ALTERNATE REALITIES
in conversation with
SYRUS MARCUS WARE Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware (he/him) is an artist, community activist, educator, abolitionist, and Vanier Scholar. His artistic works challenging systemic oppression surrounding gender, sexuality, and race have been exhibited at many venues including the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Syrus is a core member of Black Lives Matter—Toronto, a co-curator of Blackness Yes!/Blockorama, and a founding member of the Black Triangle Arts Collective and the Prison Justice Action Committee of Toronto. He earned his PhD at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies where his work examined disability justice in the arts and prison abolition in Nunavut. Syrus co-authored the anthology Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada and is a founding member of the Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts at McMaster University.
August 2, 2021 @ 3:30 p.m. EDT galt. [00:00]
SMW [00:50] 1. “The panarchy cycle is known by many Indigenous and Black cultures.[...] All systems go through periods of rapid growth and expansion, a period of sustainment, and then a period of collapse and rapid reorganization and the planting of new seeds for something else to grow.” Syrus Marcus Ware. “What Is Solidarity?: Abolition,” (What is Solidarity? Speaker Series, Waterloo Architecture, November 10, 2020), 00:13:30. 2. Originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Black Panther Party was an African-American political organization founded in Oakland, California in 1966 as part of the Black Power social movement against white supremacy. “The Black Panther Party,” National Archives, August 25, 2016.
galt. [04:03]
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You’ve previously discussed how the collapse of systems rooted in white supremacy makes way for seeds and new growth.1 In extreme situations, people care for each other rather than the police or prison system. Could you talk more about care as a method of activism that moves us toward imminent realities? This idea that we take care of each other grows out of disability justice communities and Black liberation movements like the Black Panthers.2 They created things we now take for granted: mutual aid and collective care programs, free health clinics, and food programs. These were central to dismantling our reliance on the state, which clearly wasn’t providing for us in an equitable or just way. We can see the continuation of that care through mutual aid programs we ran this year through Black Lives Matter, or care mongering groups that sprang up in communities all over the world in response to the pandemic.3 This radical connection to care has always been part of our movements. It’s important to trace the genealogy to say that this is something that has been practiced and is essential to revolution. We’re in this revolutionary process at this moment, and relying on communities of care to make us stronger is core to what we’re doing. It’s incredible to see our system grow, shift, and turn towards being in relation with other beings on this planet. When we all thrive and take care of each other, we’re watering seeds that were planted by our ancestors, who were doing this work for generations before we got here. Thinking about caring for seeds as a necessary component of growth, can you expand on your choice to use seeds as an analogy for how you frame your abolition work?