On January 21st, 2021 (7 – 8 Pm EST) video documentation from Zoom performance Catalystic by Tish Benson.
Recorded on Zoom, edited by Yoon Cho, 2020 Fall Intern.
Performance is followed by a conversation with Tish Benson & Martha Wilson.
TISH BENSON
Cadence: a modulation or inflection of the voice.
by Sharon Pendana
Before her flight to the next, bearing the sigil of the House of Chloe, Ancestor Morrison once said, “we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Tish Benson does language – masterfully. If that be the measure of her life, her fluency of cadence across the spectrum of Fifth Ward Houston, MFA in Dramatic Writing academia, and visionary esoterica elevates her.
Time-bending portals, she is a “suprahnatural” liaison between realms, on a journey of Cassandran proportions. She carries stories from the Dreamtime, filled with magic and horror, meant to be enacted as art exalting the majesty and demonstrating the suffering and survival of Africa’s stolen people through the Middle Passage and beyond. Instilled with tremendous power, these ancestral “glorystories” must be channeled, lest they explosively emerge across time with malevolent force such as the current pandemic Benson refers to as “KarmaCov.”
Before the character “Hippolyta” captured our imaginations naming herself in Lovecraft Country’s “I Am” episode, Leticia Benson, crossed a dreaming track of her own, claiming selves: Tishie, Tish, Rebekah. Spirit Crafter, Time Traveler, Cartomancer, Urban Alchemist, Prosperity Conjurer, Renegade. From her matriarchal homestead in Texas, she beckons the hoodoo legacy of her forebears. As others fret about logos and personal branding, she conjures sigils imbued with the magic of her people.
Through “cyber hoodoo summoning,” she brings forth the energies to combat “Hainttown shenanigans,” clearing a path for stories of beautiful, unapologetic blackness such as we’ve seen in Beyonce’s “Black is King,” Ciara’s “Rooted,” and director Steve McQueen’s Small Axe.
A visual artist as well, Benson takes a multimedia approach to storytelling, creating compelling films incorporating not only her stunning poetry, prose, and soundscapes, but the works of her hands – drawings, paintings, and sculptural elements. Unafraid of exploring the shadows, she plumbs the depths. Speculative, fantastical, yet ultimately grounded in truth – glorystory hallelujah.
Tish Benson is a cyberjunkie and experimental visual artist. The cyberjunkie is a confession of sorts- not having a website nor any mathematical proof of a following that relies on her truth to balance out the shinanigans known as “LIFE IS A MYSTERY” she can only deem the phone cling to her palms and “vital scans” of her instagram as some sort of weird addiction made sane only because of The Quaratine Pandemic. The experimental artist part is also a matter of opinion- or so it seems to be. Although in days gone by she has received a few honors and awards but lately she wonders how could those long ago accolades have turned into the strange Auditionings folks seem to put on for her without due cause. At any rate, Tish Benson is grateful for this Franklin Furnace opportunity to exist beyond her own imagination.
