"UNFORGETTING IN NEWBURGH - PT.2" 02-11-2024 GUEST: JEAN-MARC SUPERVILLE - TELLS OF THE RECLAIMING OF A 19TH CENTURY "COLORED" CEMETERY.

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in thefollowing programmer those of the speaker and don't
necessarily represent those of the station.It's staff management or ownership. Good morning,
you'll find me out. Pete andPoet Gold. This is Peter and
I'm the Poet Gold and we're onthe air. This morning was Jean Marck
supervillain, and he's in for parttwo. We had him on last week
also. And before we get backto Jean Macker and go right to the

(00:24):
Poet Gold for her weekly prayer poemincantation. Oh please let it roll.
Well, since we have Jean Marckback and we're talking about, you know,
the history and our ancestors, I'mgoing to do a couple of stanzas
from My locks sound nice, Soanyone who knows that I'm jumping around in
the body of the work, mylocks sound nice. My locks sound nice.

(00:44):
She wears her locks like a lion'smane, shoulders back, head lifted,
pointed, straightforward, and evolution isalways taking place in her stride.
They swing like a pendulum, soher thoughts are free flowing. On occasion
and elevators of corporate buildings, acerebral state of mind is randomly interrupted by
excuse me, but I love yourhair? How did you get it like

(01:07):
that? May I touch? No? But thank you? But no,
you cannot touch my hair. Yousee, these strands are sacred stories like
this one here who roots extend backto sixteen nineteen, when the first documented
slave ship landed on the shores ofNorth America in Jamestown, Virginia. I
hear kings and queens who became cottonpick of sing in nibberal spirituals under the

(01:29):
hot sun, while beads are sweatformed on their foreheads and glistened like diamonds
to remind them of their royalty.And this one, this one reps the
lexicon of my people with saying likegot to catch the kitchen in the back,
Kinki roots and naps, Oh,you got snaps, the Juba dans
and jive talk. We are vibrantand brilliant, and our hair is as
diverse as the hues of our skin, from blue black to high yellow and

(01:51):
everything in between, all natural,all beautiful. We are the braids and
the corn rolls platted together. Westay connected throughout the ghettos of the world.
And this one, oh, thisone is a scholar sharing knowledge like
water streaming from a forest, lettingus know that blacks were not the first
to reside in the ghetto. We'repreceded by the Jews, the Italians,
the Asians, and the Irish.So we don't have to stay here if

(02:13):
we don't choose to. The ghettois a mentality, you see, my
kinky roots, So like this microphone, converting the voices in my head into
an energy which is then amplified,allowing my ancestors stories to stay present.
That's why I keep my locks hangingover my ears, so they will always
know that I am listening. Mylocks sound nice, nice, nice,

(02:38):
nice, nice, My locks soundnice. My favorite one of Willa poems.
I mean I had to hold itdown a little bit because there's a
lot of humor in that talking aboutthe kitchen in the back. Yeah,
the kitchen in the back. I'mgonna tell you we heard that one.

(03:00):
That one alluded me. It waskitchen in the back. So well,
I think it just relates to theway when anyone who's grown up in a
household, and especially a household withblack women, especially which I did not.
Yeah, so there's a certain amountof care and we were talking about
self care and and and also intergenerationalcare that goes around hair right right right.

(03:25):
I'm not trying to be a poet. Yeah, I know, I'm
not. And the stories that arethe stories that have told me you think
of the kitchen, you you sortof uh, you know, preparing stuff,
taking care of stuff, you know, and in the back of our
hair, the kitchen, you know, it gets a little nappy back there,
you know, and so that's sortof celebrated in its own way.
You know, you know, gotto got to take care of the kitchen

(03:45):
in the back it up a bit. I'm I asked the reference when by
me the first time, when you'reback to it, I don't know what
that is. And this again isthere is a lot of cultural references that
you know, I miss black communityfor sure. The and the last week

(04:06):
we talk about the African burial groundin Newburgh and the way people have actually
been dug up and they're going tobe rever insured. It sounds a little
formal to me, but buried again, yeah, and where But I do
want to give my impressions of youknow, there's a resurrection built into the

(04:31):
idea of rising up, which yourname of your project is from the ground
up, from the ground up,And there's certainly a sense of resurrection,
which is not only a Christian notion, it's a it's a spiritual notion.
But so you have a spirituality builtinto the title as well as the reality
of the people whose history has beenlost. But I were concerned for them,

(04:59):
and I'm concerned for ourselves. Drivesus, meaning more you than me,
drives you to recreate a story,a truth that we can all embrace
going forward. Absolutely, I meanthe key word here is forgotten cemetery,
you know, forgotten quote unquote coloredcemetery. And how do we avoid forgetting?

(05:23):
You know, the dead don't askmuch of us, you know when
you speak of resurrection, the deadjust really asked to be left and remembered.
That's all they really ask of us, the living. And so I
really do mean it when I saythat we're making history, people, it's
not to be ostentatious. It's notto sound like and doing anything more than

(05:49):
making history in the sense that weare giving the voice to those who are
now voiceless, giving names to thosewho were once named and now by the
circumstances of that forgetting are unnamed orto be named again. You know it

(06:09):
curs to me gold that you know, going to your reference to the hair
in the back of your neck,which you know, tending to the forgotten
pause. That's one of the thingswe're not good at in mainstream America.
I mean, we're really good atthe present, and we sort of lean
into the future trying to figure outhow to take advantage of it. But

(06:31):
the dead are ignored or disrespected inmainstream American culture. And so your idea
of we have a duty to thedead, and again going to the kitchen
metaphor, it's intergenerational and includes bothof the James Joys, the Irish poets,
the living and the dead. Andso for you to be nodding towards

(06:57):
the dead as an important and cousinswho forced for the living is important as
as well as you know our elders, correct, you know, we have
tremendous disrespect towards towards absolutely our generationthat we should be looking up to.
And and and because and there's alsoso much i mean, the stories,

(07:20):
the history you know that that theyhold. You just don't want to lose
that. Well, may beeing theolder one in the room. Okay,
we want, we want, wewant to look, I'm not I'm not
going to fully embrace that. Andfor me, the most important UH person

(07:40):
in the world is the one whohas been born, the newest. The
most important American in the room isthe one who most recently chose America.
But you see, but that's butthat's but that's very American of you.
You know. And in different differentcultures, the the elders protected celebrated,
you know, the children will spendtime with them and nurture it. But
it's but it's it's very American too, sort of because you don't want to

(08:03):
deal with death is to cast away, you know, the elders and and
and the infirmed. And you know, because you don't represent the new,
you don't represent the new Americans.I'm American. I also want to say,
I'm going to defend what I saidbefore. Yeah, I feel some

(08:26):
stuff slipping in my mind. Butthen that result is with this interest you
have in resurrecting, recreating, embracingthe past, that people who are being
part for the silence and one ofthe things we didn't get to when we

(08:46):
were speaking last week, and wejust sort of brushed towards it is what
you consider who you consider yourself andyou know and so appreciate if you get
a sensor who you are. Yes, absolutely, before you use that me
call it first. Yes. Yes. If you're just tuning in, you're
listening to finding out with Pete andthe poet Gold and I'm the poet Gold

(09:09):
and we're here today. Would JohnMark Superville so bad, the curator of
From the Ground Up at Anne StreetGallery in newbern one of the more February
one for the month of February,probably run through March as well. Great.
I appreciate the opportunity to identify myselfand I think that part of what

(09:31):
has made me me is being uh, someone who is often on the receiving
end of that question where are youfrom? You knows you're like no,
no, no, but like whereare you really from? There's a yes,
and so you know, there's alot of projection. But you know,
I find myself always to try toagain a hole straight row when it

(09:56):
comes to identifying my mother's ancestry fromTrinidad, and you go down to Trinidad,
you'll find probably the DNA pool ofthe entire country. If I did
one of those twenty three and me, I think I would be probably five
percent of everything. But my fatheris also from the Czech Republic, and

(10:20):
he's experienced, you know, acertain version of you know, political kind
of exclusionism or just the kind ofexclusionary sort of politics of you know,
nineteen sixties Soviet invasion of Prague.That's what That's what brought him here.
And I'm somehow a product of thatvery strange mix up. So I guess

(10:46):
the short answer to the question isI'm real mixed up. Universal. Well,
there you go. So through theparticular, yes, we always find
the universal, absolutely, And sowith you universal background on the radio people
how you was being handsome? Oh, okay, you're handsome, And I

(11:09):
guess I would assume before, youknow, so when you use the Spanish
word before, I thought you mightbe a native Spanish speaker. So you
could easily mistaken for that. Youcould also look like somebody from the Mid
East. You could also be black. I'm a ship shifter, Yeah,

(11:33):
yeah, will I will take allthat. When I was in graduate school
at bart Bar College that's where Iwent, you know, for my graduate
degree, I was making videos.That's sort of my background in film and
video, and I was making thesedocumentaries of all these other men brothers from
other mothers. You can say thatpeople thought I looked like because everyone seemed

(11:54):
to think, oh my god,you look just like you know fill in
the blank. And so I thought, well, let me go find all
these guys, you know, whereare they out there? And I would
ask them, I'd look at you, what do you think you know?
And I think that experience is sortof what's allowed me to sort of also
look at people, and I reallytry my best to second guess my own

(12:18):
assumptions about other people, because youknow what you'll you'll be You'll be very
surprised. One of the things thatsort of kept me going about this project
was an encounter in Newburgh where,you know, somebody asked me just,
you know, for a couple ofbucks for something to eat. And I
was sitting and having a really importantmeeting with someone, and I said,

(12:41):
you know, I can just comeback in ten minutes, because I'm just
in this meeting. Like guy says, I'm hungry. Now I'm hungry.
I might not be standing in tenminutes, you know, And that was
my thought when you said that,you know, I'm hungry now, And
I just didn't hear myself, youknow, And so I really try and
keep myself in line with that ideathat there's really no good time to do

(13:05):
the right thing. You know.It's Martin Luther King Junior day just passed
by. It's always the right timesthe right thing. Absolutely. It reminds
me of you know where she wentshort about the alms House in the nineteenth
century in Newburgh. You know,you have the records of the people in
the basically the poorhouse another word forit. But they would ask the people

(13:26):
who are they're going to give food? So they would ask them questions like
where were you born? Or you'remarried? I'm hungry now. You want
to see the list, I canread you the list. It reads like
a very very strange poem. Here'sthe reason I've compiled the cause of poverty.
This is the reasons people visited theAlmshouse in the eighteen thirties, of
forties to fifties. Unable to paynecessary funeral expenses, application for burial of

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wife, application of burial for husband, application for burial of bastard child,
application for physician, not able topay. The physician says he has rheumatism,
inflammation of the lungs, the fever, the egg, the consumption has
a stroke of the policy, pleurisyin the head is lame. His foot

(14:11):
is frozen, which has kept himfrom labor toes frozen, being crippled.
Now you tell me what is thecause of poverty and what is the difference
between poverty and a miseration? Toour listeners, now explained well, I
mean, you know, again,I'm just borrowing from critical historians like Sadie

(14:33):
Hartman who implied that, you know, emancipation didn't really emancipate. That's the
whole problem. You know, Abolitiondidn't abolish anything. You know, what
would it really be to imagine aworld without servitude? And a miseration is
the concept that you know, povertyis manufactured and it's and it's a consequence

(14:54):
of legislation and decisions that are madeon on a level in which there are
you know, Isabel Wilckerson would callit a cast. She would say,
we should stop talking about race.You should just own up to it.
Speak speaking of M. L.K again, who when he visited in
Africa, sorry, when he wasvisiting India, was pointed out he was

(15:20):
visiting Narrow. He was having dinnerwith you know, I mean he was
up in high society and he wasvisiting schools, and the teacher introduced him
as a member of the of thelowest cast in the United States. You
should have turned probably said, Ijust had dinner with Narrow. We call
him the lowest cast. The womanWilkerson that you just referred to, she's

(15:46):
one who wrote the cast cast,the warmth of other sons, the warmth
of other sons, which traces basicallyblack people and who wanted having social advancement
in America on society, but howthey passed, maintained yourself with them and

(16:06):
their predicaments to put them in Butyou know, and chaoses were that we
we're not really familiar with in America, you know. But it's social cast
is. If you're poor, you'regoing to stay poor. If you're you
know, the Brahman class or youknow, the ruling class. You say
that way because God made you thatway. Well, this was very much

(16:26):
the nineteenth century way of thinking youwere poor because it was a condition that
was somehow endemic to your identity.Maybe you were Irish, maybe you were
Italian. Everyone should identify the momentat which they became white as a group
of people, because that whiteness iswhat has eliminated the distinctions among folks who

(16:52):
have been moved up, let's sayin the cast and yeah, the Irish
came, it was well into thetwentieth century, became white. I mean,
you know, in the nineteenth century, early Twentish century, we were
we I'm Irish. Obviously we're notwhite. We were not white. Jews
weren't Whitelics weren't white. And Imean there's still a lot of answer.

(17:15):
And that's exactly what I was referencingin my locks sound nice, you know
when I was pointing out that,you know, the Jews, the Irish,
you know, the Italians. Nonethese folks are white. Yeah,
I mean, you know it's theItalians. You know. Me being Irish,
I grew up in Irish neighborhoods andthe church was you know, overwhelmingly
Irish historically. But yeah, butwe discriminated. My community discriminated against Italian,

(17:40):
right, Yeah, like that waslike, you know, where Irish
are Italians? In some sense,we knew that we were better than uh,
well other than you know, it'sreally sort of wild. So that
baby is born with some kind ofkinky hair, right right, right right,
you know. And it's so interestingthat came up in one of my
workshop, so the Beat the Poemworkshop on race, and I just didn't,

(18:03):
you know, my own conditioning.That was not the conversation I anticipated
to come up. And the individualsaid, well, I'm Irish and we
always had issues with Italians, andit really just opened up the conversation in
the workshop beyond the traditional black andwhite, you know, and so it
was just it was just really awonderful evolution in the workshop. And part

(18:27):
of the project them from the groundup is also, you know, through
honoring the dead, you know,being able to also recognize and honor the
sacredness of the living. You know, I have a very good friends Palestinian
artists too, who've been talking tome about the project. And she said,
you know, very very pointedly,you know, we don't all have

(18:49):
the privilege to bury our dead.You know, that really hit me home.
Hit me home. Thought one second, if you're just tuning in,
you're listening to finding Out with Peteand the poet gold I'm Peter and I'm
the poet Golden. We're here withJean Mark Superville Soovak talking about his residency
at Anne Street Gallery with his projectThe Ground. It's deep, it's deep.

(19:10):
It's from the ground up, theground up. I keep taking out
the front, you know, fromthe ground up. Maybe we should say,
yeah, it's like like Facebook,which is drop dropped the Facebook.
It's just just the ground up.I like that. And you know,
we're talking about the relation of thepast and our ancestors Toiella living to us
in the future, and we werestill trying to hone in on you a

(19:34):
bit. Peter, you mentioned livingin America. Did you study history of
film with bo So? I wasin the Barn m f A program,
which is a summer program that runsover three summers, and it was absolutely,

(19:56):
absolutely exceptional experience. But I wasstudying in the film video the department.
It's sort of where they put themisfits, you know, like,
you're not a painter, you're nota sculptor, you're not a photographer,
you're not a poet. What areyou film video? Yeah? We ended
up and in your interesting history comesfrom you know, my interest in history,
I should mention. So it reallykind of began when I started looking

(20:18):
at the history of the representation ofthese lands that we do live in.
You know, I'm thinking of inparticular the Hudson River School, and a
moment just just occurred to me whenlooking at those paintings, thinking of them
as being representational. When you know, I started looking at the historical background,

(20:40):
it turns out that there's a lotof things missing in those paintings.
There's a lot of absences, there'sa disappearing when you look at the social
and the political landscape that's really asdeep and as wide as the as the
river they call the mah Kanuck.I think we should drop the Hudson.
That's name right now. The riverthat flows flows both ways. You go,

(21:07):
there, you go, that's wherewe're at. And so that sort
of acknowledgement of, you know,the way in which representationally speaking is artists
going back to the nineteenth century hada certain responsibility thinking of Thomas Cole and
Frederick Church and you know, theseartists who are rightfully celebrated as the artists

(21:30):
of deserving of that recognition and atthe same time recognizing that they sort of
made manifest destiny manifest you know,in those in those paintings. By that
disappearing maybe not representing black people werein I mean, first of all,
bye bye. By the eighteen thirties, the waterfront. I mean you could

(21:52):
just read any description Harvey Flatt hasgot from amazing. I mean the river
was nothing to look at. Imean there were brick factories and plumes of
smoke, coal fired I mean,shipping yards. I mean, there was
nothing romantic about it. But itwas exactly that is that those artists were

(22:12):
trying to reach back to this agrarianideal, the idea of America and its
wilderness, and how much that promiseneeded to be kept, and they painted
out those industrial landscapes in favor ofthis idyllic, this bucolic what was called
the American picturesque. And so Imade a series of prints called Ahistorical Landscape.

(22:34):
I just became this sort of printcollector, amateur print collector from the
original eighteen thirties prints, and Iwould insert draw on them, print and
them insert information from images from tracts, abolitionist tracts, anti slavery publishing material
from the same time. This iswhat I mean. I mean, the

(22:56):
oldest history is happening at the sametime, but it's it's it's only by
virtue are of our selective memory,our selective forgetting. We forget so much
we forget, we're forgetting, youknow. And I was, I was,
I was thinking while he was speakingand listening, and Jay Christiana Murti
would say, you weren't listening atall then, you know, but in

(23:18):
one of his books. But butwhat strikes me is the lens in which
you approach historical content, you know. And I can appreciate the broad lens,
uh, versus going in for thatsort of like one thing, looking
at life through one perspective. AndI think part of that is your own
cultural background and and how you honorit, you know. And that's and

(23:41):
that's obvious how you honor it,because Peter has tried to get you to
narrow into a box, and you'relike, well, no, I'm a
I'm this, I'm that, youknow. And I can appreciate that,
you know, I keep dodging.Yes, you approve it, and goals
be put in a box, Ijust an accurate thing. But the box
you wanted to be a universal manand also artists, and I thinks a

(24:04):
place where Jean Marck might have somethingcommon both of you have a sense of
art as ties to spirituality, andthere's my impression is both of you have
a sense to the spirituals. TheHigh Priests are our artists and we must
be open to the revelation you guyshave for us. So thanks for being

(24:27):
with us on Finally, thank you, thank thank you, p John Mark,
thank you for coming back with ustwo weeks. Absolutely so. February
third is the poets, including yourselfthat was last week and Edwin Taurus.
February tenth will be our interfaith panelwith Reverend Lewis from the Cavalry Presbyterian Church

(24:48):
and the Hebra Kadisha, the BurialCommittee of Beacon Hebrew Alliance to talk about
traditional burial practices. Thank you.Thank you to our listeners to finding out
pam Go, we appreciate you.Amen,