Meta-Note:
Philadelphia Impressions, late 2014-15
by Brenda Dixon Gottschild

Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia is building an expanded archive of cultural memory that includes multiple histories, re-place-ing the established with new narratives and understandings. Meta-Notes expand on the project's conceptual frame and ground it in a larger context.

When I asked Brenda (Free Radical) to send me one photo to accompany her first "field note" for the Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia website, she couldn't choose just one. Surveying her photo library from the past year, she sent me a collection of images that told a story of her Philly. Together, Brenda's images and captions yield an impression of a Philadelphia that is fighting for and enacting change—through action, discourse, and performance. —Lauren Bakst, Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia Interlocutor

The POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild) movement, effecting change in Philly. Two images of the program for "Strange Fruit: The 7 Last Words of 7 Black Lives," a healing service presented by interfaith clergy leaders from POWER at New Vision United Methodist Church, December, 2014.

The awesome Rennie Harris and yours truly, following Harris’s astounding movement theater dialogue with Michael Sakamoto, Painted Bride Art Center, December, 2014.

Black Lives Matter demonstration sponsored by the Philly branch of Dancing for Justice. December, 2014. Photo by Philly arts critic Lew Whittington.

Philly’s POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild) flyer for MLK Day of Action. January, 2015.

Nationally renowned anti-racist speaker Tim Wise, giving keynote address at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine’s annual Diversity Conference, April, 2015.

Program from the Wilma Theater's dynamic production of Hamlet—FABULOUS (I saw it twice)—directed by Blanka Zizka, with Afro-British woman actor, Zainab Jah, playing Hamlet.

Brenda Dixon Gottschild is an African-American cultural historian, performer, choreographer, and anti-racist cultural worker. She is a Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia Free Radical.