Belly, Hype Williams, 2008. Shot by Malik Sayeed.

liquid blackness invites you to join

Music Video as Black Art: Claiming the B-Side

our upcoming symposium to celebrate the 10-year-anniversary of the founding of the group

We are gathering on September 21-23, 2023 to celebrate the artists and scholars whose work has prompted our questions, sustained our praxis, and built archives for the conversations we continue to have about the power of contemporary black audio-visual aesthetics.

They are: Bradford Young, Jenn Nkiru, Elissa Blount Moorhead, Shawn Peters, Stefani Saintonge, Kya Lou, curator Ekow Eshun, and scholars Kara Keeling, Robert O’Meally, Mark Anthony Neal, and Stefano Harney. Bios can be found here.

Collectively, they are translating the most powerful visual insights of black music into a visual language that seamlessly moves between high art and popular culture, music and the visual arts, fashion, design, and architecture. We believe this is the most consequential audio-visual aesthetics of our times and we want to show their work and ask them about their process.

Join the conversation and help us welcome them to Atlanta on Sept 21-23.

Read Press Release Here

For us, scholarship is meaningless without hospitality, and we need your help to host in a way that is consonant with our values and goals.

As the scale of liquid blackness projects has grown and sustainability has become more challenging, we are reaching out to our extended communities, who have directly or indirectly come in contact with our programming and our previous research on this topic, to contribute to our sustainability and to make the most of this gathering.

You can help by

  • donating to Liquid Blackness, Limited so we can recoup our operating costs and offer the artists and scholars the compensation and accommodations they deserve. Donations of all sizes are welcome: this is a community project, and we are grateful for the generosity that has sustained us throughout the years.

  • attending and spreading the word. For 10 years all liquid blackness events have been free and open to the public. We are looking forward to sharing the conversation with you and your friends and family.

  • In-kind donations: please let us know what talents/services you can offer for the event.

If interested please send your inquiries and availability to liquidblacknesslimited[at]gmail.com

Editorial and Advisory Boards of
liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies

Editors in Chief:
Alessandra Raengo, Georgia State University
Lauren McLeod Cramer, University of Toronto
 
Editorial Board:
Sampada Aranke, School of the Art Institute, Chicago
Charles “Chip” Linscott, Ohio University
Walton Muyumba, Indiana University
Michele Prettyman, Fordham University
James Tobias, University of California, Riverside
 
Managing Editor:
Corey Couch, Georgia State University

Associate Editors:
Marquis Bey, Northwestern University
Erica Edwards, Yale University
Ekow Eshun, Curator (London, UK)
Kevin Jerome Everson, University of Virginia
Keith M. Harris, University of California, Riverside
Amy Herzog, City University of New York
Uri McMillan, University of California, Los Angeles

Advisory Board:
Anne Anlin Cheng, Princeton University
Thomas F. DeFrantz, Duke University
Jonathan Eburne, Pennsylvania State University
Amy Elias, University of Tennessee
Tatiana Flores, Rutgers University
Bishnupriya Ghosh, University of California, Santa Barbara
R. A. Judy, University of Pittsburgh
Kara Keeling, University of Chicago
Barbara McCullough, Filmmaker (Los Angeles)
Amber Musser, City University of New York
Marina Peterson, University of Texas, Austin
Louis Ruprecht, Georgia State University
Christina Sharpe, York University
James Gordon Williams, University of California, Santa Cruz