"Rootwork" Syllabus
Every year, Level Ground residents curate their own syllabus to reflect the critical, creative, and imaginative foundations of their residency work. This syllabus, from 2023-2024 resident artist Kyla Carter dives into the connection between Black liberation and sexuality.
CURATOR’S NOTE:
“...racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth… What should be our aim beyond meager survival of constant, generational, ongoing battery and assault?” -Letter to My Son by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black bodies are relentlessly exploited, policed, and violated in ways that deny our autonomy
leaving us to purge our minds from colonial memories and heal our bodies from ancestral wounds. I explore the historical implications of the dehumanization, objectification, bestialization, and sexualization of people within the Black diaspora as a means to understand the Black body’s relationship to autonomy and sexuality.
With roots in the exploration of Black liberation through kink/BDSM and the centering of consent, shapeshifting, the healing of trauma in the body by honoring flesh and spirit, rest, self love, hair, shadow work/play, and death, my work aims to liberate Black beings by honoring our autonomy and creating a space in which communion with the ancestors can take place.
I believe in the liberatory potential of kink and BDSM for Black bodies. Through this practice, we are challenged to direct our attention to ourselves by dedicating time and space to cultivating new positive relationships with our bodies, the environment, our communication, and our relationships with others. Most BDSM spaces are white centric and cisheteronormative, leaving a lack of visibility for anyone who identifies outside of those two narrow scopes. We must continue to take up space and curate inclusive kink environments for ourselves.
My offering acts as a tool and a body of remembrance. I have included a “ yes/no/maybe” list that will help in your kink and boundary exploration. I feel that it is important to offer community and representation as well, so I have shared the work of a few incredible people I have connected with in the kink community. All of their individual practices display elements of what it means to remove Black subjugation from BDSM. I have also included aftercare elements that include mending and tending to the meatsuits we occupy.
Our rest together is in the rootwork. 🌀
—Kyla Carter
1. The Color Of Kink by Ariane Cruz (Book, 320 pages)
2. The Pleasure Chest: Yes, No, Maybe List by THEPLEASURECHEST (Website)
A take home list to help you explore your kinks and boundaries within BDSM
5. Nymph The Enchantress (Instagram)
6. Sacred Sadism (Instagram)
An immersive art practice and research project that uses plant life as the inspiration for a variety of BDSM activities. They helped me heal some guilt I was experiencing in BDSM by reminding me that I can ground my practice with nature.
7. Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott (Book, 212 pages)
“I am willing to fully feel everything”
8. Rootwork by Kyla Carter (Playlist, 43:35)
A remembrance of one’s multiplicity and a gathering of songs that have been in conversation with me as I research, create, and process.
(I recommend playing with an 8 second crossfade)
9. Flight of the Swan (1992) by Ngozi Onwurah (Short Film)
10. Becoming Human: MATTER AND MEANING IN AN ANTIBLACK WORLD by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson (Book, 320 pages)
11. The Hair Tales by Michaela Angela Davis (Docuseries, Hulu)
12. Safiya Darling (Instagram)
13. The Nap Ministry: REST IS RESISTANCE by Tricia Hersey (Organization)
14. cryptid in the backroom by Kyla Carter (Video)
This collaboration was a means to confront the bestialization of Blackness by embracing the many creatures within myself. Mask/exoskeleton by the lovely Aeon (Instagram: @mutantbirth)
15. Fit & Bendy by Kristina Nekyia Cañizares (Mobility Coach)
A lovely friend of mine that demystifies flexibility and helps people to unlock the body’s range of motion by using movement as a means to improve communication with the body. Thank you for helping me create a new positive relationship with my meatsuit.