Black Life: Newsletter Three
Welcome back to Black Life. We come to you this month with more things that have caught our eyes and a couple of announcements. In case you missed our last newsletter click here.
BLACK LIFE EVENTS
Mandy Harris Williams
September 17, 6 PM
We are so thrilled to welcome Los Angeles–based artist Mandy Harris Williams to Black Life for a residency that explores an urgent question: As America's trajectory takes a turn toward the fascistic, what sorts of pop artistry can really augment progressive ideals? On September 17, Williams takes the digital stage for a critical art performance that engages with this and other pressing questions. You can register for the event here.
Black Life Podcast
Today we talk to writer and thinker Akande X, a Black Life Alum who in 2018 shared their multimedia presentation “That Feeling When” explores the intersection of blackness, comedy, the Internet, and politics. In an moment when white nationalism has a deep foothold in Internet culture, “TFW” provides a theoretical approach to the ethics of the Internet and the substance of memes as comedy and as political message, revealing how memes are one of the most subversive, volatile, and promising black art forms today. In our conversation we cover affect theory, their work as the editor of Maji News, a Afrofuturist community newspaper, and theorist Aria Dean's seminal article on meme culture Poor Meme, Rich Meme. Link to Podcast.
Black Life Recommendation at BAMPFA
Mr. SOUL!
While cinemas are shuttered and audiences sheltering in the glow of small screens are confronted with an inexhaustible deluge of dubious content, it is instructive to reflect on a moment when one television program became an indispensable transformative force. Mr. SOUL!chronicles the visionary producer Ellis Haizlip and SOUL!, the groundbreaking show he created. Offered the opportunity to create a Black Tonight Show, Haizlip, then active in the Black Arts Movement, insisted that it be something deeper, more dynamic and radical. Aired on public television from 1968 to 1973, the revolutionary program presented a stunning array of performers, writers, and activists—Al Green, Amiri Baraka, Gladys Knight, Kathleen Cleaver, James Baldwin, Sonia Sanchez, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and many others—to viewers nationwide. Mr. SOUL! is generously illustrated with excerpts from the show’s remarkable history along with a chorus of contemporary reflections from critics and participants in its making, as well as the words of Haizlip himself, who described SOUL! as a forum for Black people “creating, searching, and acting instead of researching and reacting. . . . There is no alternative to SOUL!”
—Kate MacKay
BLACK ART MIXTAPE #02 PAY ME IF YOU MEAN IT
Jaguar Wright @ Urban Organic 2006
The True Empress of Neo Soul.
Joy James: The Architects of Abolitionism
The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice's Carceral State Reading Group presents, "The Architects of Abolitionism: George Jackson, Angela Davis, and the Deradicalization of Prison Struggles," a lecture and conversation with Joy James. Joy James is the F.C. Oakley 3rd C. Professor at Williams College where she teaches in political science, humanities, africana studies, women and gender studies and American studies.
Brown Up Your Feed Radio Hour on NTS with Mandy Harris Williams
https://www.nts.live/shows/brown-up-your-feed
Catch up on Black Life Resident Mandy Harris Williams’ radio show on NTS and tune in for the next episode airing live on NTS.com on Thursday August 27 at 8pm.
Take good care,
Ruth & Ryanaustin