Three people with weapons in historical costume.

Dread Scott, "Slave Rebellion Reenactment," 2019; community engaged performance; 48 hours

Dread Scott

Social Practice
Chamberlain Award, 2019
www.dreadscott.net

A portrait of a person against a dark background.

Artist Statement

I look toward an era without exploitation or oppression. I don’t accept the economic foundation, social relations, and governing ideas of America. My work contributes to social change by encouraging an audience to explore important social questions based upon this perspective. This viewpoint has empowered me to make artworks that show leaders of slave revolts as heroes, challenge American patriotism as a unifying value, burn the US Constitution, position the police as successors to lynch mob terror, and burn money to highlight the absurdity of a system that treats life necessities as commodities.

While at Headlands

While at Headlands I will be working on Slave Rebellion Reenactment, a long term, community-engaged project that will reenact the largest rebellion of enslaved people in the United States. The reenactment will animate a hidden history of people with an audacious plan to take up arms to fight for their emancipation by ending slavery. The performance will involve hundreds of re-enactors, period specific costumes, horses and armaments. It will be reenacted in November on the outskirts of New Orleans where the 1811 revolt happened.