my story & lineages
My dream is mostly of curiosity and permanence. The work I hold has many forms, from video essays, writings, memory retelling, films and so much more. At the center of it all, it is a becoming. My dream extends beyond moralizing or exceptionalizing my body, my cultural background, my identity, my mind & my heart. This is just a fraction of my lineage, my positionality - and how I arrived here.
ACT I
I am experimentalist based in Minneapolis originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I reside on Dakota land. I grew up in a poor immigrant household with multi layered care networks failing but then working really well. I went to college and did my formal education in agroecology, environmental justice and focused on working with BIPOC people to decolonize the food system ways and that brought me to many rooms I didn’t intend to be in initially which pivoted my work to community safety & narrative work.
ACT II
I am a storyteller, dancer, and media artist exploring african diaspora people's experiences of development and oppression beyond the global north. I express my stories through the medium of film & short digital essays, writings and many other forms that allow me space. Archivism and storytelling are my favorite languages - and my practice is embedded in the lineages of my ancestors, radical being, responsibility beyond one’s self. Everything I do is care work manifested into all realms of remembering, resistance & seeding a work that lives beyond my life time.
ACT III
These days, I am more comfortable calling myself a filmmaker & archivist. I love crafting experimental archival storytelling using found footage, nonsense journal entries, notes written sporadically and documents to weave together the stories of what I consider to be my ancestors—immigrants, caretakers, sex workers,bar keepers,navy officers, healers—by highlighting their resilience, survival, and legacy. My goal at its roots is permanence and will always be. My archivism-informed filmmaking approach confronts my place within the diaspora, wrestling with belonging & weaves our lives in the saddest and most happiest times.
Kassa Haile
Everything i know about care work started with my grandparents, and is a inheritance of theirs.
Tsege Ferew