Ray Anthony Barrett: Go Tell it on the Mountain

Ray Anthony Barrett: Go Tell It On the Mountain is a commissioned project organized by Active Cultures, which traces the artist and chef’s months-long journey across the varied landscapes of the Western states. Through a multifaceted project—spanning writing, research, film, and cooking—and which unfolds over the course of two years, Ray interrogates the evolution of agricultural and land practices and the impact of dispossession and colonialism on foodways, tracing its roots from white settler colonialism to present day modes of capitalism and overconsumption. Ray is particularly interested in the contradictions and tensions of American foodways as they pertain to the relationship between Black people and the land they were at once forced to inhabit and indelibly shaped. It is through the lens of foodways and food justice that his line of inquiry takes form: namely, to examine the many reverberations of white settler colonialism and the ways in which these ongoing systems maintain inequities to this day. Alongside this critique, Ray reflects on the contributions of Black Americans to contemporary agricultural practices, food staples, cooking techniques, and preparation. His resulting diaristic accounts in Dispatches from the Western Wild and his experimental film Go Tell It On the Mountain are conceived as meditations on the many ways that land informs notions of identity and conceptions of food.

Throughout this journey in 2020 and 2021, Ray and his production partner Rusty Baldwin accumulated photographs, film, and sonic archives that serve as source material for the second series of programs. The resulting artist film, writings, and public programs examine the relationships between food, ecology, and agriculture to reveal the tensions and conflicts therein. Ray’s work with Active Cultures begins with Dispatches from the Western Wild, and is followed in 2022 with a screening of his film and a public conversation. Finally, the series culminates in a meal and public gathering to commemorate Ray’s journey and travels throughout the West, while also offering food as a lens from which to unravel these complex histories. The meal was conceived by Ray to highlight the ingredients and cooking methods Ray brought to bear over the course of his expedition, focusing attention on the complicated and tenuous relationship between land, labor, and culture.

Dispatches from the Western Wild is the first iteration of a series of public programs by Ray Anthony Barrett. Written in the months after having completed an expedition across the American West, these Dispatches offer reflections on genealogies, sustainability, ecologies, and the varied landscapes of the Western wild. This online journal serves as an on-going rumination on this months-long passage traversing both familiar and unfamiliar land. Ray’s reflections are rooted in both a personal endeavor towards liberation and an historical inquiry into complex questions of identity, landscapes of survival, resilience, and revival.