of tree branches formed a fragmented, hustling background. Raven Chacon’s captivating score suggested a mixture of nature and violence. The dancers cut violently through this landscape, adding layers to the sound with the rhythm of audible breaths and steps that Johnson introduced as “Rising Stomp” by Johnson on top of his car. on the ground.
On Friday, the show was followed by an inspiring conversation with the Branch of Knowledge, a group of Lenape patriarchs representing all federally recognized Lenape nations. One of the women, Lauryn French, spoke of how her ancestors were forced to flee their homes 28 times before arriving at their current home in Oklahoma.
There is a generation gap. The eldest, Elizabeth French, laughed, she said, reclaiming her land “wouldn’t happen.” Her younger artist, River Whittle, happily refuted. morning I’m going to say “landing”. I expect that. The group reflected on how they visited New York for the first time. It’s a powerful homecomingAs one member of the collective said: I belong here i know it. “
“Being Future Being”
Through Sunday at New York Live Arts in Manhattan. newyorklivearts.org.