Wonder-Workin Arts Lab is a generator of space and art that:
centers black and indigenous ways of knowing,
supports diasporic remembrance and integration.
supports “contemplative” or good-spirited experimentation.
connects us by heart and intention, not doctrine or industry.
Our experimentation is not research-oriented. It is focused on practicing in and across communities. It is focused on experience and fellowship that brings out what we know in our flesh and bones - to heal, protect, and strengthen our connection with others, ourselves, and the Spirit/ divine/ sacred.
Like when you boil something to pull the medicine out, we want to create with a potency that shows the medicine in what we’ve been practicing and what we’ve been known. We invite communities to take the medicine and pass it around. We invite communities to even help make the medicine that refortifies our own souls and bodies, opening portals to innovation and remembrance that defies even our own expectations.
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quartet-singing and soundscapes move through our bodies bringing us into ancestral wisdom; while devotional-singing d’angelo, we contemplate all our life-giving connections; an organ improvising the blues moves our pain and sorrow; some scatting, clapping, and speaking in tongues sets our mind and heart free, we hum badu and dance to Sounds of Blackness.
All of these are possibilities in this series of experiments that engages soul music intentionally as a healing modality.
The space is non-performative: no stage, person to person, with room to rest or move about. Improvise and responsiveness to the needs of the “congregation” is key.
