Creative Research

Fascinating! Her Resilience

This multimedia performance was commissioned by the Center for the Arts and premiered at the Earth Day celebration on April 22, 2011. Gina Ulysse, professor of Anthropology, African American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, conceived of this project which explores the multiple significations in the word resilience and how it has been used in different narratives about Haiti, especially since the earthquake of January 12, 2011.  The project deconstructed and reconstructed the term resilience through both a live and electronic remix (using DJ techniques) of different theories of resilience from a range of disciplines. This work also included bits of history, personal narratives, theory, and statistics in spokenword with Vodou chants and other samples of songs interwoven with quotations about Haiti  from artists and Wesleyan faculty.

Ulysse collaborated with sound sculpturist Val Jeanty, a Haitian electronic music composer/percussionist/turntablist, to transform the research sources into an audio composition. Working with nine Wesleyan students from various disciplines, the work evolved into a performance involving movement, song, and sound. 

Conceived by Gina Athena Ulysse in collaboration with Val-Inc. With choreography/dance by: Sarah Ashkin, Ali Fitzpatrick, Sara Haile, Benjamin Hunter-Hart, Ariella Knight, Marsha Jean-Charles, Tsyuoshi Onda, Phoebe Stonebraker, and Lucas-Mugabe Turner-Owens.

Interviewees: Bryan Bannon, Barry Chernoff, Jeremy Isard, Katja Kolcio,Tony Palmieri, Helen Poulos, Dana Royer, Nicole Stanton, Gary Yohe.

Quotations: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Lauren Hill (of The Fugees), Laurel Richardson, and Zora Neale Hurston.