hold on- lux radio, arkansas delta

What are our collective rituals to grieve land theft and loss?
What have been our tools to restore and ground ourselves in the grips of dispossession?
What becomes of our fragmented memories of place and home?
How do we honor what remains?
How do we make space to dream something anew? 


sweet smoke and the intimacy of forgetting: LUXradio channel processes the effects of dispossession and land loss by making a burning ritual to reshape collective memory. 

This channel takes place in Lambrook, a rural community in the Arkansas Delta, situated between the Mississippi and White River. Stewarded by the Quapaw and Osage, it was colonized by the French and Spanish to later become a predominantly Black community of sharecroppers and farmers. It had a storefront, post office, and fabled to have once had its own all Black baseball team. Due to outright trickery or shady tax liens practices or pushed out from a lack of jobs, less than a handful of Black families now remain.

In the late 90's, ADJ and her family returned to Lambrook, living with the land and restoring her grandmother’s garden in hopes of creating a sanctuary for anyone who may need a place of rest. Since that time, the community and land radically change under mono cropping, misuse of water sources, land grabs, deforestation, and the structure they lived in "half a house" has deteriorated. The dream has yet to be fully realized.

A barn raising in reverse, sweet smoke and the intimacy of forgetting: LUXradio channel seeks to process questions of place and home by dismantling and burning the “half a house” while being intentional in community. It becomes an effort to create a regenerative ritual of reclamation, remembrance, and to make a pathway for restoration.

Lambrook is a site in the multi-dimensional LUXradio created within the work HOLD ON. We will activate this site through gathering with family, recording and documenting with film and sound to add it to our deconstructed radio frequencies.