Uproar Fest

The Uproar Arts Fest has officially launched and the mobile we built as Milkweed Mutual Aid Collective is hanging in Mayo Park!

Are you like where the heck is Mayo Park?! You're not the only one! It's the tiny park with a bench on King St across from Los Altos/Nomad/That pharmacy etc.

Be sure to go revel in what we made together and to check out all the other incredible installations across Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough. And while you're taking in the magic of the mobile, be sure the scan the QR code so you can vote it as your fave! Find out more about the fest here.

The mobile is titled "“But then there were the seeds to plant” which comes from the poem "When the World as We Knew It Ended” by Joy Harjo (pasted at the end of this post). This mobile reflects what we value as a collective and community and the future we can build together. Thanks to everyone who has supported this project in any way!

The studio that housed the materials for the piece was flooded during Tropical Storm Chantal. Unfortunately, some of the ornaments created by community members did not survive the flood. We attempted to salvage and include all that we could. To all who participated in our community making-day, thank you for joining us in this creative process. Whether or not your contribution is physically present, your creativity and support made this piece possible.

We'll see you out and about looking at public art!!

When the World as We Knew It Ended
By Joy Harjo

We were dreaming on an occupied island at the farthest edge
of a trembling nation when it went down.

Two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched
the sky. Men walked on the moon. Oil was sucked dry
by two brothers. Then it went down. Swallowed
by a fire dragon, by oil and fear.
Eaten whole.

It was coming.

We had been watching since the eve of the missionaries in their
long and solemn clothes, to see what would happen.

We saw it
from the kitchen window over the sink
as we made coffee, cooked rice and
potatoes, enough for an army.

We saw it all, as we changed diapers and fed
the babies. We saw it,
through the branches
of the knowledgeable tree
through the snags of stars, through
the sun and storms from our knees
as we bathed and washed
the floors.

The conference of the birds warned us, as they flew over
destroyers in the harbor, parked there since the first takeover.
It was by their song and talk we knew when to rise
when to look out the window
to the commotion going on—
the magnetic field thrown off by grief.

We heard it.
The racket in every corner of the world. As
the hunger for war rose up in those who would steal to be president
to be king or emperor, to own the trees, stones, and everything
else that moved about the earth, inside the earth
and above it.

We knew it was coming, tasted the winds who gathered intelligence
from each leaf and flower, from every mountain, sea
and desert, from every prayer and song all over this tiny universe
floating in the skies of infinite
being.

And then it was over, this world we had grown to love
for its sweet grasses, for the many-colored horses
and fishes, for the shimmering possibilities
while dreaming.

But then there were the seeds to plant and the babies
who needed milk and comforting, and someone
picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble
and began to sing about the light flutter
the kick beneath the skin of the earth
we felt there, beneath us

a warm animal
a song being born between the legs of her;
a poem.