In December 1521, the first revolt launched by enslaved people against their European captors took place in the Americas, on the plantation of Diego Colón, son of Christopher, in what is now the Dominican Republic. This rebellion was met with force by the Spanish colonialists, generating sweeping new racist laws and an age of terror. Very little has been written about this momentous occasion. It has gone largely ignored and minimally mentioned in historical narratives as well as other media and studies. This readation/performation constitutes an attempt at ‘writing’ the narrative. Rendering the episode. All about: how you write it. How do we write it. How do we deal with it. How do we reckon with it. How. Do. We. Write. It.
In {frst rvlt}, unknown and ignored figures of history have been imagined, real figures have been enlivened in fictional, sur- and super-real contexts to shed light on an episode about which there is very little information. The blend of imaginary expansions, polemical interventions, performative innovations, and radical formal inventions is a necessity leading to a new type of work with two very different iterations: the musical/performative event, and this poetic/narrative text (the author’s final cut): a theoretico-poetic docu-fiction (or, a long theoretico-fictional docu-poem) that is a promising way to confront the writing of a barely-known event in history.
{frst rvlt}
in which is fashioned an anatomy of the first rebellion in The Americas, on the occasion of its quintocentenario
a manic embodied pluridisciplinary reckoning
(the perf/play variations)
a volume of ¡ôwhatarevolution!
(2021: Roving Performance Lab at ECR; first performed with Yes Exactly Yes at Hot Wood Arts, Brooklyn, NYC, Dec 11, 2021, on the 500th anniversary of the revolt on the island presently known as the Dominican Republic)
> Audio
http://music.1014.org/Jams/
Some audience reactions: