Black Life: Newsletter One
Welcome to Black Life, online.
Black life has of course existed online as long as the digital space has been habitable but our current moment has required us to commune in non-physical spaces so here we are.
The truth is this dispatch from Black Life was a long time coming and now it’s arrived in your inbox for which we’re very glad. We want to use this space to share with you upcoming events, things that have caught our eyes and a bit of what’s on our minds.
For this first edition of the Black Life newsletter, we have a few videos and a film that’s filled our minds with ideas and questions. We’re also thrilled to share the first episode of our audio project — short missives in podcast form featuring conversations with artists, thinkers and others in the Black Life universe. This first episode is with MahaWam, an Oakland-based musician, night-life organizer, producer, and DJ whose experimental sound is a percussive mix of hip-hop and modern electronic music.
Next month, we’ll be announcing two artist residents for Black Life programming transmitting to your screens starting in August. Stay very tuned.
BLACK ART MIXTAPE #0 How to Move in Space
1. Storyboard P: Chalk Walk
Who is Storyboard P? It becomes obvious within seconds, who is the craftsman. Is he the figuration of a crackheads ghost? Black haunting? Chills are the only thing I feel when watching. I’ll run some parallels: Vodun, Breakdance, Hip-Hop, Criminality, The Ecstatic, Spiritual Possession, Masculinity in Free Fall, Ketamine Contemporary Solo, Folk dance, and etc.
2. Jumatatu Poe- Movement Research Spring Festival 2016 at BKSD June 8, 2016
J-sette, Black Faggotry, and Minimalism (what else could you ask for?). It’s a strict dance when you put the pieces together. Their interpretation of J-sette reveals the high modernity of the form.
3. Part 2, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Alpha Chapter - Greek Show 1987, Howard University
When people think of Beyonce’s Netflix special this video comes to mind. It’s the logic of black uplift as militaristic formation. The talented tenth in movement. What is the weight that these women hold? Beyonce works in the tradition of Black American elitism. That’s her ideological “Formation”. I think of Soviet Union processional or the marches of Mao’s China. What to you get when you combine Black Womanhood, Class Distinction, the Regime of Gender, Sorority Culture and Black trajectories of cultural Uplift?
4. Ndombolo Queen Represents Kinshasa
This history of hip movements. What is the erotic? Who is she dancing for? What does it mean to be a Queen when surrounded by subjects?
5. Handsworth Songs
John Akomfrah’s 1986 film Handsworth Songs, produced by the visionary The Black Audio Film Collective he was a part of, is circulating once more. This time it is via the Lisson Gallery and amidst national and global uprisings against police brutality as a murderous arm of white supremacy. The film is streaming on the gallery’s website for another three days but it’s also a search away on another democratic streaming platform.
If London was burning from a fire fueled by police violence in 1985 and Ferguson in 2014 and Oakland in 2009 and Minneapolis in 2020 and Baltimore in 2015, in what continuum of space and time does Black life exist and perish?
Take good care,
Ruth & Ryanaustin