Do You Hear the Clank of the Muskets?

The clank of the muskets* was heard all over Crown Heights, Brooklyn, last night.  A nice crowd came out to view the installation at Gridspace, participate in a performance by Paul Benney (who dressed as George Washington and marched everyone through the neighborhood), and make cockades with me.

People were surprisingly excited by the cockades.  I wore my giant, cardboard tricorner hat loaded up with cockades and invited people to create the centerpiece for each one.  Black cockades were worn by the rebel soldiers in the American Revolutionary War - it was one of the few ways that they were recognizable as rebels and not British sympathizers.  I encouraged people to make rebellious cockades.  Most obliged but some were so rebellious that they made their own thing, which was ok too.

If you missed this event but find yourself hankering for a cockade, there will be another opportunity!  Battle Pass will make Revolution II later this year at a public event at a new installation on Smith and Bergen Streets in Brooklyn (also a site of a battle in the Battle of Brooklyn).  And, in October, I will be leading an actual workshop in making cockades at The Old Stone House in Brooklyn.

It seems that the people of Brooklyn can not quench their lust for cockades.  Can you blame them?

*  A line from Walt Whitman's poem The Centenarian’s Story, which is one of the sources of inspiration for the Battle Pass project.