Winter Tour 2018 – Don’t Forget The Magic

 

Hey all, my tour kicks off today in Atlanta! I hope to see you out, somewhere along the East Coast. Ma Ja Ka has returned and is ready to share some light on the shadows. Don’t forget the magic! Shadow keep on, keepin’ on!

Ma Ja Ka – Poetry Tour, Winter 2018
DECEMBER 2018
4 – at The Bakery Atlanta in Atlanta, GA
6 – at Moon Lake Manor in Atlanta, GA
8 – at McDonalds in Athens, GA
8 – at The Mill in Athens, GA
9 – at Rainbow Cave in Savannah, GA
12 – at Whirligig Stage in Greeneville, NC
14 – at house show in Asheville, NC
15 – at Carriage House in Blacksburg, VA
18 – at Rhizome DC in Washington DC
19 – at The Crown in Baltimore, MD
20 – at The Random Tea Room & Curiosity Shop in Philadelphia, PA

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The Paseo Festival 2018 – Recap

Give the River a Voice at the MANIFESTATION STATION

Objective: Through community dialogue and art creation we seek to give the river and surrounding watershed a sovereign voice, both as a means of creative expression and eventually legal reasoning.

Manifestation Station: The Manifestation Station is a lotus tent acquired for water protection in 2016. Since then it has been utilized as a shared community space to release fears and trauma that hold us back so we can open up space, personally and collectively, for the manifestation of positive dreams to emerge through these challenging times of planetary changes.

For the Paseo Project outdoor arts festival on September 14-15, the Manifestation Station will be a collaborative installation in the park at the John Dunn Shops created to raise awareness about our local watershed and allow the community a meeting point to discuss the future of our watershed. The installation will involve a series of audio and visual projections based around the surrounding waterways. Sounds of the river will be amplified above the conversations this will create, while video of these same waterways will be screened inside the lotus tent and on surfaces surrounding the installation. Inside the tent there will be two typewriters connected to an infinite scroll. Upon the scroll, community members will be instructed to write out prayers for our watershed, in the form of hopes and dreams for the world they would like to cultivate and leave behind for future generations, and fears and doubts for the world that is currently being manifested by the industrialized culture we live in.

Conclusion: The goal of this art installation is to transform our understanding of community, and to encourage people to get involved in the safeguarding of our watershed through positive, co-creative actions based in reverence for life. Break-out groups will form that will take up this call and form the necessary values that will protect our collective future here locally. The first steps are to meet and greet each other at the “water hole,” ask important questions together, raise awareness and begin crafting positive solutions together.

at The PASEO

September 14-15, 2018

Taos, NM

a collaboration with Taos Water Protectors

Currents New Media Festival – Recap

 

Today, I’m feeling really honored to have been asked to be a part of the international cast of artists who are participating in Currents New Media Festival (@currentsnewmedia) this year. Opening weekend was a wild blur of disjointed surreality with so many vulnerabilities exposed and manifestations transposed.

When we set out to create the ManifeSTATION Station, there was no way of knowing how many powerful moments our energies would conjure. From a stranger asking us to write a dream to celebrate 15 years since she had a stroke as a kid, to the family sharing their story about how they almost missed their son’s birthday because of car trouble and a cancelled flight, to all the new friends that repeatedly visited us throughout the weekend to decompress from the festivities happening on the main stage.

There were tears shared. There were hearts opened wide. The unicorn and clown animas brightened the moments that felt lonely. Everyone thought we were on psychedelics, but we were probably the soberest people there, just one foot in the dream, doing the Fool’s leap to other dimensions.

On our last night we stayed late in the tent reading all of the manifestations that had been written throughout the weekend. Reading writings from the Hopes and Dreams side, I felt a tug at my heart, and started weeping. There’s so much suffering in the world. All of the visitors. It felt like the lotus tent behind us had spread a wide net to round up all of the fellow freaks and outsiders.

The space presented itself as a space to recover from the outside perils. Something about the vacant lot we assembled it on, held this vortex of energy. Only the right people even saw us, much less entered. Every moment shared was a return to personal peace.

Every click of the typewriter adding to a soundbath elixir. The mantras projected animating inner consciousness. An expansion of installations assembled in the main gallery.

And in that main gallery, themes of climate change, identity, and expanding community continued to reflect what we set out to accomplish. It felt like everything was a deep conversation on the human experience. I appreciate so much the folks we shared the stage with.

Ma Ja Ka at Artscape in Baltimore

“COLLAGE HELP WANTED!”
a performance by Ma Ja Ka at Baltimore’s Artscape.
vine shot by Lee Tusman

This has to be the most celebrated experience I’ve had thus far with Ma Ja Ka. He has gone from a sad unicorn born into this reality to a truly jubilant dream body dancing to his own inner rhythm. To have these kids dancing with me was so incredibly fun. They kept saying things like, “Yo, is he real?” and “Yo! There’s a man inside that mask!!”. I took the one kid’s attempts to whack my nose as really having a hard time believing there was a real unicorn dancing in front of him. Unicorns, man. Far out stuff.

Baltimore Artscape summed up in one photo

via reddit: “Baltimore Artscape summed up in a single image”

From the comments, “He put his trombone down and the prerecorded sounds kept playing. People are just looking at him unphased so he starts shrugging his shoulders, like “so now what?” And people continue to look at him for amusement.. It was so absurd, but it made me laugh. Hope you got a lot of money for his collage funds”

http://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/2bakxn/artscape_summed_up_in_a_single_image/

Over the weekend, I traveled down to Baltimore’s Artscape with Little Berlin gallery. I busked and wrote hundreds of poems on an old electric typewriter for passing spectators. My dream body Ma Ja Ka was there to. His performance left the audience transfixed, hypnotized by their dreams.