Premiere New York Premiere
Country of Origin United States
Description In 2000, Ralph Lemon began work on Come home Charlie Patton by taking research trips in the American South. Having investigated aspects of West African and Asian cultures in the first two parts of his Geography trilogy, he returned to the United States with eyes made new from years of literal and figurative travel. What had been most familiar was now also most strange.
In his research he traced the path of the Freedom Bus rides, performed private “living room dances” for the relatives of deceased blues musicians, tracked down a 99-year-old man who still knew an ancient dance with roots in Africa, and visited a number of now-unassuming sites of infamous lynchings—one of which was not in the South at all, but in Duluth, Minnesota (Lemon’s home state). Along the way he created brief “counter-memorials” to the history and people he was trying to engage.
Identifier 2004f.00794
