Above: Cousins talks with Zachary & Betsy Jones of Zambambazao about the Soulville Census
Aisha Cousins writes performance art scores (do-it-yourself instructions for live art projects) that engage black audiences from different backgrounds in exploring their ideas about beauty and processing the changes taking place in their worlds. Her work has been performed independently on the streets of historically black neighborhoods from BedStuy to Brixton, as well as in conjunction with institutions like Weeksville Heritage Center, Project Row Houses, the Museum Of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and MoMA PS1.
In 2013, as part of The Laundromat Project's Create Change Artist-in-Residence program, she worked with her neighbors in BedStuy (Brooklyn, NY) to create a series called Mapping Soulville: The Bedstuy Remixes which explores the sociological significance of their neighborhood's Malcolm X Blvd. In 2014, as part of BRIC's Fireworks Residency, she created a series of scores that engaged Brooklynites in exploring gentrification through lens of black trickster folktales. She then merged the publics' responses into a play which her residency collaborator Greg Tate and his band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber built upon to create a formal music based stage performance called Brer Rabbit the Opera: A Funk Meditation on Gentrification.
You can view artifacts from the 365 day performance, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Could Not Understand which inspired her current project The Soulville Census in the Brooklyn Museum's online collection.
In 2013, as part of The Laundromat Project's Create Change Artist-in-Residence program, she worked with her neighbors in BedStuy (Brooklyn, NY) to create a series called Mapping Soulville: The Bedstuy Remixes which explores the sociological significance of their neighborhood's Malcolm X Blvd. In 2014, as part of BRIC's Fireworks Residency, she created a series of scores that engaged Brooklynites in exploring gentrification through lens of black trickster folktales. She then merged the publics' responses into a play which her residency collaborator Greg Tate and his band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber built upon to create a formal music based stage performance called Brer Rabbit the Opera: A Funk Meditation on Gentrification.
You can view artifacts from the 365 day performance, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Could Not Understand which inspired her current project The Soulville Census in the Brooklyn Museum's online collection.