“Blood in the soil, blood in the leaves. Blood in the pollen, blood in the seeds. May the red wash all and leave no blue. We stay true to the crimson hue.” - Bump (The Crimson Oath) 

Stained, a CGI short film is one of a series of 3D animations depicting a future where America’s landscapes are transformed by Black culture. The film follows a sensitive tea master named Demetrius, a member of the Crimson Needles gang that uses colored flora to mark territory. Haunted by the voice of his elder, O.G. Bump, Demetrius relives the memory of being reprimanded for his fascination with a blue plant; forbidden by the red gang to which he belongs. Based in a world where symbiotic relationships with technology allow Black Americans to transform “natural” and synthetic environments, the film is a small glimpse into the intimate life of one of its many inhabitants. Stained imagines an alternative ecology that foregrounds under-explored narratives. It re-frames gang culture as a landscape phenomenon and recasts those affiliated as environmental caretakers and tea makers.  

The film takes place in the narrative world of Mojo, a fictional future I created as a way of bridging the disparities between the contemporary Black experience and landscape discourse. It is a response to my experience in landscape architecture where we were taught to see, study, and interpret landscapes from a limited point of view. It embraces the friction and harmony that emerges when green agendas (climate activism, environmentalism, ecological study) and contemporary Black experience collide. In their collision, I mine for new rituals, mythologies, and landscapes that challenge our conventional understanding of “nature” and space.