Artists & Projects Directory
Cross Performance/Ralph Lemon
The
Walter Project centers on the ongoing relationship between Ralph Lemon and Walter Carter, a
100-year-old black man who has lived his entire life in Bentonia, Mississippi.
Carter has been a sharecropper, farming cotton, corn and potatoes; he has also
been a gardener and a carpenter. The two were introduced in 2002 by Jimmy
"Duck" Holmes, owner of the Blue Front Cafe, one of the few remaining
juke joints in the Delta. Since then, Lemon and Carter have continued to meet
twice a year to collaborate in Carter's house, in his backyard, along a country
road or in a nearby juke joint. They discuss and act, and document and film
their actions. If asked, Carter would likely describe it as strange "work" that
he enjoys. Lemon has gotten to know Carter's wife, Edna, his extended family
(nine children and twenty-one grandchildren), and neighbors, who have in turn
become involved in the art-making.
Lemon intends to continue this collaboration until Carter becomes too fragile,
or passes away, and through this process will periodically develop material for
public presentation. The immediacy of their partnership, and the raw material
of Carter's "ordinary" human existence, are the basis for new
artistic work combining dance, theater, video, visual art and music. This
ongoing and multi-dimensional project may be considered a "live
novel" that is an epic story about how Carter's transcendence and its
vehicle exist in the biased Mississippi landscape, in Carter's cluttered
backyard built from the "debris" of his history, and in his valiant,
ordinary life in a place where terrible things once happened. Recent public
formats of the project include mixed-media installations called (the efflorescence of) Walter, multimedia
lectures, and panel discussions. Lemon has also explored a translation of his work with Carter with
a group of African American senior citizens living in Minneapolis' North Side.