HCAS Pays Tribute to Juneteeth and DJ Screw Day with Virtual Encore of “Cry of the Third Eye: The Last Resort”
Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) is partnering with Aurora Picture Show to present the Houston premiere virtual theatrical run of Lisa E. Harris’ Cry of the Third Eye: The Last Resort from Friday, June 19th (Juneteenth) to Saturday, June 27th (RIP DJ Screw). Lisa E. Harris will also answer audience questions on Wednesday, June 24th at 7:00pm, moderated by HCAS Artistic Director Jessica Green, on Instagram Live.
Cry of the Third Eye: The Last Resort (2019) is the third and final act of Cry of the Third Eye, a three-act performed opera film by artist Grammy-Nominated Lisa E. Harris that considers gentrification, intergenerational legacy, loss, and the space of dreams. The completion of this meditational trilogy which spans a decade in the Historic Third Ward District of Houston, archives aspects of the artist’s inner and outer environments as they change over time.
Lisa will only be answering questions via IG Live and will not be performing virtually, issuing the following statement:
Black Bodies in Space: A Performer’s response to Dead Performance Online
I will not be engaging in live performance online during the pandemic, in light of more recent killings and public lynchings of Black people in this country. I will not share my Life performance in the same space that Death performance is being created, distributed and consumed. This online dead performance practice that continues to happen on us is terrorizing and institutionally funded. I am reminded that the public sphere is not obligated to any part of my Life performance, and I will not subjugate myself willingly to the entropic communion that insists on persisting.
As long as Black bodies are being forced to perform dead online, I will not be performing live online.
As long as I am Black, I will not be performing live online until I feel like my Black body is safe in space.
Li Harris May 27, 2020
The run of this free program goes from June 19th, the 155th anniversary of Juneteeth, and runs through June 27th, known as DJ Screw Day, celebrating the prolific “chopped and screwed” artist’s track “June 27” released in 1996. DJ Screw, who died tragically of a drug overdose 20 years ago on November 16th, was the most well known member of the Screwed Up Click, which George Floyd was also a part of, known as “Big Floyd.” George Floyd was a beloved member of the Third Ward community, with a footprint in the spiritual and cultural sphere. These important historical days of remembrance bookend a program that serves as an ode to Third Ward, Black Houston, Black America, and the global Black diaspora.
About Lisa E. Harris
Lisa E. Harris, Li, is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, creative soprano, performer, composer, improviser, writer, singer/songwriter and educator from Houston. Li’s work focuses on the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit and place. Using voice, theremin, movement, meditation and new media to explore spatial awareness, relationality, panoptical surveillance and sonic profiling, she maintains a focused concentration on healing in performance and living. She is the founder and creative director of Studio Enertia, an arts collective with Pittsburgh creator Alisha B. Wormsley. Studio Enertia produced Harris’s 10 year durational work, Cry of the Third Eye, a new opera film in Three Acts that archives the effects of gentrification on her Houston neighborhood. Recent engagements include ‘The Nubian Word for Flowers- a phantom Opera’ by Pauline Oliveros and IONE, and ‘Earthseed’, a co-composition commission with Nicole M. Mitchell for Chicago’s Art Institute.