Uma mulher poderosa: arquivos, memórias, e ‘a(rte)vismo’
The journey of an engaged digital ‘a(rt)ctivist’
I am a second-generation descendant of the first community of Cape Verdeans in Rhode Island who settled in the Fox Point section of Providence, RI, at the beginning of the 20th century.
I spent my childhood traversing the streets between Benefit Street, South Main Street, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Brown University. My cousins and I, along with other neighborhood kids (all related), spent countless hours in the RISD Museum, roller skating on the Brown campus, stopping for a drink of water from the fountain at the Athenaeum, and rolling down the hill of the John Brown House. In later years, I was a babysitter for our neighbors and many families along Benefit and tributary streets, and in high school worked at the “Ratty”, where generations of Cape Verdean men, to this day, work as cooks.
My personal story, research-based creative practice, and scholarship align with my memories of the community where I was born and raised. The trigger of trauma that disrupted my memory began in 1973 when my parents, along with our extended family and community, were displaced by urban renewal, the construction of I-195, historic preservation, and gentrification. All of us, in different ways, have carried the scars. I call it PTDD, or ‘post-traumatic displacement disorder’.
The trauma of that epic urban upheaval motivated me as an artist/filmmaker to document, preserve, and uplift the unique memories and lived history of the Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean village.
A unique attribute of my creative vision and academic work is the intact synergy between my lived memory and the metadata of the source materials. My work revolves around complex soundscapes and visual juxtapositions of archival and digital assets to create rich, nuanced, and textured layers of memory.
My professional commitment to research and preservation, along with over forty years of historical, educational, and carefully restored archival photographs, film, and video content provide me with the tools to open a portal into the lived history of the Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean community during the golden years, between 1892 through 1975, the final sunset of our displacement.
The words of my friend/mentor, now ancestor, filmmaker and artist Camille Billops, ring in my ears: “It is important that we write our own histories. Otherwise, they will say we were never here.”
My team at SPIA Media Productions, Inc., and the incredible, dedicated members of the Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Project, Inc., are committed to ensuring an impactful and sustainable legacy survives for future generations about the history, culture, and traditions of the Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean community’s heritage.
This initiative, spearheaded by the community’s descendants, is a testament to our RHODY attributes of RESILIENCE, HOPE, and PROVIDENCE, for the BENEFIT of all.
Claire Andrade( from ‘the Point’)-Watkins, Ph.D.
Dr. Andrade-Watkins’ career as a distinguished scholar of colonial and post-colonial francophone and lusophone African cinema spans decades. Her trajectory as an award-winning Director and filmmaker focuses on the Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean community in Rhode Island and the Global Cape Verdean Diaspora
