Wilkinson’s ‘Engaging the World’ calls for conversation of change

Filmmaker Jacqueline Olive and artist Ivan Forde discussed their works as part of Wilkinson College’s “Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Significance of Race” initiative. NICO VALENTINE, Staff Photographer.

Their mediums were vastly different. For Jacqueline Olive, it was the use of a camera and filmmaking to zoom into areas nobody else had, telling the long-buried story of the history of lynching in America. For Ivan Forde, it was using cyanotype photography to produce deep-blue-toned tapestries, placing himself as the main character within visual depictions of longstanding, epic poems.

Yet, within their discussions of their artistic work as part of the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences’ “Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Significance of Race” initiative, Olive and Forde’s messages served to give a voice and a face to the underrepresented. 

“Growing up in a world as a Black person, nothing is reinforcing your value,” Forde said. “And that’s just a fact. There isn’t much out there telling you that you’re valuable and you’re worth it, and so it’s using that technology to really see myself, and through myself to see my family and to see my friends and to see my people in an enlarged realm.” 

Olive spoke about her new film “Always in Season” in a Sept. 11 Zoom meeting hosted by Wilkinson College and open to students and faculty, while on Sept. 16 Forde discussed his work present in the Escalette Collection of Art alongside artist and educator Niama Sandy. The Sept. 11 event drew approximately 90 attendees, while the Sept. 16 event – titled “A Source of Self-Regard” – drew nearly 70. Both conversations powerfully upheld the theme of Wilkinson’s series film and lecture series, said Dean Jennifer Keene, who was present at both events. 

“Conversation changes culture,” Keene told The Panther. “We’re at this moment now at Chapman where we say, ‘Well, how can we create an anti-racist culture? What’s really changing? Is talking and conversation really doing anything?’ And if you think about culture as how people think and how they understand the world and how they interact with one another, well, dialogue is what’s going to change that.”

The discussion with Olive was structured as more of a Q-and-A, with both students and faculty chiming in to ask her questions about topics or themes within “Always in Season,” a documentary about a mother’s search for justice when her son’s body was found hanging from a North Carolina swing set in 2014. 

It was a tough way to start the discussion series, said Keene, who’d had internal musings about whether to kick off the series with such a heavy topic. However, Olive’s investigation into the subject of racial violence prompted dozens of questions from wide-eyed, inquisitive students and faculty. One of them was Wilkinson assistant professor Mildred Lewis, who after the discussion praised Olive’s style of communication. 

“When you’re talking about something as volatile and as troubling as racial violence, we need people speaking across the spectrum,” Lewis said. “The fact that she was so relatable … allowed some people to add questions … that maybe wouldn’t have spoken out.”

Lewis engaged the filmmaker in a conversation about the media’s role in covering racial terrorism and violence, the two eventually agreeing that despite the longstanding directive in journalism to remain objective, staying neutral about racially motivated deaths was “immoral.”  

The Sept. 16 event was framed like a lecture, by contrast, as Forde talked the audience through his artwork and the myths and poetry behind each piece. At one point, Forde asked listeners to take a moment to simply reflect on one of his photographs titled “The Fall of Man,” part of a series depicting the mind state of the readers of the epic poem “Paradise Lost,” framed almost as three different self-portraits blended together into one three-headed depiction.

Towards the end of the discussion Sandy engaged Forde about larger social issues related to his artwork – asking him about a “Great Flood” concept Forde had discussed previously, a moment that could shift human consciousness and whether contemporary society is in the midst of such a moment. 

“I think we are,” Forde answered. “If we’re ready to face up to the sort of demands that this moment is asking all of us to meet.”

All in all, both events accomplished a key directive of the Wilkinson initiative, said Keene – race-related conversation that could lead to social change on campus. Lewis, in particular, emphasized the need to translate feelings into conversations and conversations into action. 

“We have to … think about what it is that we can do at Chapman to make things better – in the classrooms, in the frats, on the athletic field, social groups and their outside projects, and translate the information that we’re getting into tangible, measurable action,” Lewis said.