Black Life Newsletter: Twenty-Seven
Ashara Ekundayo Library Research Resident & a farewell from Ryanaustin Dennis
BAMPFA Film Library & Study Center: Ashara Ekundayo Library Research Resident
Black Life is excited to share Ashara Ekundayo’s upcoming 6-month hybrid Archival Research Residency focused on the philosophical and practical design and use of the film archive in order to implement the making and maintenance of the AfroPortals Project Space & Archive - an experimental arts venture located in Deep East Oakland at Liberation Park in partnership with Artist As First Responder, the Black Cultural Zone CDC, Eastside Arts Alliance, and Shared Studios.
During this time, the interdisciplinary independent curator will query the following frameworks:
Keep the Archive Safe
Who curates and safeguards the archive? Institutions, collectives, artist, activists/artivists, communities?
What are the means that keep it safe? What are the histories of keeping/stewarding an archive?
Organize the Archive
How and who gets to organize and archive? What skills are needed to do this? What would a community-based organization of an archive look like? What are the principles of this process?
Make the Archive Accessible
Who gets to access the archive? What is the means by which it is made accessible? What is the history of access to archives for Black communities?
More from Ashara Ekundayo:
“I’m interested in time travel, the construct of the past, and the use of memory in the design of art narratives and archival ephemera that speak to immortality. I hope this residency and the work produced from it inspires a new generation of seekers, makers, and keepers of history.”
My guiding questions:
How can we nurture a space for active curiosity and connection between East Oakland and the Library Collection at the museum?
What are the past and present obstacles and opportunities for this design?
How do we make the archival process and museum materials interesting to communities that haven’t traditionally gone to the museum?
Ashara Ekundayo is a queer, Black, feminist, interdisciplinary independent curator, visual maker, cultural theologian, arts organizer, and consultant whose creative practice is rooted in joy-and-trauma informed pedagogies and the study of and creation of Black spaces and archives, site-responsive ceremony, and artist-based strategies such as photography, screen printing, zine design, installation, and altar making that illuminate the specific expertise of Black womxn of the African diaspora.
She is the founder of the philanthropic organization Artist As First Responder, which serves as a platform to support creatives working at the intersection of design, technology, and activism to heal communities and save lives. She is currently the principal at AECreative Consulting Partners, LLC, where she highlights artists and cultural production as essential in equitable design practices, real estate development, and movement building. She is also a cofounder of Black [Space] Residency and director of The Black Curators Lab—studio-based artist residencies celebrating the dynamic imagination of Black creatives.
She has served as a fellow with the US Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Institute for the Future, and Auburn Seminary, and has sat on several advisory boards and held artist/curatorial residencies at many institutions both in the Bay Area and beyond. She is the curatorial research fellow at Muholi Productions with South African photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi. Ekundayo lives and works between the San Francisco Bay Area and her hometown of Detroit, MI. www.artistasfirstresponder.com
BLACK LIFE MIXTAPE #23: IS IT ALL OVER MY FACE
This will be my last mixtape for Black Life, it’s been a solid 4 years and I know the program is in great hands. If you want to keep up with my other endeavors please follow my RUMP Zine.
With fortitude,
Ryanaustin
NASA's Parker Solar Probe Captures Imagery of Sun’s Outflow
Scars Alight by Kyle Kidd
Portrait of a young lady, a free person of colour, Jean Baptiste Bonjour, 1852
Kokomo Arnold-Sissy Man Blues
On Shirley Prendergast
The young woman on the far left is Shirley Prendergast with Allan Kaprow who was known to have started The Happenings. Shirley Prendergast would later on make “history by being admitted to the United Scenic Artists’ (USA) lighting division as the first African-American woman in 1969, and the first black female lighting designer on Broadway in 1973, with Joseph Walker’s The River Niger.”
I found this image in a book on the history of the Happenings and I couldn’t shake my curiosity around who this woman was. My mind swirled with questions of how she landed in that situation.
Soul II Stro by Stro Elliot
History of Black-Palestinian Solidarity
AI Generated Atlanta Housewife Nene Leaks Running from a White Refrigerator
Keke Palmer on Lacan
Images I took of Mr. Shell, one of the few Black Farmers who cultivate tobacco in America. I spent sometime with him and his sons on their farm in Virginia where they make cigars, jams, and other preserves.
Here but I'm Gone by Curtis Mayfield
P.S.
With gratitude to Ryanaustin Dennis for a good four years of Black Life,
ruth + Ryanaustin