Charging Station serves as an intimate space for communal resistance, akin to a public square for sharing direct messages in person, energising and focusing our collective struggles.

Reflecting on Kahlil Gibran’s words in The Beloved, this experience invites us to consider love’s intricacies and delights, now turned inward to question our own hearts and souls:

In the past, O people, you asked me about the wonders and delights of love, and you found satisfaction in what I told you. But now, when love has draped me with its robes, I in my turn come to ask you about its ways and virtues. Is there one among you who can answer me? I come to ask you about what is in me and wish you to tell me of my own soul. Is there one among you who can explain my heart to my own heart, who can explain my essence to my essence itself?*

* Kahlil Gibran, The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1997): 1.

Saul Williams (born 1972, New York, USA), American poet, musician, and actor. His diverse repertoire spans music, literature, and film. Notably, he codirected the acclaimed sci-fi musical Neptune Frost with Anisia Uzeyman and starred in the award-winning film Slam. Saul’s discography includes six albums featuring collaborations with notable artists like Trent Reznor and Janelle Monáe. His literary opus comprises five poetry collections.

In When Solidarity Is Not a Metaphor, Williams’s Charging Station, co created with Uzeyman, resonates with the exhibition’s ethos of communal engagement and reflection, offering a locus for shared resistance.

Anisia Uzeyman (born 1975, Gihindamuyaga Mbazi, Rwanda), a multifaceted actress, playwright, and director, explores the confluence of theatre and film with a unique, poetic vision. An alumna of the Théâtre National de Bretagne (TNB, Rennes), she is the cinematographer and the co-director, with Saul Williams, of the sci-fi musical Neptune Frost, which earned accolades including a première at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight 2021. Her directorial debut, Dreamstates, shot entirely on iPhones, challenges conventional filmmaking, blending road-movie aesthetics with digital-age storytelling.

In When Solidarity Is Not a Metaphor, Uzeyman’s collaboration with Saul Williams in Charging Station embodies the exhibition’s ethos, offering a communal avenue for dialogue and reflection.

3PM
April 18_20