Flight

by THE EDITORS
in Spring 2023

There is freedom in flight. Which is to say there is freedom in movement. Motion is the antithesis of stasis. But stillness and hesitance force us to consider when flight should happen, to consider what it is we are fleeing.

There is meaning in this decision to flee. The political philosopher Neil Roberts argues that the decision itself is akin to freedom.[1] The abstract artist Peter Bradley offers that the movement of paint, the way it flies across the canvas is what makes a work of art. The artist Aziza Gibson-Hunter agrees. And then there are the musicians–Esperanza Spalding and McCoy Tyner–evoking flight after flight through sound.

These artists, like the contributors to A Gathering Together, are flying, like the Africans who flew away home in the face of plantation slavery. We are fleeing the imprisonment of form. Fleeing the imprisonment of structure. Fleeing definitions and language. Fleeing to ourselves. Through flight, we are in motion, are free.

References

[1] Neil Roberts, Freedom as Marronage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015)

The Curious Case of the Dam-a-Rama

Romare Bearden: Conjure, Continuation, and Art in the Practice of Life