Hello Festival-Goer,

Thanks for visiting this page that Bree and Kathleen made for us. I love Bree and Kathleen so much. They have been wonderful friends, collaborators, and supporters over the years that we’ve known each other. I am so grateful for these two powerful people in my life.

A little while ago, after several months into pandemic life, Bree and Kathleen invited me to participate in this festival. I’m always griping about never having a chance to share my work (“too busy,” “nobody ‘sees’ me,” “I don’t have any ideas”) yet uncharacteristically I was excited to participate. I co-created a new podcast series with my collaborator and platonic partner Doug LeCours. Confronted by the shifting possibilities for performance-making within self-isolation we wanted to work within the venue that is available to us: the Internet. Our podcast, Pregnancy Dream, is an open exploration in the choreography of friends and artists in conversation, touching on pop culture, art-making, and relationships. In the podcast, as in our friendship, we oscillate between a self-help-y rhetoric and a co-created comedic sensibility. Pregnancy Dream invites the tensions and complexities within that tonal range. 

We wrote those last three sentences for an application to The Shed’s Open Call commissioning project. It felt strange; we are two young artists, increasingly weary of our stake in institutional gains as a means of shaping our art careers, energized by the current uprisings seeded by Black-led justice movements, our skepticism rooting deeper toward the worthiness of these institutions. Writing that application and feeling these feelings is one of our many contradictions. 

Then, the festival was about to start. And then, George Floyd was murdered by the Minneapolis police. The current waves of the Black Lives Matter uprisings took hold. We paused to involve ourselves in the protest and resistance, we paused as white voices in the air waves, we paused to assess what our priorities are. 

Then, when it was time to “get back to it”- to the contribution of our banter-beating, meandering, self-talk, crosstalk- our podcast contribution made no sense. I thought about recommending a Black artist to take my place in the festival, but as soon as I started thinking about that process I found myself tokenizing Black people in my life whom I love and respect deeply. That wasn’t the right move. 

We considered sharing an episode of our podcast in which we take on together, over air waves, an intimate conversation about whiteness and white supremacy and the life journey of undoing these toxicities within ourselves, our art practices, our families, and our communities. I’ve been practicing in these conversations since 2016 when I had what I would consider my first awakening as a white person, since then growing more and more conscious of the ways I have been operationalized to uphold systems of oppression and perpetually commit violences against Black and Brown bodies. I committed, in that wave of my awakening, to talking to white people more; to share with them truths we have been socialized not to see and to dialogue on the word and the work of what we don’t know we don’t know; the project of undoing whiteness and reclaiming our humanity as white people. 

In 2020, I thought, “I’m practiced enough in this dialogue. I have language for white supremacy now. Perhaps, I could take this opportunity to share more publicly what I’ve been practicing and use this platform to reach more white people to involve and commit themselves to undoing our racism.” 

So, we recorded this episode. It was very hard and it makes no sense to share it. 

The impulse to take something intimate and make it public is supremacy itself. The point of these conversations is that they are practice, not performance. 

No matter how many times I checked my intention, this move was still performative allyship. I am diligently working to undo that urge within myself each day. My work is to embrace the work of undoing white supremacy each day of my life, knowing that very few people will see me do it; how antithetical to everything I’ve ever learned and internalized, yet critical to moving forward in true solidarity. 

I love Bree and Kathleen. I am in awe at the rigor these two people put into making space to share their work and the work of their communities. They are the hardest working people in showbiz. I am privileged to be among artists and friends in this space. And, as a white artist, I am in a long process of considering my role(s) in my arts community. I am working hard to undo the supremacist myth that I am meant to be extraordinary and that being seen is the receipt. 

My dream when we emerge from our homes, from this pandemic, from this moment in our social and economic world shift, is that our art praxis will feel more like organizing for Black liberation. Anything we do- in our art, in our work, in our lives- will be because we commit to the truth that none of us are free until Black Trans Women are free. 

In love and solidarity,

Greer

Edited by Tara Sheena and Doug LeCours

Bibliography: Where I am now is by no means final and I didn’t get here on my own. Everything I’ve said here, someone has taught me. Countless individuals actually. I’ve only just begun to reckon with my lack of a thorough bibliography of my learning and unlearning over the past many years. Credit goes to The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, reverend angel Kyodo williams, Race Forward, Artists Co-Creating Real Equity, White Artists in Conversation, Resmaa Menakem, Robin DiAngelo, The Racial Justice Institute, Ibram X. Kendi, tons more and dear friends, mentors and elders in my life whom without their labor, compassion, love and commitment I would not be able to struggle.