Resound/Revision Festival: Indigenous Pittsburgh and Otherwise Worlds
This three-day festival celebrates how music, sound, listening, and other arts can challenge our everyday relationships to place. We will be encouraged to rethink our understanding of Pittsburgh as Indigenous land, filled with sites of Indigenous presence—past, present, and future. Afro/Black and Indigenous Futurisms create possibilities to imagine “otherwise worlds,” in which Black and Indigenous solidarity thrive and paths are built against and beyond settler colonialism. All attendees are invited to consider their own positionalities and to commit to a more just and liberatory future.
The phrase “otherwise worlds” comes from Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness, edited by Tiffany Lethabo King, Jenell Navarro, and Andrea Smith, which “hopes to model practices of reading and listening that create new possibilities for thinking of, caring for, and talking to one another” (5). We hope that this festival creates some of those new possibilities, or at the very least, sets you on a path to create such possibilities.
This festival is part of the “Decolonized Futures” project funded by the Center for Arts in Society.
“Sun Goddess” by Morgan Overton
Festival Schedule:
Friday, April 9
7pm EST – streaming concert with Audiopharmacy
Saturday, April 10
2:30pm EST – roundtable on Afro/Black and Indigenous Futurisms, featuring Rasheedah Phillips of Black Quantum Futurism, Johnnie Jae of A Tribe Called Geek, and DJ Shub
7pm EST – “Futures” YouTube concert, featuring music by Sadie Buck and the Six Nations Women Singers, Tanya Tagaq, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, and Melody McKiver
Sunday, April 11
2:30pm EST – Indigenous Pittsburgh Soundwalk
Use #resoundpgh on all social media platforms to share your participation in the festival weekend.
Notes about “Sun Goddess”:
The painting references a solar eclipse, which was a point of inspiration for Nat Turner to organize the slave rebellion of 1831. The woman holds a bird, which is a reference to “Sankofa.” This word of the Akan people means to learn from the past and bring forward what is useful for the future.
About the artist:
A proud Pittsburgh native, Morgan Overton earned her master's in social work from the University of Pittsburgh with a focus in community organization and social action, and a certificate in Human Services Management. Morgan also earned a bachelor's degree in psychology with a minor in studio arts from the University of Pittsburgh. She is Vice Chair of the Pittsburgh Gender Equity Commission. She believes empowerment and resistance come in many forms, art being one—a platform of social change and powerful narratives. Her work widely uplifts the leaders of freedom movements who came before us, but also unsung everyday heroes of today who carry forth such legacies. The common theme in her work is to uplift excellence that has been silenced for too long. Whether on the ground, on paint, or through policy, Morgan is invested in Pittsburgh actualizing its livability for each of its community members, through unapologetic justice, collaboration, and intersectionality.
Additional support for the festival has been provided by the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.
