You previously participated in a video-recorded interview for the purpose of creating a documentary about the Idle Crimes & Heavy Work (ICHW) initiative - thank you for all that you shared with us!
As I work on writing an article about ICHW, I realize I cannot do it using my voice alone. This work is deeply collaborative, and as such, any publication about this work would benefit from having multiple perspectives represented. Therefore, I ask for your consent to cite your interview in the article.
About the Article:
Idle Crimes & Heavy Work (ICHW) is a dance collaboration exploring the history of Black women's incarcerated labor, resistance, and restoration in Georgia. Through archival and embodied memory research, interactive performance, workshops, and community gatherings, ICHW connects the stories of real women past and present to sites throughout Atlanta that were shaped by their labor but long since forgotten. Mattie Crawford, for example, was a Reconstruction-era teenager sentenced to life in prison, who became a blacksmith in one of Atlanta’s most notorious prison camps that is now just a vacant lot. Other similar sites are now high end shopping malls, recreation centers, industrial plants, or residential neighborhoods - most of the visible markers of exploited labor are gone. Since the archives of Georgia’s carceral system were often built by the very men working in the nexus of racism, capitalism, and patriarchy that perpetuated the conditions of forced labor, discourses on this history often exclude Black women’s experiences. As such, ICHW strives to restore erased histories and emblazon the experiences of incarcerated Black women on the cityscapes of our community as an act of resistance.
In this article, I draw from my experiences as lead collaborator of ICHW and place them in conversation with participant interviews and scholarship on abolition, arts activism, body-as-archive, Black Feminist Thought, and Black Performance Theory. I examine ICHW as an initiative that enacts an ethos of abolitionist feminism and operates at the intersections of creative research, liberatory memory work, site-specific participatory performance.
Purpose of This Consent Form
This consent form is necessary to ensure that you understand the purpose of your involvement and that you agree to the conditions of your participation. Please read the accompanying information sheet and then sign this form to certify that you approve the following:
the use of your interview video/audio recordings and transcripts
access to the interview transcript will be limited to ICHW core collaborators (Tambra Omiyale Harris and Julie B. Johnson), any research assistants, the documentary video production team, and academic colleagues and researchers whom might serve as collaborators as part of the research process
any variation of the conditions above will only occur with your further explicit approval
