blackgirl on mars: notes on a life in copenhagen (or how my alienation brings me closer to people).

the hip hop caravan meets Aisha Raptivism Fukushima meets Joseph Agami meets Lesley-Ann Brown @ Kimia  Blaagaardsgade 2a, kld Copenhagen, 2200

'Note to Self', the lab (Kingston, NY)

books my sister read the lab, stroudsberg, pa march 2014 Dear Lesley-Ann,  How are you? I am glad you are back with your son. I did not understand clearly if you said you are  not back, or you  are back in Copenhagen. This year has been very trying for me. The death of my  colleagues made  me very sad.It took me a good while to get myself back together and frankly I still have moments of sadness when I think of  this great teacher who left us.She gave so much and deep down I think they overworked her and because she was so giving she did not see herself as deserving to have the time for herself . Her death taught us all a whole lot.We will always miss her. I know what you mean by reclaiming  the motivation  to do what you plan to do. Sometimes it can be daunting or even become a huge  battle just to be motivated,  because often  I feel the same way too.I have not written anything, I am waiting to end the school year .The...

  Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography & Video One of the most troubling incidents I experienced within the last few years was a visit from a poet.   It was here in Copenhagen, and I had received a call if I had a place to stay for a poet from Brooklyn. Of course, I answered, no hesitancy needed.   The poet ended up being someone whose work I had always admired, and I was happy to provide a space for this talent.   Hailing from the Caribbean, this poet had managed to forge a career for herself with her outspokenness and strength. I admired her. One evening, as we poured wine and exchanged experiences, the poet revealed that she had no big respect for African Americans. I was a bit thrown. Yes, I had grown up in the Caribbean and was familiar with the general condescending attitude many from the Caribbean had been indoctrinated to view the African American aspect of the Diaspora - but it was not something I had expected t...

'have you heard what happened to williamsburgh?' by lab nyc, march 2014 New York is a city of change and there is little room for nostalgia.   Memories often get bulldozed to the ground, with new, seemingly everlasting monuments, rearing its glittering and glitzy head from the concrete up to the skies, for the next fabulous generation to arrogantly pass it by.   There is little space for taking walks down memory lane – often such excursions will merely reveal pathways to the future and recollections with no place to anchor anymore.   If you can’t tolerate change, New York is not for you.   Someone once told me they overheard one tourist remark to the other, “New York will be great when they finish building it.” New York is the city of eternal change. But there are some things that seem to remain the same, although they too are changing, albeit at a pace tantamount to the birthing of mountains.   You see this change in the neighborhoods ...

'Hitler' by thelab, Berlin, Germany 2010 (I had the pleasure of "teaching" the following writer years ago during my sojourn in Hellerup (that's a book unto itself). I was really proud of him when he sent me the following he recently wrote for his school's (Copenhagen Business School) blog. ) I grew up in the Whiskeybelt, north of Copenhagen. On Friday afternoons in spring, old women in  mink coats  strolled along the park and Filipino nannies wheeled toddlers around. There was  kartoffelsalat, and  øllebrød,  and  Disney Sjov på DR1,  and before bed we would steal the salted licorice Mom kept in the cabinet and wonder if she’d ever notice. My childhood could have been a Danish Norman Rockwell painting ( Nordmand Stenbrønd? ). Except, Norman Rockwell never painted two Asian kids with white parents. I was adopted from a South Korean town called Masan when I was three months old. I was two when we flew to Seoul to adopt my little sister. That’s...