Searching for Collective Memory
What narratives are shaping our historical record?
Whose experiences, perspectives, and voices influence our cultural consciousness?
Vagabondia (2000), now on view at The Bass Museum of Art. Photo by Chantal Lawrie
On May 21, Commissioner, in community with Pioneer Winter Collective and Maven Leadership Collective, hosted Searching for Collective Memory—an embodied program inspired by Sir Issac Julien's two-channel installation, Vagabondia (2000), during Third Thursdays at The Bass Museum of Art.
Set within London's Sir John Soane's Museum, Julien’s film follows a conservator as she moves through rooms filled with objects collected during the late 18th and early 19th centuries at the height of the British Empire. As she walks through the galleries, things become increasingly surreal. Ghostly figures begin to appear, interrupting the quiet order of the space and drawing attention to the colonial legacies embedded within the institution.
Interpreting Vagabondia
In an essay titled “Creolizing Vision” for Documenta’s Platform6, Julien explains how the film Vagabondia initially began as a performance piece, commissioned for the 1999 exhibition Retrace Your Steps: Remember Tomorrow, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Cerith Wyn Evans and held at the Soane Museum.
And so, together we retraced Julien’s steps to “remember tomorrow.”
The conceptualizing of the public program, Searching for Collective Memory, fittingly began by inviting Pioneer Winter’s 2026 Grass Stains program—a biennial performance residency by the acclaimed dance company—to occupy the museum in Miami Beach. Performing artists included Nina Osoria Ahmadi, Cecilia Benitez, Darryl Brown, Gabri Christa (mentor), Lisa Kusanagi, Arsimmer McCoy, Nicole Pedraza, and Hattie Mae Williams; led by founder Pioneer Winter.
Hattie Mae Williams, 2026 Grass Stains artist-in-residence. Photo by Chantal Lawrie
Interspersed throughout Collins Park, unwittingly flirting with the role of the “vagabond” by their very presence, performers freely intervened on guided tours led by practitioners and conspirators Lauren Baccus, Lauryn Lawrence, and Veronica Pesantes. At times, these interventions had the effect of illuminating narratives shared by the guides about the public art in the park—works by artists such as Carola Bravo, Jim Drain, Silvie Fleury, Carlos Luna, Ugo Rondinone, and Lawrence Weiner—adding depth and new perspectives. Conversely, they also foiled assumptions, disrupting or challenging established notions of art and ownership.
Most telling, performances brought to life the idea of the vagabond as a traveler—a movement artist—defined by a sense of dislocation not only in physical space but also in visual language.
Resisting the binary
Bringing urgent questions around stewardship, memory, and erasure into the present, the conversation tried on a different shape—from performance to panel—inside The Bass. In a full house of locals, creatives, arts workers, and supporters, we explored how contemporary society cares for cultural narratives. Using Vagabondia as a roadmap for the discussion, moderator Corey Davis highlighted the use of "mirroring" in the film, noting that the format and story both served to reveal and obscure, much as we see in contemporary discourse.
Searching for Collective Memory panel conversation. Photo by Chantal Lawrie
Alongside photographer and scholar Vanessa Charlot, filmmaker Jason Fitzroy Jeffers, and writer Lise Ragbir, Davis interrogated how institutions, including museums, are tasked with preserving collective memory, and where perspectives have been erased or overlooked within their own professional and personal environments. As the conversation unfolded, we found shared language with Julien’s film and, by extension, site-specific performances by Grass Stains artists.
In the film and our interpretations, the experience of dislocation is portrayed as a means of creating new narratives and realities. With Julien, the vagabond characters emerge as tricksters—apparitions that don’t just echo the past, but that mark what’s been omitted from the histories the museum presents.
Reframed, the vagabond is a strategy: a fluid approach to engineering loopholes and escape routes from dominant systems; a spaciousness that leaves room for self-determination, self-actualization, and rest.
In the end, we agreed: “We refuse to traffic in binaries.”
With gratitude
This 2026 Grass Stains cycle by Pioneer Winter Collective was supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation, and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, and the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.
A special thank you for the vision-dreaming and creative support of Maven Leadership Collective, an ideas lab that cultivates ecosystems of support for queer and trans innovators and creatives of color and allies.
Searching for Collective Memory was curated by Commissioner and made possible through the generous support of the Art Bridges Foundation Access for All Program with The Bass, alongside community love from Frolic Culture/Black Miami Weekend.
Deepest gratitude to The Bass Museum of Art and their incredible team for opening their doors and creating opportunities for this collaboration.
Photography by Chantal Lawrie and video by Alexa Caravia.