American Chameleon

We've all heard the term "Living the American Dream." For me, this dream of a possible future beyond the poverty embedded inside my Black inner-city youth, was all I had as a child and teenager. But as I've grown older, I've come to realize that dreams have power and manifest in strange ways throughout our daily decisions to either fulfill our dream-self or not. But what happens when you learn that what you thought was your dream was really only social conditioning? In this conversation with author, scholar, and performance maker Season Butler, we discuss her debut novel "Cygnet" and the cruel optimistic circumstances that inspired the story and frames the psychic state of its protagonist. *Cruel Optimism is a term coined by American theorist Lauren Berlant and refers to the way the modern human clings to such fantasies of the "good life" even when the conditions for surviving the modern world have become increasingly more compromised due to climate change, economic failure, social injustice, political unrest, and more. Learn more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppdd2R46Eh4

STANK by jaamil olawale kosoko featuring mayfield brooks composition by Everett Asis Saunders. STANK is a spoken word piece written and performed by jaamil olawale kosoko

Marking the last episode of American Chameleon for 2019, I have the pleasure of chatting with artist Miguel Gutierrez. We recorded this conversation during the summer of 2018 while in residence at Bates Dance Festival. We discuss the inspiration behind his newest work "This Bridge Called My Ass", as well as themes around sustainability and resisting production based process. We'll be back in Spring 2020 with all new episodes.

On this week's episode of American Chameleon, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and poet Tracy K. Smith continue their conversation unpacking themes of race, loss, and the power of poetry to connect across borders and difference. Additionally, we at American Chameleon would like to take a moment to acknowledge the National Day of Mourning. Annually on the fourth Thursday in November, the organizers of this observance consider Thanksgiving Day as a continued reminder of the *democide and suffering of Native American peoples."Democide" is the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.

For this week's episode of American Chameleon, I sit down with poet Tracy K. Smith. We discuss the poetics of loss and what it means to be American in this contemporary moment.

In Episode 1, "My Black Body as a Matter of Fact!" Jaamil discusses the real life circumstances that led to the creation of American Chameleon Podcast. Jaamil did an interview with Nora McInerny (Terrible , Thanks for Asking) in 2017 where he goes into much more detail around those circumstances, post traumatic enlightenment, and the his own continued journey towards healing. Here's a link to that show: https://www.ttfa.org/episode/ttfa/2017/11/what-does-all-this-loss-mean

Part sound art, part creative critical discourse, American Chameleon is a conversation based podcast hosted by performance artist, poet, and curator jaamil olawale kosoko. It centers around the idea of the artist as a chameleon––someone who shapeshifts in order to survive in the world––not only in response to the environment, but also in response to the past, their inner selves, and imaginations of the future. The project began as a way to capture and archive the critical (but often invisible) conversations Jaamil was already having with fellow Black/POC artists, scholars, and activists during the development processes of his newest performance work. In the show, we explore how these subjects exemplify the chameleonic figure who moves between cultures, mediums, and projected identities. The writers and activists come from a number of places around the world and work in a surprising number of creative genres. They include former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, choreographer Miguel Gutierrez, performance artists Ima Iduozee and mayfield brooks, sound designer and composer Everett Asis-Saunders, writer Season Butler, and curator and scholar Joy Kristin Kalu. Conversations, interwoven with reading excerpts and experimental sound art, dive into the rich complexities of grief, the ways in which identity forms or emerges out of one’s creative practice, and how history, politics, and personal narratives shape the work contemporary global thought leaders create.