Marlon F. Hall

media release: April 5 - May 17, Main Gallery, Memorial Union, Madison. Reception: Friday, April 5, 6–7:30pm.

From April 5 to May 17, 2024, artist, author, and anthropologist Marlon F. Hall will present Can I Tell You A Story?: A Door at the Center of a Table, an exhibition that will demonstrate the beauty of human connectedness found at the intersection of anthropology and art, which brings healing to “communities that have experienced political, cultural, or systemic trauma.” 

Marlon makes tables to make meals as an art practice. At the center of these tables are reclaimed doors made of native wood from the communities where he finds himself. He invites to the table a cross-pollination of people —16 at a time— to engage in the beauty intrinsic to being human. Original musical composition, rich culinary art, and intentionally designed conversations drive a night of wonder experienced by people who are different and share a heart for the community. At the table, they cannot talk about what they do, only who they are and why they exist.

As a Spring 2024 Interdisciplinary Artist-in-Residence in UW–Madison’s Division of the Arts and the Art Department, Marlon brings meals as an art practice to campus and the greater Madison area. He has invited a cross-pollination of university students to explore the power of community meals and be transformed through the restorative practice of storylistening.

On April 29, 2024, at 6:00 PM at Hamel Music Center, Marlon F. Hall will present Can I Tell You a Story? Film screening and Live Performance of From a Door at The Center of a Table. Produced by university students, directed by interdisciplinary Artist-in-Residence Marlon F. Hall, conducted by Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Keyon Harrold, scored live by a micro-orchestra of improvisational jazz musicians, and put to a setlist by DJ Faisal Abdu’Allah, the visual poem will embody the journey of Marlon’s class From a Door at the Center of a Table in which he invited a cross-pollination of students to explore the power of community meals and be transformed through the restorative practice of storylistening.  Please RSVP.

Whereas a traditional film follows a standard narrative arc, recounting events chronologically— art, music, ethnography, and poetry meet to form a visual poem— an original concept and expression developed by Marlon F. Hall. Visual poems, then, are driven, not by the linear arc of time, but by a shapeless love for the subjects and their stories, in sonnet-like rhythm, from stanza to stanza. 

Marlon makes tables to make meals as an art practice. At the center of these tables are reclaimed doors made of native wood from the communities where he finds himself. History affirms that the meal is the oldest institution known to man: before civil government, religion, or academic institutions, the meal was the first place we learned to be human. As such, Hall activates meals and stories as doorways through which we discover who we are as we hold the door for the discovery of others.  

This experimental performance, set around a table with an archival door at the center, will integrate improvisational jazz, film, poetry, and storytelling. It will illuminate the intercultural and intergenerational impact of the cross-pollination of students, artists, and community members whose separate stories, histories, and cultures came together to nourish the soul at a dinner table made for learning. 

From a Door at The Center of a Table: Visual Poem and Improvisational Jazz Performance is both presentation and invitation to activate your own stories as portals through which you can discover who you are as you are— not what you do— and hold the door for the discovery of others.