Creative Mornings

Creative Mornings is a free, monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types.

March’s Theme is Corruption.

Corruption can start innocently, like favoring someone you know over someone you don’t. Or recalling a gift they once sent, and repay them with a project for that sweetness. Corruption is a spectrum, rewarding social connections and financial advantages over the rules of fair play. It exists in every society and every institution.

Some people survive through corruption, the labyrinthine bureaucracies where they live making it literally impossible otherwise. But while they survive, others perish. Rising plumes of toxic chemicals, collapsing buildings not constructed to code, we owe the calamities all around us to those who cared more about profit than people and gain over the greater good.

As social anthropologist Lucy Koechlin notes, “A world without corruption is a powerful idea. But it doesn’t appear out of the blue.” It takes courage to speak out. To demand transparency and accountability. To strengthen whistleblower protections and the rule of law. To break up corporate concentration while organizing coalitions of people to reset the balance. What will you do to hold power to account?

MARCH SPEAKERS

Through prose and lyric poetry xavia-margrith miles, Gina Cornejo, and de’Angelo DIA explore the manifestation of corruption and embodied resistance. This presentation will be followed by a Q&A.

de’Angelo DIA is a descendant of a lineage of Gullah griots, priests, and priestesses, thus inheriting the ability of astral projection, chlorokinesis, and necromancy. When not defending Earth-616, he can be found delightfully consumed by graphic novels, art and poetry journals, Blaxploitation films, and conversations with topics ranging from Jesus and Buddha as brothers to the gospel according to Stan Lee.

xavia-margrith miles is a diarist, assemblist, and enchantress. xavia-margrith wields humorist sensibilities to cultivate intimacy with transformation, loss, desire, and divinity. Horror films, toys, and organic matter animate play and her exploration of wildness and interdependence. She is seeded in Minnesota’s tundra, seasoned by Southern love, and Philly-fed.

An Americana Peruana and queer identifying creative, multidisciplinary artist Gina Cornejo (she/they) specializes in autobiographical writing, storytelling, and immersive solo performance. Chosen for the First Draft Residency program (Revolve Gallery, Sept-Oct 2021) she debuted her original solo performance show titled “when sugar was sugar was sugar,” and her pandemic-born collaborative film piece “Atmosphere.”