The Poem Johnson PhD Papers: Tidalectics Re-imagined (after Kamau Brathwaite)

This practice-based PhD, The PhD Papers of Poem Johnson: Tidalectics Re-imagined (after Kamau Brathwaite), asks how artists can use speculative fabulation, archival film re-montage, and weaving as methodologies to re-imagine archival custody for diasporic communities historically excluded from State records, and how living artists can shape the posthumous reception of their work before institutional stewardship begins.

The dissertation employs speculative fabulation as a narrative device, structuring the body of work as if encountered in 2088 after the artist's estate deposits archives to a community-based center for Black studies. This non-linear temporal framework engages custodial futures, interrogates the politics of memory, and challenges archival authority.

The research proceeds through three material registers: archival re-montage foregrounding decaying documentary records; weaving as counter-archiving engaging the Jacquard loom's colonial history; and rehearsal-as-research methodology connecting tidalectics to Afrodiasporic choreographic practice.