Abigail DeVille: "Light of Freedom" | Art21 "Extended Play"

ABIGAIL DEVILLE:
"If there is no struggle there is no progress."

"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet
depreciate agitation,"

"are men who want crops without plowing up
the ground,"

"they want rain without thunder and lightning."

"They want the ocean without the awful roar
of its many waters."

Frederick Douglass, August 4th, 1857.

[Abigail DeVille: "Light of Freedom"]

[Madison Square Park]

Initially, I found the
Frederick Douglass quote,

and that was just me
thinking about a way to

quickly contextualize what happened this summer.

I think it was the images that he painted.

I just kept thinking about the rolling waves,

and just the waves of people that
hooked each other, arm in arm,

and protested in the face of, potentially,
death,

through this pandemic,

to fight for whatever this nation
actually pretends

that it was founded or based on.

It's a commemoration of the Black Lives Matter
protests and movement,

and the Black lives here in this continent
for 400 years.

As I was placing the arms,

thinking about the kinds of ways in which
everything could have been so different,

that there have been opportunities and moments
that have been missed,

cyclically in New York history and in the
nation's history as a whole:

moments for progress

or moments that potentially the playing field
was going to be evened out.

I had a really awesome fourth grade teacher,

her name was Mrs. Hammond.

She was spectacular.

She really made history come alive for us.

She played for us Martin Luther King's
"I Have A Dream" speech on vinyl,

and you could hear a pin drop in that classroom.

I just remember holding my best friend's hand
underneath the table the entire time

just being so moved by his words

and the power of his words.

She planted a seed, for sure,

of thinking about how we're all participants
within history.

Seeing images of the Statue of Liberty's hand
with torch in the park,

I was just like, "Okay, now I can stop looking."

"This is it."

"It's everything that I'm thinking about--"

"everything I want to talk about."

The torch and the hand of the Statue of Liberty

sat in this park for six years
from 1876 to 1882

while they were trying to fundraise
for the pedestal

for the Statue of Liberty.

I love scaffolding.

It's ubiquitous here in New York City.

Things have always been constructed
and torn down.

This idea of freedom is under continual construction--

and reconstruction--

from generation to generation.

Thinking about bells being another symbol
of liberty,

but then encaged within this torch,

that it actually can't really make a sound.

That also is the fuel of the torch,

and also blue fire being the hottest fire
that there is.

Society has tried to separate us or define
us by our bodies

or where we live--

or socioeconomic class, education, everything.

And then how collectively we can
link our arms together

and assert something else.

I think making that work,

it was, in a way, like a prayer or a hope

for something for the future--

to bring names from the past into the present.

And then to continue the descension--

to pass the baton to honor the collective.