Myssi Robinson is the Platform 2026 Writer-in-Residence. Her writing and drawings here are imaginative responses to day pulls down the sky, a night of songs by Okwui Okpokwasili in collaboration with Peter Born (Sweat Variant). 

Original marks were laid on March 12th 7:30pm at St. Marks Church during the offering.  Each surface corresponds to a specific song world as specified by the lyrics printed within.  That day, a Thursday, it was raining in a way that made our gathering feel sacred. Baptized along city pathways before entering.  The soil drank.  A theater that is a church was a garden when fed.  Spirits leaned far past the front edges of our bodies as we beheld: The single light above.  The notecards raining.  Inhabitation undulating within one of our most piercing oracles.  Her hands needing and becoming the hold. The sweat and sweetness of grief. The deepest groan … we all cycling, held in the gravity of grace.  

What exactly do you need to wail freely? 

Judy, Seta and I chatted for a moment afterwards. Okwui spoke heart broken about the 100+ Iranian school girls that our government had recently murdered on yet another first day of war in Minab, Iran.  The unimaginable for the Shahrak-e Al-Mahdi neighborhood.  Devastation and anger opened us for a moment (for all moments) landing in the song echoes, in the dissonance of our comfort.  We meet these rituals and uplift our prophets because what exists is eating us alive and devouring them dead.  

Hana (8)
Zahra (7)
Mahdis (7)
Nadia (9)
Fatemeh (10)
Hanieh (7)
Asna (12) 

… Baby girls:  these surfaces, their messages, their color stories, their grief logic, the moment they honor, are for you too. 

These are archives that sprawl and make mess like us. Some of the drawings ask for transformation, mirroring the inner alchemy that happens when supernatural performance takes root within.  Witnessing seeds us again and again.  Some of the works held tight to their original form. Imprinted, whole and telling. This collection is not finished but ready to be with community as Seta helps me see.  Sweat Variant micro-altars.  Portals where life force presses.  Distillation.  I stay playing the album while I listen and act myself into this multi-dimensional witnessing.  I recommend that y’all do too.  
Because medicine.

Myssi Robinson is a Bessie award-winning performer, interdisciplinary maker and ever-evolving steward of care raised on and recently returned to Powhatan lands / Richmond, VA.  Myssi has interpreted many dances, and currently explores imaginative archiving, mixed-media marking + design, ritual curiosity and her own improvising body.  Her archival practice weaves responsive visual art, photography, writing, video poetry and spirit-centered witnessing into material altars that honor embodiment, collective processing, affirmation of being and the blurring of legibility.  She is joyfully rooted in long term archival relationships with Jasmine Hearn’s Memory Fleet and Ogemdi Ude’s Major, and is the Danspace writer-in-residence for Platform 2026: Secret Gardens.  In all her working, intuition and empathy play with maximalist instinct to give life to what comes.  Gratitude to Carolyn, Darrin and all that is unseen for life and her abilities to create freely within it.