Activation of What is your first memory of dirt? with neighbors centering land and remembrance as a collective tool toward liberation at La Huerta Community Garden with NeighborSpace (Chicago, IL)
Puerto Rican-born, Brooklyn-based artist Yanira Castro / a canary torsi, and a team of collaborators, launch a new public art project as an act of intervention during the 2024 Presidential election. With Exorcism = Liberation, the award-winning Castro engages the American public to experience shared concerns and future-building, embedded in Puerto Rican culture and the U.S.’s ongoing colonial history. Born out of the necessity to come together to enact a just collective future, Exorcism = Liberation grounds us in immersive experience and action. Trusting in the power of empathy, the project’s audio experiences offer space for the public to feel and to act while reflecting on difficult questions like: What is the disaster you are preparing for?
Coordinated with a multitude of participating community and arts organizations in citywide collective experiences between July and November 2024, Exorcism = Liberation will have an “on-the-ground” presence in three U.S. locations with strong Puerto Rican diaspora communities. This multifaceted project is stewarded locally by Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, IL; A.P.E. Ltd. in partnership with UMass Fine Arts Center in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts; and a canary torsi in New York City. Exorcism = Liberation can also be accessed on the project’s website: www.exorcism-liberation.net.
Exorcism = Liberation utilizes familiar forms of political media campaigns, placing provocative slogans on the street and mass transit, distributing stickers, posters, handmade banners, lawn signs, and buttons/pins through local community organizations acting as distribution hubs. The slogans reflect the project’s themes:
“What is your first memory of dirt?
“I came here to weep”
and “Exorcism = Liberation.”
Accompanying each slogan is a QR code leading to an immersive audio experience in which local Puerto Rican performers prompt the individual listener to remember their connection to land, grieve, and conjure a liberated world. Exorcism = Liberation is a call to action, a rehearsal for collective liberation. “It offers a different kind of campaign than the election we are in the middle of,” says Castro. “We want to connect, challenge, spark conversation, contemplate, move, and provoke change.”
Exorcism = Liberation is an extension of Yanira Castro / a canary torsi’s I came here to weep, a multimodal participatory project enacted by the public and supported by Creative Capital.