Locally Grown: Sign Up for a Brilliance Remastered One on One Garden Walk in Durham!

23 03 2013

historic-terraces-at-duke-gardens-6Another part of the Brilliance Remastered Durham Advantage!   It is SPRING!!!!  I am celebrating my favorite season in Durham, focusing my energy on the community I love!!!!!  Are you or someone you know someone who could benefit from a personalized Brilliance Remastered Conversation this Spring?

Maybe you are about to graduate from something or about to embark on your own social justice minded project.  Maybe you are ready to have a breakthrough around making your creative or intellectual work more community accountable.  Maybe you are hoping to launch an art project that will make our world a better place.  Maybe you need to quit your job and are looking for a way to transition out.  Maybe you want to make your side project the center of your life.  Maybe you just know a walk and conversation with Sista Docta Lex about your passionate work would increase its value for our whole community.  If that is you or someone you love you should sign up for a garden walk!  (Also if your accessibility or allergy needs call for it we can certainly sit in a garden or walk near a river or do something else.)

images-1So here is how it works!

1.  Sign up for one of only 7 available one hour walks (Monday and Wednesday afternoons from April 1-22)

2.  Send an email to Lex at brillianceremastered@gmail.com about what you are up to right now and your hopes and dreams for our conversation.

3.  Recirculate the love!  Donate $50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind (the same donation that folks not lucky enough to live in or near Durham pay for a phone consultation) OR donate $25 and a delicious healthy vegetarian meal that can feed Lex and her partner Julia!

That’s it!!!!  Looking forward to your locally growing brilliance!!!

Love,

Lex





Black Feminist Film School Fieldtrip! A Place of Rage at UNC

22 03 2013

211185_151073095043370_1131390110_nDate: Wednesday, March 27
Time: 7:30p
Place:UNC Greensboro Campus, Curry Building, Room 225 (Curry Auditorium)

Black Feminist Film School co-founder Alexis Pauline Gumbs is thrilled to lead a discussion after a screening of Pratibha Parmar’s film  “A Place of Rage” at UNC-Greensboro.

“This exuberant celebration of African American women and their achievements features interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of the civil rights, Black power and feminist movements, the trio reassess how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionized American society. A stirring chapter in African American history, highlighted by music from Prince, Janet Jackson, the Neville Brothers and the Staple Singers.”
This event is brought to you by Women & Gender Studies Program of UNCG





We Know What We Need!: Brilliance Remastered Need Ensemble Convenes!

5 03 2013

Audre+21Last night was the first session of the Brilliance Remastered  weeklong digital performance intensive honoring Audre Lorde’s “Need: A Chorale for Black Women’s Voices” as a resource for community accountable artist/intellectuals.  Inspired by Omi Osun/Joni L. Jones and the Jazz Aesthetic Manifesto we created this group poem as a performance, practice and primer on what we need in order to be present in our lives and in this intimate work together across time zones and geographical borders.  Here is one arrangement of our poem:

 

 

 

 

 We Know What We Need

 

i know

i need love

i know

i need to know that

i am loved

 

i know that

(i need hugs on hugs on hugs)

 

i know

we need water

i know

we need art

i know

we need our imaginations

i know

we need trust

i know

we need to breathe deeply

i know

we need LIFE

i know

we need to trust the miracles

yes! i know

we need miracles

 

i know

I’m needing

dancing

 

i know i

need to forgive

i know i

need to let go

i know i

need to accept that

I exist.

 

i know we

need to stop being shamed of our natural smells shapes ideas loves

i know we

need to remember what we hid

i know we

need to forgive ourselves

i know we

need to be courageous

i know we

need our ancestors breathing

i know we

need to continue learning

i know we

need to surrender to freedom

i know we

need to cry

i know we

need to work it all out

i know we

need to exhale

i know we

need to laugh… belly laughs…

i know we

need to mother ourselves

I know we

need to (continue to) connect

i know we

need to reach out for support when the terrors begin

i know we

need to hold hands

i know we

need to practice self love

 

 

i know

we need each other

we know

we need one another

i know

we need to heal

i know

we need to speak each others names

i know

we need to speak each others names in prayer

i know

we need sacred space

i know

we need ritual

i know

we need space to dream

i know

i need this space

this space!!!!

 

I know

i needed to come here tonight… this week.

i know

i need this life because i am here

i know

i need to overcome fear of the unknown

i know

it takes presence to perceive the miracles

i know

that i can always find this space when

i need it

 

yessss

!!!!!!!





Concrete Ritual for Audre Lorde (Sign up for March’s Ensemble)

18 02 2013

Check out this poetry/video collaboration between Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Julia Roxanne Wallace and then sign up for our performance intensive honoring Audre Lorde ASAP!

Join the Brilliance Remastered community the first week of March for an interactive webinar investigation of performance and online ritual in relationship to community accountable intellectual work.  Participants will learn about performance practices from Audre Lorde’s Chorale Need, a classic text designed to end violence against black women and the shared experience of creating a healing multi-media cyber performance for our community about who we are and what we need as community accountable intellectuals.

Registration Due by Feb. 22, 2013

*the ensemble will be limited to 9 participants

Intensive dates: March 4,5,6,7,8  2012   (9pm Eastern Time)

Fee: Sliding Scale $150-250

Required Reading:

  • “Need” “Coal” “Power” and “Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde,
  • One Campus Guide to Performing “Need” edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
  • Excerpts from Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic by Omi Osun
  • (all readings available via pdf and snail mail to registered participants)

To Register:

  • Send an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your contact info (INCLUDING SNAIL MAIL ADDRESS) and what you hope to get out of the course.
  • Send registration deposit of $50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind via paypal:
  • https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=3VHV86GHPK56J
  • Full registration fee is due by March 1, 2013
  • webinar will take place over google hangout. participants will have to register (for free) for google plus.

http://www.alexispauline.com/brillianceremastered/2012/10/23/need-a-cyber-performance-ritual-for-community-accountable-scholars/





Walking Arawak Road in Vinyl Magazine

18 02 2013
Just in time for the birthdays of Audre Lorde and my grandfather Jeremiah Gumbs, here is my poem “Walking Arawak Road” http://vinylpoetry.com/volume-7/page-18/





Better Together! Sign up for the first Brilliance Remastered Cohort by Feb. 10th!

1 02 2013

After the successful launch of the three course Brilliance Remastered One-on-One coaching curriculum in 2012 we are expanding the brilliance by offering the courses to distinguished passionate cohorts of visionaries in 2013!

The cohort model allows a set of aligned visionaries to experience the life-changing curricula and to benefit from one-on-one attention from Sista Docta Lex while building community with each other.   Doing it together also allows Brilliance Remastered to provide this service at a lower rate.  (However the one-on-one version of this curriculum is still available for those of you who want me all to yourself! :)

Cohort Participants Commit to a 3-Month Experience with:

  • weekly transformative assignments
  • bi-weekly google-hangout discussion sessions with fellow cohort members facilitated by Lex
  • weekly email check-ins with Lex
  • access to Lex’s super-secret online office hours
  • song dedications and motivation

all for $500 per participant.  Payment plans are available.  I am committed to making this accessible to you!

Participants join the cohort through a phone assessment conversation where we will determine the best way to engage the curriculum.  Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com to schedule a phone assessment for $25.  More on phone assessments here.

Here are this year’s offerings! Looking forward to working together!

Semester that Changed Your Life Coaching Modules:

Spring 2013 “Doing What I Came to Do”: Activating Your Purpose*

*Email brillianceremastered to set up a phone assessment by Feb 10th.

“I am who I am doing what I came to do.”-Audre Lorde

This is the first and most crucial coaching module in the Brilliance Remastered curriculum.  In this coaching process also known as the “purpose-keeper,” I will facilitate and support you in remembering/crafting and supporting an intentional, generative, empowering and energizing greater purpose for your degree work.   This process will give you a touchstone for every step of your degree work giving you consistent access to the superpower of PURPOSE which will provide energy and perspective when the going gets tough.  More info here.

Summer 2013 Community is Not a Luxury: Necessary Praxis for Degree Survival*

“Look how you print yourself on my heart.” -Audre Lorde

This intermediate stage of the coaching curriculum trains you to implement and build a community of accountability outside of the limits of your university setting.  Community accountability is what distinguishes meaningful intellectual labor from elitist word games.  This coaching module is for scholars who are committed to making a difference in the lives of the communities that inspire them and also activates community as a superpower to sustain your wholeness and to support and celebrate you in your degree process.  More info here.

Fall 2013 “My Words Will Be There”:  Eternal Strategies for Sustainable Community Accountable Scholarship

This advanced stage of the coaching curriculum is exclusively for graduates of the Doing What I Came to Do and Community is Not a Luxury coaching curricula or scholars who have defended their dissertations or already have PhD’s and are at a transition point in their careers.  This coaching process will provide you with the tools to build a sustainable ecology for your own scholarship that does not depend on the economy of the university.  This is a crucial tool-set for scholars who want their work to live in community organizing, to be interdependent with educational institutions, or to create their own educational/activist institutions.  More info here.





A Litany for Survival: Black Feminist Film School Celebrates Audre Lorde, Michelle Parkerson and Ada Griffin

23 01 2013

A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde by Ada Griffin and Michelle Parkerson
54ded1f80412b1afcc1f22fbb5bff7b8_1M
Wednesday, January 30th,  6:30 pm

Duke University FHI Garage Smith Warehouse Bay 4  114 S. Buchanan Blvd., Durham, NC 27708-0403

Join the Black Feminist Film School Crew for a special screening of Ada Griffin and Michelle Parkerson’s crucial film on the life and legacy of Audre Lorde in preparation for February (or as Alexis likes to call it…”the month of our Lorde”).   Also be the FIRST to learn about Lex’s new Lorde Concordance traveling performance through an interactive exercise!  See you there!!!!








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