I'm Perry from Santa Barbara and I support the slowdown meeting a wide diversity of poets

and their outstanding poems takes my mind and heart to a higher place.

A truth that feeds my day away from the debilitating misinformation or the plagues us.

Join me by making a gift to the slowdown today.

Go to slowdownshow.org slash donate.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

When I lived in Philadelphia, one of my favorite events was the annual dot-off festival.

In the black box theater where I worked, we'd invite community artists to contribute short performances.

Born during the last days of World War I, data artists aimed to replace

accepted modes of art making with the absurd, repugnant, and nonsensical.

The festival acts were generally not rehearsed, but the tech check allowed a glimpse into what to expect.

I tried not to get too curious.

I preferred the surprise.

One act featured a group of exquisitely dressed women in 1960s mod fashion.

Pokedots, white gloves, handbags, and big shades, who pretending to stand in a life-size kennel

simultaneously barked like canines.

Followed by the couple who recreated Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, where data was founded.

To simulate time travel, they stretched sheets of plastic cling wrap across the stage,

and backlit in low light, saying slowdown versions of old-school hip-hop at a piano with a large candelabra.

Then, here was my favorite.

An art student made a grainy black and white film of herself kissing a man to the live accompaniment of an accordion.

The film was shown on a real-to-real projector.

...