In 2022, the Brooklyn-based arts nonprofit WORTHLESSSTUDIOS hosted 1-800 Completely happy Birthday, a posthumous tribute to 12 Black and Brown people killed by police. Created by San Francisco-based artist Mohammad Gorjestani, the undertaking initially started in 2020 as a voicemail initiative that allowed individuals to depart and hearken to messages for the victims on their birthdays. Two years later, it grew to become a large-scale interactive show that ran for 4 months in a warehouse on the border of East Williamsburg and Bushwick. The exhibition raised $12,000 in funds for the households of the exhibition’s “celebrants”: Dujuan Armstrong, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Fred Cox, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Xzavier Hill, Donovon Lynch, Sean Monterrosa, Tony “Terrell” Robinson Jr., and Mario Woods.
Now, WORTHLESSSTUDIOS and Gorjestani’s movie manufacturing firm Even/Odd have partnered with the general public security advocacy group Marketing campaign Zero for one more iteration of 1-800 Completely happy Birthday on a nationwide scale, slated to open in 2025. Working alongside Gorjestani and the celebrants’ households, the undertaking’s new fellow BJ McBride, an Oakland-based producer who co-founded the BE-Imaginative artist collective, will deliver the tales of Armstrong, Bland, Castile, Clark, Cox, Garner, Grant, Hill, Lynch, Monterrosa, Robinson, and Woods to venues throughout the nation.
“I keep in mind precisely the place I used to be when it occurred,” McBride advised Hyperallergic about his recollections of the 2015 police killing of Woods, who was 26 years-old on the time.
“I had taken that very same path to my job within the monetary district in San Francisco that morning,” McBride stated, recalling that it wasn’t till lunchtime that he noticed the information of Woods’s demise on social media.
Within the aftermath of Woods’s police homicide, McBride joined his friends within the protests in opposition to police violence and systemic racism, and he remembered questioning what would occur as soon as the information cycle modified and public backlash dwindled. Now, he hopes to deliver 1-800 Completely happy Birthday again to his residence on the West Coast, particularly given the area’s personal civil rights historical past and enduring police violence that continues to form its communities at the moment.
“The fact of that is that the police violence remains to be right here,” McBride stated. “It’s not within the information cycle as a lot because it was [a few years ago,] however that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s nonetheless one thing that our nation wants to deal with.”
Along with increasing the undertaking to different areas of the nation, Gorjestani advised Hyperallergic that he’s concerned about facilitating the eventual return of the cellphone cubicles to the celebrants’ communities.
“Telephone cubicles have been everlasting buildings in public area, so it could be good to proceed that,” Gorjestani stated, including that the staff has found out learn how to energy the cubicles with photo voltaic power to allow them to be put in each indoors and outdoor.
They’re additionally open to probably discovering a everlasting residence for the set up, if given the chance.
“The entire idea of this undertaking is to make use of artwork to encourage individuals to ponder and examine their very own emotions and feelings about this epidemic of state violence,” he stated.