Conversations Without Walls: BLACK MALE REVISITED

February 8, 2014
Saturday at 3:00PM

This 4-hour conversation takes place in the Parish Hall at St. Mark’s Church (131 East 10th Street at 2nd Avenue).

Conversations Without Walls is a series of discussions addressing current issues in dance, organized by Danspace executive director Judy Hussie-Taylor and performance scholar Jenn Joy. This Conversation is part of Food for Thought: Black Male Revisited. Experimental Representations through the Ephemeral Form., curated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko.

3-4PM – Revisiting Black Male Today: A Look 20 Years Later
Panelists discuss the seminal 1994 Black Maleexhibition at The Whitney Museum of American Art. We consider how the landscape has changed for black male visual and performance artists (as both subjects and practitioners) over the past 20 years. Is there more visibility today? Is black art simply in vogue in this contemporary moment, or have we, in fact, undergone a renaissance?
With: Rich Blint moderator (Independent Curator, Associate Director, Office of Community Outreach and Education, Columbia University School of the Arts),Greg Tate (Writer, Artist, Educator), Paloma McGregor (Choreographer, Community Organizer),James Haile III (Writer, Educator), Holly Bass (Visual Artist, Poet, Journalist)

4-5PM – Expanding Notions of Black Masculinity: Gender and Identity in Visual and Performance Art
Panelists discuss issues of visibility for queer and trans artists working in contemporary art. We touch on themes of tokenism and how artists are currently working to combat negative stereotypes of Blackness and Queerness within the American Art Canon.
With: Thomas Lax – Moderator (Assistant Curator, Studio Museum in Harlem), Paul Mpagi Sepuya(Visual Artist), niv Acosta (Artist, Musician)

5-6PM –  Considering Contemporary Artistic Practices and the Distribution of “New” Black Creativity
Panelists discuss how the landscape for the performance and visual arts field has changed (or how it has stayed the same) since the ’90s. We discuss issues of distribution for experimentation for minority artists as well as issues of cultural bias towards outsider artists: those who don’t easily categorize within normative performance genres and traditions such as “modern dance and/or theater.”
With: Whitney V. Hunter – Moderator (Artist, Independent Curator, and Educator), Cosmo Whyte(Artist, Educator), Sherman Fleming (Artist, Educator), Ryann Holmes (Community Programming Director, MoCADA, Founder of bklyn boihood), Ni’Ja Whitson (Visual and Performing Artist)

6-6:30 Closing Conversation: Gregory Walker(Founding Director of The Brother’s Network) in dialogue with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko