Friendship is a method
Collaborators vqueeram and Vishal Jugdeo pen a post-script to their film Does Your House Have Lions (2021), reflecting on its resonances in national politics, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, affect, and kinship. Their film was screened earlier this year as part of Doc Fortnight 2022: MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media.
"One day in the late sixties, I was on the phone with Rahsaan and mentioned to him that just that day I had bought a house. He responded by asking, “Does your house have lions?” I said, “What?” He said, “Lions. You know, like in front of a museum or the post office. You know, concrete lions. My house has lions. Get a house with lions.”
—Joel Dorn, May 1993, Rahsaan Roland Kirk Anthology
Sonia Sanchez’s book of poems for the many sisters who lost their brothers to HIV/AIDS, Does Your House Have Lions?, begins with this excerpt, first published in the liner notes of The Rahsaan Kirk Anthology, which shares this title. Here, Sanchez blurs friendship and family, tosses humor into grief, and troubles history with memory. Titling her book after a found quote—at once a theft and a gift—Sanchez offers a practice of being without property and of naming without debt. A discipline to abolish in the ordinary." — vqueeram and Vishal Jugdeo, July 6, 2022
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the post moma website.
Read more about Vishal Jugdeo.
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