Know We Are Beholden: Eleanor Roosevelt at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial

• In Event: 58.057 - Reexperiencing Democracy Through the Arts as Scholarly Work in the Public Sphere

Abstract

The words “I have a Dream” have become iconic for many based on Martin Luther Kings speech. Dreaming crosses all boundaries, whether personal, political, historical or spiritual. As an artist/researcher/teacher I engage an awake-dream practice as a form of subtle or slow activism (Heim, 2003), that allows me to cross boundaries and enter the unfamiliar, the unknown. This has become one way to generate data for my arts-based research practice. Prior to the performative event/session last year I entered an individual awake-dream state/process at the MLK and FDR monuments. I recorded the emergent awake-dream(s) and crafted them into “involuntary poems” (States, 1988) that were read and recorded at the monuments. At each monument I performed a poem which included audience refrains and moved into an expanded voice that was more than my own, where “seemingly divided or unfamiliar parts, or even discarded ones, [dreamt themselves] into a more complex, interconnected whole” (States, 1988, p. 32). At the FDR memorial a female voice emerged through the awake-dream. This voice I understood in retrospect was the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt. The only woman included in a presidential monument for her pivotal role in the United Nations.

In addition to recording my awake-dream at the monuments I collected video footage. The arts-based inquiry deepened upon returning to my studio where I culled and collaged the video footage together with the recorded spoken poetic text. The formation of the poem leads into historical and scientific research that informs the poem and the accompanying academic writing. Working with fragments of video imagery further extends the inquiry as I co-create within the dream-space of the moving image and involuntary poem. The video that will be shared in the presentation offers an entry into trance-based learning (Four Arrows, 2016) followed by reflective academically collaged writing.

Author

• Barbara A. Bickel, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale