Healing the Past and Creating the Future in the Present Moment
2007 | Durham, North Carolina
PROJECT PARTNERS:
Forging community connections in the legacy of Pauli Murray
Healing the Past and Creating the Future in the Present Moment was a two-week residency and collaboration with residents of Durham, North Carolina and Duke University to develop and create public works about Pauli Murray. Through three workshops that included participatory exercises, multimedia creations, contemplative practice, and dialogue, the residency exemplified the liberating consequences of community building.
THEME
Acknowledging the past and creating things for the future hinges on the liberating consequences of community building, and an attention to the process of living in the present moment.
CONCEPT
The first week of the residency focused on a series of multidisciplinary exercises that referenced Pauli Murray, who grew up in Southwest Central Durham and went on to become a lawyer, civil rights activist, feminist, priest, and poet. Murray was chosen as a focus for the residency because her passion for justice, her history, and her philosophy provided fertile ground for cultivating university-community relationships.
To identify students, faculty, staff, and community members to be collaborators in the residency project, Cook built on conversations with Duke University’s Art, Art History and Visual Studies Department (with collaborator Pedro Lasch); African and African American Studies Department (with collaborator Mark Anthony Neal); Duke Performances (with collaborator Aaron Greenwald); and Duke undergraduates (with collaborator Megan Moskop), as well as the Lyon Park Community Center senior citizens’ group (with collaborator Thomas Womble); Partners for Youth (with collaborator Lee Bordley); and the Quality of Life Project in Southwest Central Durham (with collaborator Dorcas Bradley).
The residency enriched the arts at Duke by creating provocative dialogue among students, faculty, staff, and the broader Durham community. It modeled revolutionary ideas about what the practice of art can be, its societal benefits, and how it can be a force for intellectual discovery and social change. Participants in the residency experienced art, practiced collaboration, considered notions of history and culture, and reflected upon their own identity within diverse and overlapping communities. By connecting Duke University to the larger Durham community, the project put knowledge in the service of society, fostering social collaboration and collective unification.
METHOD
Through reference to the life, art, and passions of Pauli Murray, the residency workshops focused on learning together, and highlighting connections as individuals and community members to Murray’s work. Building on visual art practice, historical information, and contemplative education strategies, participants collaboratively created elements for the public installation. Cook’s studio was open to visitors throughout the process, inviting contributions by students, community artists, other groups and individuals interested in the project. During the final week of the residency, Cook painted the collaborative works and installed them at a celebration at the Lyon Park Community Center honoring Pauli Murray.
Healing the Past and Creating the Future in the Present Moment provided an opportunity to create the first in a series of public works commissioned as part of Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life the following spring. The residency energized students, faculty, and community residents to forge alliances, enabling work in the spring to proceed with a core group of campus and community organizers already in place. The fall residency also enriched an ongoing dialogue about the power of the intersection of art, the documentary process, and community building.
