The Commons Crit
In each of its three outings since 2019, the Commons Festival has been a little different, partly because of the state of the world—pre-pandemic, early pandemic, and wherever we are now. But its adaptability also naturally stems from its form, which is determined by whichever cohort of local artists plans and performs it each year.
In this, the Commons Crit has followed suit. Devised by Brian Howe with Alexandra Ripp, one of the founders of the festival, it has been an experiment in a more fluid and invested kind of arts journalism for a new era. Rather than feigning objectivity and writing toward consumers, writers are embedded with the artists throughout the development and performance of the original work—theater, dance, poetry, music, visual art, and more—that they create for the festival.
For the first two years, the Commons Crit was published in a special section in INDY Week, but when the festival returned in spring 2024, as a collaboration between Southern Futures and Culture Mill, we wanted to break even further away from conventional forms of arts writing. So we embedded the poets and scholars Jameela F. Dallis, Fred L. Joiner, and Nina Oteria and encouraged them to develop their responses organically, in whatever forms they took.
For Fred, that meant becoming immersed in the development of the work that Sylvester Allen Jr., Johnny Lee Chapman III, Cortland Gilliam, Anthony “Otto” Nelson Jr., Jasmine Powell, and CJ Suitt put on stage, as well as emceeing the festival. And Nina and Jameela created the poetic texts, partly ekphrastic but also free and personal, that we’re pleased to share with you now.
In its third year, the Commons Crit evolved into a process of art begetting art—a shift largely inspired by a collaboration that Brian and Cortland did around the Culture Mill project Eclipse, Nothing Abides, which can also be found on this site—and its writers, refracting the festival’s themes through their own lenses, capture how it felt to be there more than a review could.