Look, I know you didn’t realise it but Black People are losing sleep, and it’s all Whitey’s fault. Not only that but those poor Black People can’t dream properly either and, according to Fannie Sosa and Navild Acosta, who are ‘Cross-disciplinary Artists’, whatever that is, reparations are now payable.
Of course cash is a given, but they also require you to give up some nap time and perhaps a sabbatical or two or some other generic time off.
Funnily enough this all started as an art installation (above) back in early 2019 but seems to have been taken up as a genuine cause being promoted by a no lesser tome than Teen Vogue – and other publications within the current BLM mania.
Black Power Naps is an artistic initiative with components including physical installations, zines, an opera, and more. But it’s also a recognition of the hundreds of years of sleep deprivation that Black people and people of color have experienced as a result of systemic racism, a way to pushback against the false stereotype that Black people are lazy, and an investigation of the inequitable distribution of rest. That lack of sleep has serious consequences.
Right, so Black People are falsely thought to be lazy, because, Racism, but it isn’t their fault, so to make up for this it is up to you, as a nasty White Person, to let them go and have a lie down. Ok, got it, that sounds legit. Please, please, tell me more.
Black Power Naps is a sculptural installation, vibrational device and curatorial initiative that reclaims laziness and idleness as power.
Departing from historical records that show that deliberate fragmentation of restorative sleep patterns were used to subjugate and extract labor from enslaved people, we have realised that this extraction has not stopped, it has only morphed.
A state of constant fatigue is still used to break our will. This “sleep gap” shows that there are front lines in our bedrooms as well as the streets: deficit of sleep and lack of free time for some is the building block of the “free world”. After learning who benefits most from restful sleep and down time, we are creating interactive surfaces for a playful approach to investigate and practice deliberate energetic repair.
As Afro Latinx artists, we believe that reparation must come from the institution under many shapes, one of them being the redistribution of rest, relaxation, and down times.
Umm, sorry, you say a “vibrational device”, and what is that exactly? And let me get this straight, we built the free world by keeping slaves tired? Ahhh, OK.
Geeze, who are these people? Well, actually that is easy to find too. From their website, blackpowernaps.black we get this succinct bio for one of them. (Oh and yep, there really is a .black internet name thingy).
Fannie Sosa is an internationally applauded, award-winning, interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and activist cued up to recieve their doctorate degree in Gender and Social Science at Lille 3 University in 2019. Their Afro-diasporic and Indigenous ancestry has informed their many years of research, performances, and teachings. Sosa’s work focuses on developing pleasurable methodologies using vibrational and sonic therapy, movement practices that liberate the core, and transformational social justice-centered publications. Their performance work has been produced by Tate Modern, Matadero Madrid, and Wiener Festwochen. Sosa’s current artistic projects include Black Power Naps, Pleasure is Power, Consent Improvisation, and screen writing a new television series.
Wow, Ok, I think I may need a lie down myself. Don’t you bloody White Fullas steal any of my dreams while I’m out either or you’ll be paying for it for years.
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