The Master’s House

December 3rd, 2022

For Hudson’s 2022 Winter Walk celebration, a cold and rainy one in 2022, we projected an animated text featuring the final paragraph of Audre Lords’s seminal essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” A complementary Incident Report installation, up through the entire month of December, featured a scrolling LED text and giant typeset early poem by Lorde.

BLACKOUT POEMS: Celebrating Hudson Youth & Community Library of Voice and Sound

December 4th, 2021

On the night of December 4th, 2021, on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of Hudson Hall’s Winter Walk, we projected phrases from Hudson oral histories and “blackout poems” created from them by Hudson Youth in collaboration with Oral History Summer School and the Community Library of Voice and Sound. This TENTACLE projection was one part of a three part installation, including a multi-media INCIDENT REPORT installation and a set of AMTRAK POETRY placards. Special thanks to Hudson Hall for making helping to make this possible.

Coronavirus Haiku

From May 1st, 2021

TENTACLE returns with a selection of haiku by frontline pandemic workers created through the Worker Writers School, which supports writers from one of New York’s most ubiquitous yet least-heard populations: low-wage workers. Mark Nowak, a writer and founding director of the school, presents a selection of haiku written by “frontline workers” during the Covid 19 crisis. The TENTACLE projection launch coincides with the release of Coronavirus Haiku, published by Kenning Editions on the occasion of Worker Writers School’s 10th anniversary year. The poets included had already been studying examples of the form and its connection to political resistance from seventeenth-century Japan to the Black Arts Movement of the twentieth century, as well as its capacity to amplify voices of everyday life. These “coronavirus haiku” convey moments of protest, solace, wonder, certainty, love, and strife. The writers in the collection hail from the school’s worker center partners, including Domestic Workers United, New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Damayan Migrant Workers Association, Street Vendor Project, and Retail Action Project. The projections for this TENTACLE presentation were realized by Betye Arrastia Nowak.

Alando McIntyre

Alfreda Small

Christine Lewis

Davidson Garrett

Doreen McGill

Estabon Chimilio

Kelebohile Nkhereanye

Kerl Brooks

Lorraine Garnett

Nimfa Despabiladeras

Paloma Zapata

Seth Goldman

Thomas Barzey

Mark Nowak is a poet, cultural critic, playwright and essayist, from Buffalo, New York. Nowak is the author of three poetry collections: Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009), Shut Up Shut Down(Coffee House Press, 2004), and Revenants (Coffee House Press, 2000). A portion of his critical book, Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020), chronicles his work with the Worker Writers School.

We

From March 20th, 2021

TENTACLE launches with “We,” from the Prague-based poetry and performance collective OBJECT:PARADISE. The scrolling text features a series of statements of hope and solidarity that, in the context of COVID-19 restrictions, can be read either positively or negatively.

Here’s the text:

We keep vacuuming the house. We sold our shoes because we do not need them anymore. We cooked our girlfriend breakfast after she yelled at us. We brush our teeth twice a day as an event. We are excited to go to the store, to eat vegetables. We have found hidden secrets of our homes, our bodies. We have developed habits we are not yet comfortable with. We feel sorry for the delivery driver. We call our mothers and tell them we are sorry for not calling. We wash our hands when we come home. We think about our childhoods and smile. We clean new places in old rooms. We want our friends to call us so we call them. We want to be looked at so we look close at ourselves. We get haircuts in the living room & pay for the inconvenience. We want to be better cooks so we call our mother in-laws. We cry secretly in the other room while our girlfriend sleeps to not wake her. We want to be more creative and we are excited for a moment. We make our beds and are not afraid anymore. We tell each other It is ok. We tell each other we are not alone. Tell each other. Tell ourselves. It is ok. We are not alone. It is ok. We are not alone.

We’re delighted to be working with OBJECT:PARADISE and look forward to more projects, both here and there, in the future.