A Lens On Healing
Wildstyle Paschall
Indianapolis, IN USA
Wildstyle Paschall, is a hip hop music producer, a local historian, a writer, an activist, and a photographer, born and raised in Indiana.
Art is woven into all that he does.
DeAmon Harges is a neighbor, friend, and collaborator with Wildstyle in The Learning Tree, an organization of neighbors in Indianapolis that care about uncovering the gifts and assets to be shared and exchanged in community.
DeAmon’s says, "Wildstyle is a healer."
...loving on each other...
"The standard picture of my neighborhood that you'll ever see is, it's dark. There are red and blue lights flashing and they're saying... “it was a shooting “... blah, blah blah... and it's always at night."
"I needed to show,
'Hey, there's real news. There's people here. They're not all dealing drugs, or using drugs all day long. And we're not all killing each other.'
You know, we're actually loving on each other all the time”
seeing through the lens
"I’m more observing on details. It makes me look at everything, every scene and from a perspective to tell people ...'what's going on here?'
Will people be able to figure out that this person is saying? Or feeling?
How am I going to convey this to you, without words?
It does make me look at the world differently?"
finally, "hey, enough is enough!"
"Last year everybody’s national focus was George Floyd. But in Indianapolis we started two and a half to three weeks before George Floyd.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police shot a young black man. He was on Facebook live streaming him trying to get away from police, getting out of his car, and running on foot."
"All of Indianapolis could hear all the shots. It was like 10 of them, you know, one right after another, and the police swore up and down that he somehow ran across the field and got tased...you can hear him yelling as he gets tased and is convulsing on the ground."
"Black folks here, we've actually had a lot to be upset about, and we don't tend to get out on the streets that often, and do anything,..
...it made me feel proud that, you know... we have taken to the streets."
"Finally, we said, ‘Hey, enough is enough.’
And I wanted to capture that."
passion to create
"...people are passionate, and some of them spent their last dime, spent money they didn't have, to record albums to put shows together to get cover art, to create."
"...even though they would prefer it to be commercial, it is the least commercial thing. One of the most authentic things is a local hip hop show...everybody there, from the people on stage, to the people that came out and watched it, they're doing it because they're passionate about the art, you know, whether they're the consumer, or they're the creator. Oftentimes the crowd is littered with people that are also hip hop artists."
"I want everybody to see those pictures because I want everybody investing in the Indianapolis hip hop scene and getting involved and coming out shows and spending money and supporting it."
"...you see people are coming out to support each other and have a good time, let their hair down and you know, really create something."
"I want to show ... that people are fired up, that they are engaged about what's going on in their community, and you should come out if that's the way you feel."
