liquid blackness

What is liquid blackness?

liquid blackness Journal

Jenn Nkiru’s Panafrican Imagination:

Black Studies As Aesthetic Practice

Research Projects and Events

liquid blackness News and Art Reviews

Recent Updates

liquidblackness

As an installation capable of evoking a fraught re

As an installation capable of evoking a fraught reconsideration of the space it inhabits—as made apparent from its residency at the Girard College Chapel in Philadelphia last month—Elissa Blount Moorhead and Bradford Young’s “Back and Song” intentionally brings into relief the inequities experienced by Black individuals and communities, especially as they interface health care systems that are structurally antagonistic to the practice of black care.
.
“This work is essentially site-specific, as the emotional labor that it does, and in turn asks us to do, is made more powerful by its location,” Natalie Sandstrom writes in her review of “Back and Song” in Artblog. “To witness this work in a spiritual space of a historically white and male institution is to make steps toward healing a historical injustice. When we, the viewers, exit the space, our location changes, but we bring the work with us, continuing the work that this art asks us to do.”
.
Concerned with “the complex and profound connections between health, wellness, and the Black experience in America,” the installation raises tensions between challenge and comfort, the historical legacies of race of health, and “beg[s] us to think about our positionality as viewers, and as humans, and to remain open and empathetic to the experiences of others…By watching, our own backs are made heavier by the weight of knowledge” (Sandstrom, Artblog).
.
Photo: “Back and Song,” by Elissa Blount Moorhead and Bradford Young. Girard College Chapel. Charles Fox, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
.
.
.
#BackAndSong #ElissaBlountMoorhead #BradfordYoung #VideoInstallation #ArtInstallation #GirardCollege #BlackLineage #liquidblackness #VisualActOfBlackCare #Research #Scholarship @ebmoorhead

“Back and Song,” a four-channel video installa

“Back and Song,” a four-channel video installation by Elissa Blount Moorhead and Bradford Young, considers medical discrimination and healing in the Black community. Playing in 20-minute loops, the installation’s four screens incorporate contemporary and archival footage of dancing, childbirth, medicine men, prisoners, and testimonials about meditation. The installation, organized by the Philadelphia Contemporary and Thomas Jefferson University, recently concluded an October residency at the Girard College chapel in Philadelphia.
.
In a review for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Valerie Russ argues that the images screened are “meant to counter a long history of alienation from Western, predominately white, medicine…and the history of mistrust that goes along with that.”
.
Images of dancing—as part of African healing rituals as well as stage performances by Nina Simone and Thelonious Monk—are featured prominently, in particular. These images contribute to a sense of the celebration of black resilience that comes through “Back and Song.”
.
Like Arthur Jafa and Jenn Nkiru, Moorhead and Young think through the contemporary black experience using both archival and new footage. Jafa, Young, and Nkiru have previously been the focus of #liquidblackness research projects and public screenings.
.
Moorhead, an artist, curator, and author, is a principal creative partner of TNEG film studio—a collective comprised of herself, Jafa, and Malik Sayeed—and co-founder of Red Clay Arts. She explores the poetics of quotidian Black life, emphasizing the gestural dialectics of both quiet and revolutionary domesticity and community building. Likes Miles Davis who played facing his band, her work is both self-authorized and determined to seek black liberation in the present. She is committed to exploring and building (ana)architectures of black community ties by privileging process and practice over predetermined outcomes.
.
Photo: Moorhead and Young at the premiere of “Back and Song." Charles Fox, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
.
.
.
#BackAndSong #ElissaBlountMoorhead #BradfordYoung #JennNkiru #VideoInstallation #ArtInstallation #GirardCollege #BlackLineage #Research #Scholarship

“It’s going to take all of us to arrive at the

“It’s going to take all of us to arrive at the gates of freedom, right? So this, this unrealistic idea that, from my perspective at least, that certain groups of us are not centrally represented…I’m thinking about representation, I guess, on that level. Also, when I think about queerness as well I think about by virtue of us running away from ideas of queerness, how much of our histories are we losing? And by virtue of how much of our histories are we losing, how full is our future? How full is this future that we’re going towards looking like? That’s why Audre Lorde’s quote, particularly, I wanted to include that quote particularly. There’s no point pretending that some of us do not exist.” – @jennnkiru , from JENN NKIRU’S PANAFRICAN IMAGINATION: BLACK STUDIES AS AESTHETIC PRACTICE, a free public #ArtistTalk and #Screening held on April 14, 2019 with #liquidblackness at #GeorgiaStateUniversity.
.
🎥 AN ABRIDGED VIDEO OF NKIRU'S ARTIST TALK IS NOW UP ON OUR WEBSITE. VISIT THE LINK IN OUR BIO. TO SEE MORE.
.
.
.
#Scholarship #Research #Atlanta #BlackLineage #QueerVisibility #JennNkiru #MusicArtVideo #Cinema #FMT #COTA @gsufilmmediatheatre @gsuarts

Load More... Follow on Instagram