Olio
Book •
Olio is a collection of persona poems that gives voice to 19th-century Black performers and enslaved figures, using poetic forms to excavate hidden and marginalized histories.
The work blends archival fragments, performance personae, and imaginative reconstruction to foreground the lived experience and sonic world of its subjects.
Its layered approach encourages readers to consider how testimony and representation are constructed in the archive.
The collection has been influential for scholars and artists working on performance, archives, and Black studies, serving as both an aesthetic and methodological model.
Bainbridge cites it as an entry point through which she first encountered the McCoy twins and as an inspiration for her own performative engagements with archival material.
The work blends archival fragments, performance personae, and imaginative reconstruction to foreground the lived experience and sonic world of its subjects.
Its layered approach encourages readers to consider how testimony and representation are constructed in the archive.
The collection has been influential for scholars and artists working on performance, archives, and Black studies, serving as both an aesthetic and methodological model.
Bainbridge cites it as an entry point through which she first encountered the McCoy twins and as an inspiration for her own performative engagements with archival material.
Mentioned by
Mentioned in 0 episodes
Mentioned by ![undefined]()
![undefined]()
Sullivan Summer
Danielle Bainbridge
Danielle Bainbridge, "Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive" (NYU Press, 2026)
