a collaborative project by Jessica Feldman, Jerome Haferd & K. Brandt Knapp
caesura: a forum is a site-specific sound and architectural installation, presented on the Acropolis in Marcus Garvey Park. The installation provides a space for gathering, listening, and community within the Harlem Park and is inspired by the park’s historic Fire Watchtower bell and past as a site for activist organizing.
fabricated with DASH-7 and supported by kammetal
audio excerpt (3:29) (please listen with headphones or good speakers if possible!)
(control-click to download and save file)
source material:
- “Hon. Marcus Garvey on His Return to the U.S.A.,” July 1921
- “Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,” July 1921
- field recording of BlackLivesMatter protest, Harlem, New York City, 23 December 2014
- various recordings of bells
Marcus Garvey speeches Copyright © 1995 The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project, UCLA
“We wound through the poorer streets at first, a black image of sorrow, then turned into Seventh Avenue and down and over to Lenox. Then I hurried with the leading brothers to the park in a cab. A brother in the Park Department had opened the lookout tower, and a crude platform of planks and ranked saw horses had been erected beneath the black iron bell, and I could feel my eardrums throbbing with the old, hollow, gut-vibrant Dong-Dong-Doom.”
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, 1995), 451.
cae·su·ra: a forum is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. cae·su·ra: a forum is also made possible in part with public funds from The Fund for Creative Communities, supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. LMCC.net
