A Moving Our Stories initiative in partnership with Giwayen Mata
Idle Crimes & Heavy Work (ICHW) is a participatory community-oriented dance research endeavor exploring the history of Black women's incarcerated labor, resistance, and restoration in Georgia. Through archival and embodied memory research, interactive performance, workshops, dance films, and community gatherings, ICHW connects the stories of women past and present to sites throughout Atlanta that were shaped by their labor but long since forgotten. Since the archives of Georgia’s carceral system were often built by the very men working in the nexus of racism, capitalism, and patriarchy that perpetuated the conditions of forced labor, discourses on this history often exclude Black women’s experiences. As such, ICHW strives to restore erased histories and emblazon the experiences of incarcerated Black women on the cityscapes of our community as an act of resistance.
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Our Supporters
Idle Crimes & Heavy Work is generously supported through the 2020-23 Partners for Change grant made possible by Alternate ROOTS and The Surdna Foundation.
We are grateful for previous support from Black Spatial Relics, the inaugural Mellon-funded mini research grant from Spelman College's Gender & Sexualities Studies Institute, the Arbes Award, and the Alternate ROOTS Artistic Assistance Grant.
Idle Crimes & Heavy Work is generously supported through the 2020-23 Partners for Change grant made possible by Alternate ROOTS and The Surdna Foundation.
We are grateful for previous support from Black Spatial Relics, the inaugural Mellon-funded mini research grant from Spelman College's Gender & Sexualities Studies Institute, the Arbes Award, and the Alternate ROOTS Artistic Assistance Grant.
Solidarity Statement
As we, the collaborators of Idle Crimes & Heavy Work, contemplate the ways in which Black women's incarcerated labor is embedded throughout the cityscape of Atlanta and beyond as a legacy of slavery and the forced labor of African descendent people, we acknowledge that we are standing on the stolen lands of the Muscogee/Creek Nation. We honor the histories and lived experiences of indigenous people here, throughout the U.S., and across the globe, and move in solidarity as we work to build a more liberated and just future for all.
As we, the collaborators of Idle Crimes & Heavy Work, contemplate the ways in which Black women's incarcerated labor is embedded throughout the cityscape of Atlanta and beyond as a legacy of slavery and the forced labor of African descendent people, we acknowledge that we are standing on the stolen lands of the Muscogee/Creek Nation. We honor the histories and lived experiences of indigenous people here, throughout the U.S., and across the globe, and move in solidarity as we work to build a more liberated and just future for all.