liquid blackness is an ensemble of students, faculty, alumni, and community, gathering in study and practice:

Founding Members: From conversations to commitment

 

Alessandra Raengo is Georgia State University Distinguished Professor of Moving Image Studies, the Founding Editor-in-Chief of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies (at Duke University Press) and founder of the liquid blackness research group that initiated the journal in 2013. She is the author of On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value (Dartmouth College Press, 2013) and of Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled (Bloomsbury Press, 2016). She has published widely on the visual arts and filmmaking  of the Black diaspora, racial capitalism, and modes of black “liquidity” in the contemporary arts. Her work has appeared in Camera Obscura, Discourse, Adaptation, The WorldPicture Journal, Black Camera, The Black Scholar, Flash Art, Refract, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and several anthologies, including the award-wining collections LA Rebellion: Creating a New Black American Cinema (2015) and Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures (2021).

She is the recipient of a Paul Mellon Senior Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (Fall 2022) and the Georgia State University Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award (2021), and the College of the Arts Outstanding Senior Faculty Award (2017).

 In 2013 she founded theliquid blacknessresearch group, working closely with Moving Image Studies graduate students Lauren McLeod Cramer, Kristin Juarez, Cameron Kunzelman and former advisee and alumna Dr. Michele Prettyman. In 2020, the liquid blackness journal, she also founded and edited for five years, was acquired by Duke University Press as liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies. A unique experiment with bridging the divide between theory, practice and praxis, liquid blackness names a theoretical concept, a methodology, a pedagogy, an archival project, a curatorial practice, and a praxis of community-building. She is looking forward to continuing to build liquid blackness’s outreach capacity through its nonprofit, Liquid Blackness, Limited.

She is working on a book titled Liquidity of the Black Arts which reclaims an unattended art historical discourse about radical syncretism in artmaking practices to show how contemporary black filmmakers/installation artists working in between commercial, art, and online spaces pursue collective praxes of informality to confront the unprecedented financialization of black art.

Kristin Juarez is postdoctoral research specialist for the African American Art History Initiative at the Getty Research Institute. As part of the founding editorial board of liquid blackness she also served as research Assistant from August 2013-May 2016. Her scholarly interest focus on how Black studies informs experiments in the archive, video installation, and dance. She is currently working on an exhibition of the choreographer Blondell Cummings, whose understudied work formed an aesthetic bridge between Black American dance traditions and postmodern dance in New York. The exhibition draws largely on Cummings’ personal archive and is the first solo exhibition dedicated to the artist. 

Grant Writing

  • Center for Collaborative and International Arts (CENCIA) awarded for “Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph” 

  • Center for Collaborative and International Arts (CENCIA) awarded for The Black Audio Film Collective Film and Speaker Series 

  • Center for Collaborative and International Arts (CENCIA) awarded for The Arts and Politics of the Jazz Ensemble 

  • Center for Collaborative and International Arts (CENCIA) awarded for Black Audio Film Collective Film and Speaker Series 

Panel Moderator 

  • “Arthur Jafa in Conversation: Strategies for a Black Aesthetics” (April 4, 2016) 

  • Research Assistant 

  • Passing Through: The Politics of the Jazz Ensemble 

  • Arthur Jafa in Conversation: Strategies for a Black Aesthetics 

  • The Black Audio Film Collective 

  • Blackness, Aesthetics, Liquidity 

  • L.A. Rebellion: Creating A New Black Cinema 

  • Event Coordination 

  • Drawing Through 

  • The Arts and Politics of the Jazz Ensemble 

  • Arthur Jafa In Conversation: Strategies for a Black Aesthetics 

  • The Black Audio Film Collective Film and Speaker Series 

  • Liquid Blackness Symposium 

  • L.A. Rebellion: Creating A New Black Cinema 

Curation 

  • Liquid blackness at the Window Project (2014) Black Audio Film Collective Resource (2014) Passing Through Dossier (2015) 

Editorial Staff - Journal 

  • “Passing Through Film.” liquid blackness2, no. 5 (September 2015) 

  • “fluid radicalisms.” liquid blackness1, no. 4 (November 2014) 

  • “2014 liquid blackness symposium: reflections and movements.” liquid blackness1, no.3 (July 2014) 

  • “blackness, aesthetics, liquidity.” liquid blackness 1, no. 2 (April 2014) 

  • “2013 liquid blackness on the L.A. rebellion.” liquid blackness1, no. 1 (November 2013) 

Presentations 

  • “On Larry Clark’s Papers: An Archive of Black Cinema” Collaborative University Research and Visualization Environment, Georgia State University (March 2015) 

Publications 

  • “Passing Through, the Black Cinematheque, and the Networks of Larry Clark.” InMediaRes. September 2015. 

  • “Inside and Out: The Open Hand in the Work of Donald Rodney and Keith Piper.” liquid blackness, Issue 4, November 2014. 

  • “Getting Outside of ‘Always-already’: Form, Medium, Figure, A conversation with Hamza Walker.” liquid blackness, Issue 3, Summer 2014. 

  • with Christina Price Washington. “Dislodging the Visual: Yanique Norman’s Amorphous Beings.” liquid blackness, Issue 2, April 2014. 

  • “Ekphrastic Fear: The Invisible Bodies in Nikita Gale’s Work.” liquid blackness, Issue 2, April 2014.

Cameron Kunzelman holds a PhD from Georgia State University in Moving Image Studies. His scholarship focuses on the relationship between aesthetic theory, games, and speculation. He is a founding editorial member of liquid blackness, and he co-planned many early events as well as co-produced the first issues of the journal. His most significant contributions to the group have been in conceptualizing the original L.A. Rebellion scholarly events, the Black Audio Film Collective Screening and Speakers series, the Passing Through research project and Symposium, and he has provided logistical and commentary support for several other projects for the group since then. He has worked as a researcher for liquid blackness in various capacities since its inception, and his published work for the group has largely centered on the historic context for the films of the L.A. Rebellion and the Black Audio Film Collective. 

Lauren McLeod Cramer is an Assistant Professor in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on the aesthetics of blackness and popular culture. She is currently writing a book on hip-hop, architecture, and black spatial practice and has published writing on a wide variety of “art objects” including WorldStarHipHop.com, the videos from Jay-Z’s 4:44, Peter Eisenman’s architectural designs, and Meghan Markle’s wedding. Lauren is a founding member of liquid blackness and the co-Editor of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies (Duke University Press). Her writing has appeared in The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, The Black Scholar, Black Camera, Film Criticism, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Docalogue and the edited collection Writing for Screen Media (Routledge, 2019). 

Editorial Board 

  • “Holding Blackness in Suspension” liquid blackness 4, no. 7 (October 2017)

  •  “Black Ontology and the Love of Blackness” liquid blackness 3, no. 6 (December 2016)

  • “Passing Through Film.” liquid blackness 2, no. 5 (September 2015) 

  • “fluid radicalisms.” liquid blackness 1, no. 4 (November 2014) 

  • “2014 liquid blackness symposium: reflections and movements.” liquid blackness 1, no.3 (July 2014) 

  • “blackness, aesthetics, liquidity.” liquid blackness1, no. 2 (April 2014) 

  • “2013 liquid blackness on the L.A. rebellion.” liquid blackness 1, no. 1 (November 2013) 

Research Assistant

  • Dreams Are Colder Than Death: Arthur Jafa In Conversation (April 2016)

  • L.A. Rebellion: Creating A New Black Cinema (October 2013)

  • Blackness, Aesthetics, Liquidity and the Liquid Blackness Symposium (April 2014)

  • Fluid Radicalisms: The Black Audio Film Collective (September 2014)

  • Passing Through: The Politics of the Jazz Ensemble” (September 2015)

Selected Publications    

  • “The Black Archival Impulse.” In Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised): A Docalogue, edited by Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuchs. London: Routledge, Forthcoming.

  • Co-Authored with Alessandra Raengo,“There is No Form in the Middle: Kevin Everson’s Massive Abstractions.” liquid blackness journal of aesthetics and black studies 5, no. 2 (Fall 2021).

  • “Belly.” ASAP/J “black One shot” 19.1 (August 1, 2022). https://asapjournal.com/b-o-s-19-1-belly-lauren-cramer/ Co-Edited with Alessandra Raengo. “Modes of Black Liquidity: Music Video as Black Art.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 59, no. 2, In Focus, (Winter 2020): 138-169.

  • “Revival: Lauren Cramer Reviews Arthur Jafa’s ‘Air Above Mountains, Unknown Pleasures’ At Gavin Brown’s Enterprise” liquid blackness (July 1, 2018) 

  • “Icons of Catastrophe: Diagramming Blackness in Kahlil Joseph’s Until the Quiet Comes” liquid blackness 3: no. 7, (October 2017)

  • Co-Authored with Alessandra Raengo. “Freeing Black Codes: liquid blackness Plays the Jazz Ensemble.” in "Black Code Studies,” ed. Jessica Marie Johnson and Mark Anthony Neal, special issue, The Black Scholar 47, no. 3 (Summer 2017). 

  • “Spatiality” Empyre_soft_skinned_space(April 2016)

  • “Passing Through: A Methodology for Close Analysis” liquid blackness2, no. 5, “Passing Through Film” (September 2015): 40-49. 

  • “Post liquid blackness: Form, Satire, and Clearing Gestures. A Conversation with Derek Conrad Murray” liquid blackness1, no. 3, liquid blackness Symposium: Reflections and Movements (July 2014): 14-19. 

Panel Moderator

  • “Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph” with Filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, (October 6, 2016)

  • Moderator and Co-Organizer, “Arthur Jafa in Conversation: Strategies for Black Aesthetics” (April 4, 2016)

  • Panel Moderator, “Action, Location, Creation: Thinking the Art of Political Praxis” liquid blackness Symposium “Passing Through: The Arts and Politics of the Jazz Ensemble” (September 19, 2015)

Selected Presentations 

  • “Icons of Catastrophe: Diagramming Blackness in Until the Quiet Comes” liquid blackness 2016 Symposium: “Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph” (October 7, 2016)

  • Passing Through Research-in-Progress, CURV: Collaborative University Research & Visualization Environment (February 20, 2015)

Student Members: Current Graduate Research Assistants

 

Joshua Cleveland is a Filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist whose work mainly explores how experimentation and abstraction within aesthetics and Narrative can form nuanced and intentional dialogues around ideas of collective human care. I conceptually and visually hope to encourage structural and hierarchal investigations around sexuality, ethics, race, and other modes of social and cultural embodiment. I seek to explore in my filmmaking practice, more equitable methods of film production. I also hope to discover effective methods of critiquing, re-evaluating, and rupturing and re-imaging abusive hegemonic methods and authorities within the art and filmmaking world. I am devoted to this work to potentially produce safer and generative creative communities, so that individuals can work towards a better understanding of their creative voice and their authentic selves.

Corey Couch is a Ph.D. candidate in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University. Her area of research is critical aesthetic theory and contemporary capitalism. She was the managing editor for the liquid blackness journal from 2019-2023. She joined the research group in 2018 and remains a contributor to the group’s research pages and public-facing events.

Managing Editor – Journal

  • “Liquidity,” liquid blackness 5, no. 1 (April 2021)

  • “Blackness,” liquid blackness 5, no. 2 (Fall 2021)

  • “Aesthetics,” liquid blackness 6, no. 1 (Spring 2022)

  • “Afro-Gothic,” liquid blackness 6, no.2 (Fall 2022)

  • “Black and Queer, Music on Screen,” liquid blackness 7, no. 1 (Spring 2023)

  • “Suspension,” liquid blackness 7, no. 2 (Fall, 2023)

  • “Informalisms,” liquid blackness 8, no. 1 (Spring 2024)

Presentations

  • “(A) Black Lineage of the Music Art Video” on Kahlil Joseph’s Black Mary

Alper Gobel is a doctoral candidate in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University. His research focuses on experimental video and documentary cinema in the digital era. He has been serving as research assistant for the liquid blackness research group and journal since the summer of 2020.

Research Assistant

  • “Music Video as Black Art” Digital Scholarship (Summer 2021)

Assistant Art Director — Journal  

  • “Liquidity,” liquid Blackness 5, no. 1 (April 2021)

  • “Blackness,” liquid Blackness 5, no. 2 (Fall 2021)

  • “Afro-Gothic,” liquid blackness 6, no.2 (Fall 2022)

  • “Black and Queer, Music on Screen,” liquid blackness 7, no. 1 (Spring 2023)

  • “Suspension,” liquid blackness 7, no. 2 (Fall, 2023)

Ashley Hendricks is a doctoral candidate in the Moving Image Studies program at Georgia State University. Her research interests include race and aesthetics, screen dance, gender studies, youth media, and sound aesthetics. She has been a research assistant with liquid blackness since Fall 2021.

Selected Presentations

  • “Rhythm and Groove: Sculpted Time in Kevin Jerome Everson’s Cinnamon,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, September 14-17, 2022

  • “Rhythmic Refrains: Counting Time Through Fred Waller’s Paramount Headliners,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Virtual, March 31-April 3, 2022  

  • “End (of the World) Girl,” International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, March 20-24, 2021

Selected Publications

  • “Children of the Revolution.” liquid blackness, 1. November, 2013.

  • “Towards an Uncodified Vocabulary: Movements in liquid blackness. liquid blackness, 1, no. 3. July 2014.

  • "Vanishing Point: Chadwick Boseman’s Body and the Still Image." Black Camera 14, no. 2. Spring, 2023.

Gail A. McFarland is a doctoral candidate in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University. She also holds a Masters of African American Studies degree, with a focus on culture and aesthetics, from Georgia State University. Her research is focused on Black aesthetic narrative subversion in film, through race, class, and gender. She has served with the liquid blackness research project since the fall of 2020.

Contributor

  • “Music Video as Black Art” (2021)

Jeffrey W. Peterson is a writer, critic, and teacher from Fayetteville, GA. He previously taught English Composition at Spelman College and the University of West Georgia, as well as Language Arts and percussion at metro-Atlanta high schools. He has a BA in English, an MFA in Writing, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University.

Anna Winter is a MFA student in Film Production at Georgia State University. She’s led many different lives and had different relationships with cinema throughout the years. Right now she enjoys making films with people and not just about them. This means the films take time and also that she often films with close family and friends, where the trust and knowledge of each other's gestures, body movements, fragilities, strengths, and embarrassments are known. With a deep discomfort of assuming the role of directorial authority, she prefers instead to find routes and moments of play in her filmmaking. She hopes to create cinematic environments where people, including herself, have the time and space to bring parts of themselves that feel honest, fragile, chaotic, fragmented, dishonest, confusing, clear, quiet, shy, loud, eager, defiant, etc. to films and projects. She’s very happy to be part of liquid blackness and study the works of filmmakers and artists who are radically thinking and reimagining their processes through filmmaking.

Alumni Members: Continued engagement in the ensemble

 

Daren Fowler recently earned his Ph.D. from the School of Film, Media & Theatre at Georgia State University. His research examines the aesthetic politics of queer media and activism, with particular focus on the continuing AIDS crisis and its visual investment in the body and materialism. He began working with liquid blackness in the fall of 2015 as a copyeditor before becoming Managing Editor of the liquid blackness journal. He was drawn to working with liquid blackness because of his investment in the role aesthetics play in the cultural, historical, and political work of the marginalized, and its power to help communities speak back, survive, and thrive. He was deeply involved in the Bradford Young research project, cultivating the conservations, critical and academic, around Young’s commercial and artistic productions, as well as researching his position within the lineage of Howard University and Haile Gerima. His work with liquid blackness also includes facilitating panels for symposiums and helping plan and organize artist events.

Managing Editor - Journal

  • “Holding Blackness: Aesthetics of Suspension,” liquid blackness4, no. 7 (October 2017)

  • “Black Ontology and the Love of Blackness,” liquid blackness3, no. 6 (December 2016)

Copyeditor - Journal

  • “Holding Blackness: Aesthetics of Suspension,” liquid blackness4, no. 7 (October 2017)

  • “Black Ontology and the Love of Blackness,” liquid blackness3, no. 6 (December 2016)

  • “Passing Through Film,” liquid blackness 2, no. 5 (September 2015)

 Research Assistant

  • “Bradford Young and the Visual Art of Black Care” (April 15, 2018)

  • “Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph” (October 7, 2017)

 Panel Moderator

  • “Architectures of Blackness: Space, Sound, and Screens,” Lauren M. Cramer, Gregory Zinman, and Kara Keeling.  “Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph” (October 7, 2017)

 Event Coordination

  • “Bradford Young and the Visual Art of Black Care” (April 15, 2018).

  • “Figuring Suspension: A Study of Visual Recording Artist Storyboard P” (February 9, 2018)

  • “Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph” (October 7, 2017)

Jenny Gunn is Assistant Professor of Film Theory in the School of Film, Media & Theatre at Georgia State University. Her current book project examines affinities between cinematic forms and online expressions of subjectivity in the aftermath of the webcam and the forward-facing smartphone camera. Her broader research interests include film theory and philosophy, digital media theory, and visual culture studies. Jenny is affiliated faculty with the liquid blackness research group. Jenny has assisted with many of liquid blackness' major research projects of artists such as Arthur Jafa, Kahlil Joseph, Bradford Young, Jenn Nkiru, Elissa Blount-Moorhead and most recently, the 10th anniversary liquid blackness symposium. Jenny has served on the dissertation committees of recent graduates and liquid blackness members, Derrick Jones and Alper Gobel. This summer she participated in Dr. Raengo’s study group on Blackness and Aesthetics and the work of Fred Moten.

Publications

  • Gunn, Jenny. “The Importance of a House and the Pandemic Formation of the ATLFilmParty Community.” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 26, 2023, pp. 154–168. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.26.10

  • Intergenerational Pedagogy in Jenn Nkiru's Rebirth is Necessary." JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, vol. 59 no. 2, 2020, p. 163-168. 

  • “The Outside meets the Institution: The Carters’ APESHIT Video.” “Close-Up: Jay Z.” Black Camera. Issue 11.1, Fall 2019, pp. 385-398.

djones Derrick Jones is Associate Director of the James Farmer Multicultural Center at the University of Mary Washington. In addition to his Ph.D. from GSU, he holds an MFA in film production. His research explores blackness as archival, social, and creative practice. djones' academic and artistic practices tend towards blackness as generative ground. He has been working with liquid blackness since the fall of 2018 managing the archive, helping coordinate production needs for events, editing, and managing the budget. He wanted to work with liquid blackness to remain connected with research and events that speak specifically to blackness and work to impact its visibility and access.

Selected Presentations

  • “We Talking About Practice” ASAP14 - The Association for the Study of the Arts in the Present (October 2023)

  • “Music Video as Black Art: Claiming the B-Side: The Project” Music Video as Black Art: Claiming the B-Side Symposium - Hosted by liquid blackness, GSU (September 2023)

  • “The Political Reach of Form” Beyond the Culture Conference: Black Popular Culture and Social Justice - Hosted by African American Studies Department, GSU (February 2020)

  • “The Becker Letter in the Wake: Black Annotations and Black Redactions” ASAP12 - The Association for the Study of the Arts in the Present (October 2021)

Selected Publications    

  • “Fake News and Fading Views: The Archive and the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre.” Memory Studies Journal Special Issue: Sites of Reckoning, June 2023.

Research Assistant

  • “Music Video as Black Art: Claiming the B-Side” (2023)

  • “Figure/Ground: Abstraction and Object Matter in Kevin Jerome Everson's Artmaking Practice” (2022)

  • “Music Video as Black Art” Digital Scholarship (Summer 2021)

  • “Facing the Band: Elissa Blount-Moorhead and the (Ana)architectures of Community Ties” (2020)

  • “Jenn Nkiru’s Pan-African Imagination: Black Studies as Aesthetic Practice” (April 14, 2019)

Video Production and Post-Production Work

  • “Jenn Nkiru’s Pan-African Imagination: Black Studies as Aesthetic Practice” (April 14, 2019)

  • “A Black Lineage of the Music Art Video” - Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center (March 28, 2019)

  • “Holding Place. Taking Flight: Childish Gambino, Bradford Young, Terence Nance, and Grace Jones” (October 7, 2018)

  • “Bradford Young and the Visual Art of Black Care”

  • “Horace Trapscott: A Musical Griot – A Screening and Q&A with Barbara McCullough”

  • “Arthur Jafa in Conversation: Strategies for a Black Aesthetic”

Website Design

  • liquid blackness website

  • Music Video as Black Art website

Art Director – Journal

  • “Suspension,” liquid blackness 7, no. 2 (Fall, 2023)

  • “Black and Queer, Music on Screen,” liquid blackness 7, no. 1 (Spring 2023)

  • “Afro-Gothic,” liquid blackness 6, no.2 (Fall 2022)

  • “Aesthetics,” liquid blackness 6, no. 1 (Spring 2022)

  • “Blackness,” liquid blackness 5, no. 2 (Fall 2021)

  • “Liquidity,” liquid blackness 5, no. 1 (April 2021)

Michele Prettyman is an Assistant Professor in Fordham University’s Department of Communication and Media Studies and a scholar of African American cinema, visual and popular culture, and a media consultant. As alumna of the Moving Image Studies doctoral program at GSU, she has advised the founding of the liquid blackness research group in 2013 and beyond. Her recent publications include an essay in The Lemonade Readerentitled, “To Feel Like A “Natural Woman”: Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé and the Ecological Spirituality of Lemonade;” “Flash(es) of the Spirit: Images of Black Life as a Spiritual Encounter in the Smithsonian’s NMAAHC” forWorld Records’srecent issue “Documenting Blackness at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.” In 2019, she co-edited and contributed to a “Close Up” series in Black Camerajournal focusing on the “New York Scene” of black independent filmmakers. 

Michele teaches courses in film, history, African American cinema, global cinema, digital storytelling, race, gender and media, Southern film, and screenwriting. She curates panels and events for film festivals and has enjoyed a partnership with the American Black Film Festival (ABFF) as part of Daughters of Eve Media, of which she is a co-founder. She has also worked with the Tubman African American Museum curating its inaugural film festival in 2019 and both the Macon and College Town Film Festivals. Her research has been presented at a variety of Conferences and forums, including the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers.

LA Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema

  • Panel moderator at the opening night screening of Charles Burnett’s My Brother’s Wedding, at the Plaza Theatre

  • In Conversation with Zeinabu Irene Davis at Arnika Dawkins Gallery

  • In Conversation with Haile Gerima at Emory University

Publications 

  • “Daughter of the Rebellion” liquid blackness1, no.1, November 2013. 

  • “The Liquidity of the Virtual Body: A Conversation with Nettrice Gaskins.” liquid blackness 1, no. 2. April 2014. 

  • “Creating Space.” liquid blackness1, no. 3 July 2014. 

  • “The Persistence of Wild Style: Hip Hop and Music Video Culture at the Intersection of Performance and Provocation” in IN FOCUS Dossier: “Modes of Black Liquidity: Music Video as Black Art,” ed. Alessandra Raengo and Lauren McLeod Cramer, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies59, no. 2 (Winter 2020) 

Presentations: 

  • “From HeLa to Eternity: The Metaphysical Liquidity of Black Female Embodiment,” American Comparative Literature Association Experimental Conference (ACL(x)) Penn State University, University Park, September 23-24, 2016 

  • “Pedagogies of Digital Storytelling: Thoughts on Narratives of the Personal and the Political," Seminar on “Curating for Blackness: Toward Black Digital Study.” 

  • Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, Oakland, CA. October 26-28, 2017

John Roberts is a media studies instructor in the College of Media, Communication, and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research explores the relationship between aesthetics and speculation in media and visual culture. He has been a member of the liquid blackness research group since 2016, during which time he has served as a staff member for the liquid blackness journal, as well as the group’s digital humanities liaison. He has worked as a research assistant on several of the group’s research projects, including those organized around Jenn Nkiru, Bradford Young, Barbara McCullough, and Storyboard P. He also implemented the group’s digital humanities empyre project of constructing a hyperlinked network of discourse on blackness and/as aesthetics, and facilitated the group’s screening of Barbara McCullough’s work and subsequent Q&A and workshop.  

Issue Staff - Journal

  • “Holding Blackness: Aesthetic of Suspension,” liquid blackness4, no. 7 (October 2017)

  • “Black Ontology and the Love of Blackness,” liquid blackness3, no. 6 (December 2016)

Research Assistant

  • “Jenn Nkiru’s Panafrican Imagination: Black Studies as Aesthetic Practice” (April 14, 2019)

  • “Bradford Young and the Visual Art of Black Care” (April 15, 2018)

  • “Figuring Suspension: A Study of Visual Recording Artist Storyboard P” (February 9, 2018)

  • “liquid blackness: Formal Approaches to Blackness and/as Aesthetics (empyre)” (2016-2017)

Event Coordination

  • Jenn Nkiru Masterclass (April 15, 2019)

  • Bradford Young Masterclass (April 16, 2018)

  • “Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot” (October 28, 2017) 

Legacy Members: Past members whose contributions remain vital to the history and development of liquid blackness

 

Jazmine R. Hudson is a doctoral student in the School of Film, Media & Theatre at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on media industry practices that have concrete aesthetic outcomes examined through the theoretical framework of black filmmaking. She began working with liquid blacknessin the fall of 2017 as a Research Contributor and later became the Visual Documentarian. Jazmine was drawn to the work of liquid blacknessbecause of the deep engagement of black aesthetics and the commitment of the group’s “Free Jazz” ensemblic process. She was deeply involved in the Jenn Nkiru research project, cultivating the conservations, critical and academic, around Nkiru’s commercial and artistic productions, as well as researching her position within the lineage of Howard University and Haile Gerima. Jazmine’s work with liquid blacknessalso includes acting as a research assistant and panelist for liquid blacknessevents.

Selected Presentations

  • “The Political Reach of Form” Beyond the Culture Conference: Black Popular Culture and Social Justice - Hosted by African American Studies Department, GSU (February 7, 2020)

  • “A Black Lineage of the Music Art Video” - Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center (March 28, 2019)

Research Assistant

  • “Horace Tapscott: A Musical Griot” (October 28, 2017)

  • “Barbara McCullough: Materials on the Film, Filmmaker, and Artistic Context”

  • “Bradford Young and the Visual Art of Black Care” (April 15, 2018)

  • “Holding Place. Taking Flight: Childish Gambino, Bradford Young, Terence Nance, and Grace Jones” (October 7, 2018)

 Panel Moderator

  • “Jenn Nkiru’s Pan-African Imagination: Black Studies as Aesthetic Practice” (April 14, 2019)

 Video Production

  • “Holding Place. Taking Flight: Childish Gambino, Bradford Young, Terence Nance, and Grace Jones” (October 7, 2018)

  • “Bradford Young and the Visual Art of Black Care” (April 15-17, 2018)

  • “Rendering (the) Visible III: Liquidity” (February 8-10, 2018)

Chris Hunt is an Atlanta-based filmmaker and musician. His work often explores the intersection of the existential and aesthetic via liminal scenarios and textured sonic landscapes. As a founding member of the now defunct Atlanta band Cloudeater, early on Hunt established a curious and fervent pursuit of sonic exploration and intensity. As a solo artist, 2016 saw the release of Tomb I & II, a pair of starkly dense debut EP’s released on Psych Army Intergalactic. In 2018 Hunt released Carnelian, which offers an emotionally delicate yet austere pathway towards 2020’s Torrent. Additionally, Hunt frequently collaborates with sonic technologist Deantoni parks aka Technoself as well as with visual artist Kacie Marie with whom Hunt produced 2016’s audio-visual work Silver Planet. Hunt’s production credits include Wale, vōx and Emil Werstler. Visually, Hunt enjoys an ongoing collaboration with fellow liquid blackness associate Cameron Kunzelman which has produced a pair of short films and an experimental web-series respectively titled Adiaphora (2017), Spyglass (2018) and The Instrument (2020). In 2019 Hunt began a collaboration with New York-based scholar and author Nicola Masciandaro on FIAT LUX, an unfolding series of short experimental films exploring the texture of space, color and the weird. 

 As a longtime friend of founder Alessandra Raengo his involvement in liquid blackness began at its inception and continues to evolve today. His role may be best defined as support but specific missions have included designing the liquid blackness logo, early poster and postcard design, and photography which has encompassed promotional materials for the LA Rebellion screenings (2013), Black Audio Film Collective Film and Speaker Series (2014) and the research project and Symposium on Larry Clark’s Passing Through (2015). Hunt also worked with Raengo, Joey Molina and Kristin Juarez to wrangle the initial layout designs for the first several issues of the liquid blackness journal, which helped to establish a starting point for liquid blackness’ evolving visual aesthetic. 

Gabriela (Gaby) McNicoll received her MA in Film Production from Georgia State University. In collaboration with her production partner, Dana E. Salter, they make narrative and documentary films which focus largely on the culture, politics, and socioeconomic issues of women in the American South. Currently, with Mo Morgan, another Atlanta filmmaker, Dana and Gaby are in production on a documentary led by activist Pamela Winn, of RestoreHer. Gaby was fortunate to support the vital work of the liquid blackness research group by migrating their archive and building a new website.

Cedric Simmons is an M.A student and Research Assistant in Film Production, Georgia State’s School of Film, Media & Theater by way of interdisciplinary interests and studies. For liquid blackness, Cedric has contributed feedback and insights to the “Music Video as Black Art” pathway into the liquid blackness archive and beyond.

Charleen Wilcox is a doctoral student in the Moving Image Studies at Georgia State University. Her research interests include race and aesthetics, film philosophy, and gender studies. Charleen’s dissertation proposes that understanding the mixed-race body and its stakes necessitates a move away from representational concerns toward a consideration of the formal properties of its image production. Building on theories from the cinema’s fundamental unit, the close-up, she theorizes the mixed-race body as an example of a miscegenated image. She has presented at conferences including SCMS (2017), CMRS (2017, 2018), and SEWSA (2017). Charleen joined the liquid blackness research group as a staff member in spring 2016. She contributed to the in-house production of the liquid blackness journal for it two most recent issues, and provided support for liquid blackness artist talks, screenings, and masterclasses. Since 2019, she has crafted messages for the liquid blackness Instagram account. 

Chief Copyeditor – Journal 

  • “Holding Blackness: Aesthetics and Suspension,” liquid blackness4, no. 7 (October 2017) 

Staff Member – Journal  

  • “Black Ontology and the Love of Blackness,” liquid blackness3, no. 6 (December 2016) 

Social Media – Events and Ongoing 

  • “Jenn Nkiru’s Pan-African Imagination: Black Studies as Aesthetic Practice: A Public Screening and Artist Talk,” Georgia State University, Atlanta (April 14, 2019) 

  • “A Black Lineage of the Music Art Video,” Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center (March 28, 2019) 

Event Support 

  • “Jenn Nkiru’s Pan-African Imagination: Black Studies as Aesthetic Practice: A Public Screening and Artist Talk,” Georgia State University, Atlanta (April 14, 2019) 

  • “Bradford Young and the Visual Art of Black Care: A Screening and Artist Talk,” Georgia State University, Atlanta (April 15, 2018) 

  • “Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph: Public Screening and Symposium,” Georgia State University, Atlanta (October 6 – 7, 2016) 

  • Rendering the Visible II: Figure Conference, Georgia State University, Atlanta (February 6 – 8, 2014) 

  • Rendering the Visible Conference, Georgia State University, Atlanta, (February 11 – 12, 2011)