Mississippi Creates: A. J. Haynes / Evidence
Document Type
Video
Publication Date
12-1-2023
Abstract
Black and Filipino queer-femme musical artist A.J. Haynes finds freedom of expression and bodily agency in ancestral ties to Mississippi land. Through genre-expansive music and community activism, A.J. invites us through a portal where the roots of black and queer futures grow infinitely through time and space.
Mississippi Creates is a collaborative project between the MFA in Documentary Expression and Yoknapatawpha Arts Council started in 2021 by John Rash as part of his MFA Documentary Fieldwork course at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. MFA students enrolled in the course are each provided with funding to produce a short documentary film highlighting musicians creating work influenced or inspired by the life, culture, and sounds of Mississippi. Each film pairs new original recordings of the musician performances with oral history interviews to capture both the craft and inspiration of the creative process.
Lucy Gaines is a writer and documentarian in pursuit of an M.A. in Southern Studies and Documentary Expression at The University of Mississippi. Previously, she earned her B.F.A in Art and B.A. in English Literature from Rhodes College before working across creative disciplines to hone her multimedia storytelling approach. Her current research and creative projects seek to challenge and mobilize the definitive “sense of place” once attributed to the American South.
Relational Format
video recording
Recommended Citation
Gaines, Lucy, "Mississippi Creates: A. J. Haynes / Evidence" (2023). Fall 2023 Showcase. 4.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/docshowcase_2023-12/4
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Photo (Click image to see a full-size version):
Lucy Gaines