Sovereign Futures
Various locations
April 4-7, 2024
Sovereign Futures, a four-day program from the University of Tulsa, brought artists, academics, and others together for performances, exhibits, communal meals, chartered bus tours to Boley and Pawhuska, panel discussions and more around the stories of sovereignty that meet in Indian Territory. Curated by Allison Glenn, this felt like something new: not an academic conference, nor a lecture series, nor an art festival, but a series of generative, clear-eyed, community-focused encounters with Oklahoma’s Black and Indigenous histories and possibilities.
Information about the program was a little hard to find until the last minute, but I threw certainty to the wind and found my way into as many of the offerings as I could. (When local art community forces like Yatika Starr Fields, Caleb Gayle and Kalyn Fay Barnoski are on a curation team, it’s never not worth it to show up.) All the events were free to attend, non-exclusive and nourishing—often literally, with local food available on site.
I spent a long time meditating on the graphic score for Barnoski’s For Tvlse (in the manner of Pauline) before heading to Guthrie Green to hear it performed on Sovereign Futures’ opening night. It’s a shape that seems to beat like a heart: nine connected circles with a tenth in the middle, reverberating in an interplay of voices. (The “Pauline” in the title refers to Pauline Oliveros, a pioneer of a musical form known as “deep listening.”) The performance was set in the middle of the grass—something that, according to GG’s audio team, has never happened before at the Green, where performers usually play from the stage. The first show of the season at this bustling public venue was literally grounded and profoundly intersectional, as if opening a portal into the future that Sovereign Futures was here to help us envision.
Three Indigenous storytellers (Britt Postoak [Muscogee], Zebadiah Nophire [Cherokee], Chelsea Hicks [Osage]) held the outer points in Barnoski’s score, with three musicians (Mark Kuykendall, Jake Lynn, Matt Magerkurth) and three vocalists (Annie Ellicott, Sage Nizhoni, Damion Shade) stationed just inside and a single “interpreter” in the center. The audience sat on the grass surrounding them: a silent but present part of the work. Sounds and stories ebbed and flowed around the circle, both autonomous and responsive, often with several happening at once. Each voice (story, instrument, song) spoke in its own language, bringing its own texture that resonated with the rest.