My work challenges clarity in the archive, seeking the stories that fall outside the frame. It focuses on the interwoven histories of the Chitlin Circuit – its social infrastructure, built environment, crowds, oral histories, and music production as elements of collective memory and vessels of “Black noise”. Through photography, video, and collage, I consider how imagery can carry an inaudible resonant hum, and the way the cut/the flip/the remix can introduce new ways of knowing. Through drawing, I use the electrical circuit to imagine spaces of Black performance as sites of resonance and refusal. When a circuit is present, electricity flows - a representation of the way the essence of the Chitlin Circuit reappears, even as its structures shape-shift and take new form. Together, they serve as a new type of “oral(sonic, visual)tradition”.

Cacie is currently a 2nd-year graduate student pursuing her Master of Fine Art degree at the University of Pennsylvania.