Stages of Tectonic Blackness
Stages of Tectonic Blackness: Blackdom, New Mexico
The performance of Stages of Tectonic Blackness in Blackdom, New Mexico, was an act of reclamation, reverence, and reflection on the layered histories of Black bodies and the land they once called home. Blackdom, established in 1902 by 13 African American families, was envisioned as a utopia of Black freedom and self-determination. For over two decades, it thrived as a community of educators, farmers, artisans, and soldiers—a beacon of sovereignty and ingenuity in the Southwest. However, by the 1930s, Blackdom was abandoned due to racial tensions, persistent drought, and limited access to water, leaving the land to grow silent. Returning to this space nearly a century later, the collaborators of Stages of Tectonic Blackness reignited its legacy through ritual and performance, transforming the forgotten into a site of remembrance and renewal.
For Nikesha Breeze, a direct descendant of Blackdom, this iteration of Stages of Tectonic Blackness was deeply personal. Breeze’s familial connection to the land carried a profound sense of responsibility to honor the stories of those who lived there while engaging with the wounds left by history. Breeze describes the performance as a layered experience of both mourning and celebration—a process of acknowledging the trauma of erasure while uplifting the resilience and vision that built Blackdom in the first place. The act of moving, lying, and breathing on the land became a physical and spiritual dialogue between the performers, the space, and the memories it holds.
Accessing Blackdom itself was an intentional part of the performance. The land, now locked within thousands of acres of private property, required collaboration with New Mexico State University and local organizations to gain entry. The performers trekked for over an hour, pulling carts across arid terrain, to reach the site. This journey mirrored the perseverance of Blackdom’s founders, transforming the physical effort into a durational prelude to the ritual. The performance unfolded in this remote, windswept space—an archeological site untouched for nearly a century. The presence of Black bodies moving on the land after decades of silence carried a visceral weight, a reminder of both the erasure and endurance of Black histories in the Southwest.
The performance incorporated elements of sound, movement, and stillness, inviting audiences to witness the radical act of Black bodies resting on the Earth. Lazarus Nance Letcher’s original music resonated with the land, weaving a sonic tapestry that merged past and present. MK’s cinematographic documentation captured the interplay of bodies and landscape, creating a visual archive that preserves the ephemeral nature of the performance while extending its reach. Together, the collaborators engaged in a shared ritual of reclamation, embodying questions of what it means to touch the Earth as a Black body, to occupy space that once held dreams of freedom, and to carry those dreams forward into the future.
This performance also extended beyond the site itself through a public community storytelling project and film screening, fostering dialogue with descendants of Blackdom and the broader Black community in rural southwestern New Mexico. By connecting with these communities, Stages of Tectonic Blackness wove individual and collective narratives into the fabric of its ritual practice, emphasizing the importance of shared remembrance and mutual healing.
In Blackdom, Stages of Tectonic Blackness did more than recall a history; it embodied the ongoing struggle for freedom, justice, and self-determination. It invited participants and witnesses alike to tarry with questions of race, land, and legacy, creating a space for healing and transformation. Through this performance, the collaborators honored the vision of Blackdom’s founders while imagining a future where Black bodies and Earth bodies are free to rest, resist, and thrive.
Stages of Tectonic Blackness is an ongoing series of durational performances and ritualized, elongated mourning rites for Black bodies/ Earth bodies. An act of Black Queer resistance, decolonized time, and reimagined future.
A collaborative performance project by Miles Tokunow, Nikesha Breeze, Lazarus Nance Letcher, and cinematographer, MK; Stages Of Tectonic Blackness tarries with the paralleled processes of dehumanization and extraction, emergence and rebellion, freedom and accountability as sustained by Black bodies and Earth bodies. This work includes live land-based durational performance interventions, original music, a series of short films and direct community engagement with Queer, Black, and Indigenous peoples.
In a cultural moment racked with urgency, Stages of Tectonic Blackness invites us to move slowly in order to feel more deeply into this time.
As a durational ritual practice of Black queer resistance, this work prioritizes Black experience, Black time, Black bodies and our racialized relationship to the earth, liberation and colonization.
The relationship between artistic collaborators began in the summer of 2020 when they began to co-create the first iteration of Stages of Tectonic Blackness. This on-going work is a completely collaborative creation that continues to develop and expand with each iteration. Stages of Tectonic Blackness’s aim is to have layered experiences for black audiences as well as non-black audiences members. While black and non-black audience members tarry with different questions through the work, the hope with this work is to dive deep into race, history, and land.
Each of the artists involved identify as either POC, trans or differently abled, or a combination of those. For these reasons and many more each artist has dedicated their work and lives to racial and/or cultural justice. As artists and scholars our work expands beyond our performances into direct community organizing, lectures, academic research, advocacy and intervention. We believe in anti-capitalist, anti-racist policy and are dedicated to the continual support and valuing of QTBIPOC+ and Earth life. We work as a lateral and collaborative whole dedicated to the support of one another as people and artists, as well as those we serve and support in turn. As QTBIPOC+ people, every day we are focused on ways to dismantle white supremacy in our lives, in our communities and in our world.
As Artists, this project will widen our reach into the communities and narratives that matter to us and the world. We recognize that these voices have been historically denied and ignored. We hope to strengthen and grow our relationships with co-commissioners and with mutual support be able to continue to work within communities through Art. Opening up global dialogues around blackness, indigeneity, land, and liberation. We hope to inspire deeper conversations and historical curiosity and research though our own unique scholarship with Black bodies, land and time. As artists/scholars we hope to add our voices and our bodies into the great legacy of Black performance, black philosophy, and ritual art.
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NIKESHA BREEZE: Creative Director
PERFORMANCE ARTIST
An American born African Diaspora descendant of the Mende People of Sierra Leone, and Assyrian American Immigrants from Iran. Nikesha Breeze’s interdisciplinary work reimagines the possibility of healing inter-generational traumatic inheritance through the intersection of art and ritual. Working from a Global African Diasporic, Afro-Centric and Afro-Futurist perspective, Nikesha centers Black bodies, simultaneously existing within realms of past, present, and future. Their performance art, film, painting, textiles, sculpture, and site-specific engagement build a counter-narrative of an Otherwise, black bodies and ideas are seen as existing in hypervalue, a realm of indivisibility between black artistic aesthetic, black time, and ritual healing.
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Miles Touknow: Co-visionary
DANCER
Miles Tokunow is a multimedia storyteller. He is an artist, organizer, and educator. Miles' work is often about the layers of history and culture within identity. Miles’ art practice is about exploring, searching (yearning) for new meanings and stories by deconstructing the ones that already exist, informed by his life as a transracial adoptee. He often explores the Black radical tradition through movement and theory. He is an Afro-Futurist and interrogates the historical, spiritual and tangible relationship of body to land.
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Lazarus Nance Letcher: Composer
MUSICIAN
Laz (they/them) is an academic and artist living on Tiwa Pueblo land. Laz’s academic research focuses on transphobia’s roots in white supremacy, Black and Indigenous liberation movements, and the legacy of Black music in our freedom. Laz has toured domestically and internationally as a solo musician and with ensembles. Laz works as an addiction recovery coach with a focus on BIPOC sobriety and dreams of a world where minoritized people have access to safer and holistic addiction recovery.
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MK
FILMMAKER
mk is a visual artist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They are originally from a small rural town by the name of Sulligent, Alabama. A driving force for the majority of their work, mk has expanded on the concept of home encompassing place, family, and the self. Using found items, stories, and the longing to be back in their small town, mk investigates coping mechanisms through the function of photographic memory. They work in a variety of mediums ranging from photography, filmmaking, printmaking, and sculpture to pursue and question their upbringing, identity, family, and the terms of loss and memory.