Artist Statement
Anicka collected letters, observed performances, and conducted interviews to ask about how we use embodiment to make sense of our public spaces and collective histories. Through archival studies and sensemaking methodology developed from the library and information science field, the work aims to give language to the unseen exchanges that happen between Southern landscapes, artists, and spectators. Exchanges that stay with us and influence our ways of knowing and being. The research is underscored by a hope that imaginative reconstructions of history, place, and autobiography through performance have the power to initiate radical social transformation.
gaze, time travel, and the unknown: contemporary site-specific performance in Atlanta’s public spaces is the result of a year of letter writing, observations, and interviews collected by Art on the Atlanta BeltLine Scholar-in-Residence Anicka Austin. The attached 25-minute audio diary introduces the work and includes field recordings, an interview excerpt, and unpublished writings from her research. Created as an accessible compilation of journal entries or reflections, the website radicalgestures.myportfolio.com provides a container for information gathered during the research. Return to the website periodically for additional reflections, transcriptions, and audio/visual material.
Artist Bio
Anicka Austin is an artist and archivist. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Carolina Academic Library Associates fellowship, graduating in May 2020 with a Master of Science in Library Science. She is currently working as visiting archivist for the Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade papers at Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library. A focus on embodied archives and the tension between ephemerality and documentation grew from the seeds of creative process as a 2017-2018 WonderRoot Hughley Fellow. Works from the Hughley fellowship were presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and the Zuckerman Museum of Art’s Fine Arts Gallery (Kennesaw, GA).
She was an Ansley Park Distinguished Fellow at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in 2017 and a 2015-2018 Lucky Penny Work Room resident artist. This project was created for the 2021-2022 Art on the Atlanta Beltline Scholar-in-Residency.