Black Life: Newsletter Twenty-One
Sasha Kelley live at BAMPFA this Saturday afternoon, a recommendation and the usual mixtape
Welcome back to Black Life!
We’re thrilled to host our first in-person event since 2020 with Sasha Kelley’s residency presentation this Saturday August 27 from 12pm until 4pm. During her summer as a Black Life resident, Kelley has been asking: how can a contemporary archive be experienced and felt?
To that end, she’s answered that question in brief below for our newsletter readers:
an archive, made from scratch outside of the hierarchies of art and academic institutions can come in many forms.
some of my favorites have been:
- my friends extensive black cinema vhs collection
- the travel and art magnets that i grew up seeing on my mothers fridge
- grandmas closets filled with boxes of photos, baby clothes, and newspaper clippingsthe shape of an archive is as malleable as the contents within collections.
and can be as accessible as the permission of its collector(s)
but interactivity / your ability to touch, to sit with, to borrow, to take home
that is a part where the digital world reigns supreme& better yet, lets just print it, distribute it so now the replicas can be added
to more archives globally
On Saturday, you can expect more answers and articulations via digital compilations and physical archives from posters to books will be present in the Koret Reading Room on Saturday. Kelley will be in the room for conversations as well as we the curators. We’ll have also some printed materials to give away ~
BLACK LIFE RECOMMENDS: Neptune Frost & the African Film Festival
Anisia Uzeyman, Saul Williams
Rwanda, United States, 2021
Featuring Cheryl Isheja, Elvis Ngabo “Bobo”, Bertrand Ninteretse “Kaya Free”,Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 at 7pm (119 mins)
Replete with mind-altering visual and sonic imagery, this Afrofuturist mélange of music, poetry, and resistance is hypnotic and visionary. Set in Rwanda, the film depicts a genderqueer community of hackers and techno poets. Though plot is secondary to style and rhythm, there is a young man named Matalusa who mines coltan, an essential ingredient of cell phones. He meets Neptune, a messianic figure able to change genders. Other characters offer bits of wisdom or a simple invitation to put on headphones and join their dance. As one of them observes, “The war forced us into other dimensions,” and Neptune Frost brings a few of those dimensions to vivid life, carving out a bold new vision for Black cinema as it does so.
See more programs from the upcoming African Film Festival here.
BLACK LIFE MIXTAPE #18 - Soul Beat Ads
The Untold History of Oakland’s Soul Beat, a Pioneer Among Black-Owned TV Networks