Black Life: Newsletter Two
Announcing two new digital events with Mandy Harris Williams and Darol Olu Kae
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 it, you can find our first installment of the newsletter which launched last month here.
First, we are thrilled to announce that we’ll be hosting two new Black Life residents starting next month! First is Mandy Harris Williams, an artist from New York City, currently living in Los Angeles. Williams’ work seeks to get everybody the love they deserve, through creative, informational and deconstructive gestures that span multiple mediums. You can get to know Williams ahead of their Black Life programming by following them on Twitter, Instagram and reading this recent interview they did with Creative Independent. We will announce dates for digital events taking place in August and September with Williams very soon.
Following Williams’ residency, we’ll be joined by Darol Olu Kae. Kae is a filmmaker from and based in Los Angeles this Fall. Kae’s artistic practice focuses on the reverberations of collective memory, time, and mythology through a critical and contemporary lens that blurs the line between poetics and everyday life. The filmmaker has collaborated with filmmakers A.G. Rojas (‘Godchild’) and Kahlil Joseph (BLKNWS). Kae will be with Black Life in October and November for a series of events including a film screening and a discussion. More details will come soon about both Williams’ and Kae’s events.
Along with our newsletter, we also launched Black Life’s podcast last month. This installation of the podcast has a visual component this time around filmed by Ryanaustin Dennis in Oakland. We hope you enjoy these trailers for future conversations with Deontré Martin and Sanford Jenkins. Full episodes will be coming soon...
Black Life Visual Podcast Trailers
Black Life: Deontré Martin
Deontré Martin is a yogi, writer, activist, and student of his queer Oakland/bay area community. Deontré is the founder of “i freaking love yoga”, a weekly, all-inclusive qtpoc-centered yoga gathering in West Oakland’s Lower Bottoms neighborhood.
Black Life: Sanford Jenkins
Sanford Jenkins, an Oakland-based artist and filmmaker. Born in Philadelphia, he earned a BA at Morehouse College and an MFA in Film and Television Production at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
BLACK ART MIXTAPE #01 How I Sound When I’m Alone
1. The Giverny Document: Ja’Tovia Gary
Filmed across Harlem and Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France, Ja’Tovia Gary’s The Giverny Document is in the filmmaker’s own words “a cinematic poem” concerned with the safety of the Black femme body. “Do you feel safe in your body?” Gary asks women of various ages on a busy Harlem intersection. The filmmaker’s cinematic stanzas travel between those conversations to archival footage including Nina Simone dictating her song “Feelings”, her fingers slowly lamenting on her piano.
Black women are not safe in their bodies. Black trans women are not safe in their bodies. How do we negotiate and interact with this most violent reality?
2. @allblackasmr: Jazmin Jones
All Black ASMR is a repository of delightful sights, sounds and intangible filmic pleasures gathered by Jazmin Jones. Jones, who’s also a co-founder of the collective BUFU, has a sharp sense for these delights: honey mukbangs, nature excursions, combs and brushes gathering hair with grace, uncontrollable laughter. All Black. All pleasure. All the time.
This is for Black people. Calibrate your participation accordingly.
3. Eternity's Pillar with Alice Coltrane, KTTV Los Angeles 1986
Spiritual Guru Alice Coltrane
“Alice Coltrane had a TV show on KTTV, called Eternity's Pillar. At the end of every show she would play harmonium and sing vedic gospel songs with some of the students from her ashram.”
4. Alice Coltrane (Black Journal segment):
“The 16mm color film print is a short documentary made for a segment of National Education Television's Black Journal television program. The segment focuses on the life of Alice Coltrane and her children in the wake of the death of her husband, famed jazz magician John Coltrane. This film was shot sometime during 1970; three years after the death of John Coltrane.”
Take good care,
Ruth & Ryanaustin