The Parade of Fantasia: through the march of Black Lives Matter

It was not the conversation

It was not the rules

It was not about making a group

It was not the colour of skin

It was not the mentality

It was not the background

It is a sound you hear

It is a song you are singing

It is a music that leads you with its rhythm

It is an attitude of you trying to understand

It is a feeling to share your thoughts

It is participation you need to try

It was an emotional and tranquil march that welcomes me to join in on 10th of June, 2020.

The definition of march is one part parade in a sense that a parade is a march or an organized procession consisting of consecutive displays. Parade displays move down a street past a crowd. Marches, on the other hand, have a common border or frontier and give a sense of formal, rhythmic walking.

1 http://heartcrychurch.com/parade-vs-march/

Protesting and Art

Our march is a fully artistic campaign. The purpose is to protest and support “Black Lives Matter”, demonstrating the will of our movement with pride. Besides, it is full of playfulness and beauty; if generates the scenic beginning, creating the landscape. A series of enjoyable activities such as a refreshing feeling of the way we could release our tension by shouting what we want to say together. Its translation to reality. The sense of optimism is also essential in a way that the optimism is comprehensive, it holds all of the vectors of individuals’ emotions towards our goals. And all the integrated optimism become a symbol of celebration as a public procession, creating moments of drama and theatric spectacle. These number of theatrical moments confront the boundary of outsider and insider by incorporating aspects of a procession, becoming the big wave of humans’ collective arguments. These moments make parade extremely political because it is a predominantly social form of art. And the good thing in general after the artwork of protesting, these themes and micronarratives make sense of its multidimensional aspects: in the next day in a café or a grocery store, the parade provides a focal topic for the conversation and for feeling a part of a larger community.

Welcome, welcome ladies and gentlemen to this afternoon’s gathering and very welcome you are […] Delighted, delighted I am to see people from all corners of the world with us here today, people of all shades, colours, and hues, why before me I can see green, olive, jasmine and emerald. We are a small and welcoming tribe on the west of Europe. I’d like to welcome you all here and trust you’ll leave after your allotted fortnight and let the rest of us get on with it!

Here are the introduction statements by the theatre and community-arts company, Macnas, The city of Galway of Ireland at the Galway Arts Festival.

Parade in a theatrical moment

By the spontaneity of this open-air setting, the theatrical parades create a performance community that allows members playing musical instruments to cheer and celebrate our members. The road we step on, which is just an ordinary pedestrian path, temporarily takes place into the glorious road to demonstrate our multivocal elaborations. [Fig01] The theatrical parades as performance today tell the audience that we are an urbanistic community subverting political systems. In other words, by enacting theatre on the streets, the parades themselves are representing the transformations that need to be considered.

Fig.01 During the march for protesting on the 7th St at Downtown LA

The role of parades

The layers of meaning in the parade include the social and political aspects giving an opportunity for learning. And especially for social learning: how do we get along together in this new situation? These multiple aspects of the parade allow for a framing that collects not merely differing points of view, but also a series of stories that, taken together, provide a large message or story. [Fig02] On the other hand, the theatrical parades should not be too didactic in a sense that it is clear that any “indicative message” should be combined with enjoyment even if the prerequisite purpose of parades is to acknowledge the participator. The reason is that it is always more fun solving puzzles or finding patterns. That is what the mind spontaneously follows more than just listening to a treatise. Of course, most participants go to the parades not to see theatre but to be educated and entertained.

Fig.02 During the march for protesting on the 7th St at Downtown LA

The original meaning of parade derives from French, meaning “to prepare”. In this sense, the parade is performed based on the months of preparations involving multiple committees. It happens with the tireless efforts of sometimes thousands of people creating miles of crowded-lined streets.3 One of the strongest tools for creating community is audience participation. Participation is required to campaign, entertain and manifest.

Transformation of Los Angeles

As parade needs to have a preparation, the urban program has to have a preparation for our parades. It is not only for the execution of protesting but also for the certain pressure to giving our daily life, as a symbol of our will and as a reminder to the community. The drawing below is the imaginary car for a celebration of manifestation that has a transformable, deployable, and temporal gadget. [Fig.03] Usually, these parts are hidden to the city and only when it is needed, it appears to celebrate and protest. Imagine when it regularly happens, can’t we think that the city would transform?

Fig.03 Drawing for the proposal of protesting a celebration

Christie Fox, Creating Community: Macnas’s Galway Arts Festival Parade, 2000, The university of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies) P.31