Collin Riggins: I view my work, “a n d y o u w i l l f i n d,” as doing a few things. First, it was a sonic experiment. John Coltrane is probably most known for his mastery of free jazz, which basically attempted to disrupt structure and tempo through improvisation. If you listen, it sounds much different than cool jazz or bebop or any of those earlier forms which were much smoother. So, when folks heard Coltrane’s free jazz, many cats realized they couldn’t dance to it. It was too damn confusing. 

To me, I always thought that was some radical sugar honey iced tea — to throw a wrench in convention and make people sit with that. But I also questioned whether the idea that you couldn’t dance to Trane was entirely true. So, I had my good friend Khari perform an improvisational dance to contemporary hip-hop music that I felt captured the militancy of free jazz. When I synced his movement to Trane’s Ascension, I could really see the ways in which they labored in harmony. They ebbed and flowed together, working as a unit. The thing that brought them together was their radical freedom in expression and refusal to abide by structure.

“a n d y o u w i l l f i n d ” was also a tribute to black militancy more broadly. The ways in which the tradition of black militancy is captured in the archive — which is to say American consciousness — often demonizes black thought. You would think that folks like Fred Hampton were driven by an intense hate and intense hate alone. That is definitely an easier way to understand his ultimate murder by the FBI than to actually confront the insidious legacy of white supremacy. 

Yet, when you actually engage with this archival materiality, you find the opposite to be true. These thinkers — thinkers that many of us are still trying to catch up to — were driven by the opposite: an unyielding love. They articulated this love in such profound ways and actively anticipated and worked towards a world that could hold such love in abundance. My film attempts to take footage of black militancy as it exists in the archive and center the love that undergirds it. I hope that this practice can inspire folks to really consider how narrative functions in collective American memory.