←

Ain't Got No / I Got Life

Ain’t Got No / I Got Life: is an exercise in waiting—waiting for dusk’s cover, waiting for a train’s arrival, waiting for intervention, waiting for word.

Hinged by Nina’s song, two performers hang around in a suspended space between “ain’t got no” and “got life.” They loiter and linger in parallel “waiting rooms”—each surrendering to a remote authority who’ll decide when, where, and under what conditions they can continue their discrete journeys in pursuit of “life.” If and when those decisive agents do appear, the resulting negotiations are the same: each traveler separates from herself in order to make the crossing.

In fragments of poetry, movement, and archival recordings, Ain’t Got No lingers on the significance of “arrival” to peoples of the diaspora. It attempts to locate freedom as a destination—just as it retreats, anchors in an unknown harbor, and must be sought after anew.

Created in collaboration with Imani Elizabeth Jackson