I Promise to Burn Forever brings together the alternative archival practices of London/Berlin-based artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and Minnesota-based artist, Agartuu Inor in response to a growing technological presence that reduces and divides our memory.
In her interactive games, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley intervenes in the course of history for those who are ready. Through digitally transmitted wisdom of Black trans ancestors who were buried too soon, she creates avenues to heal these severed relationships and restores agency in how they are remembered. She begins this process that is reanimated by each visitor, creating a game world for resurrection, rest, joy, and self inquiry, where the player is accountable to their participation within and beyond the gallery.
Agartuu Inor’s installation summons an afro-indigenous landscape through the algorithmically generated Barakah Garden. Sculptural references from East-African Islamic architecture form the Barakah Library, a memorial archive filled with Black and Indigenous texts for liberation and healing. The library’s interface asks the next lender to contact its previous borrower for access, creating a web of decentralized study that is facilitated by each book’s digital footprint. The archive becomes not only the books, but also the connections they make.
They ask, how will you see yourself in this story?