The Imagined New is an interdisciplinary platform for critical exchange and research around African and African diasporic art practices as they relate to questions of history, archive and the alternative imagination(s) of the Radical Black Tradition.
Collaboratively presented by the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University, and the Brown Arts Initiative..
THE IMAGINED NEW / working through alternative archives: the Black Sonic
BLACK SONIC HERITAGE AS HERESY
December 2021 - July 2022 | theimaginednew.org/vol-ii
If the project of history is one of silence, of the systematic erasure and disappearance of those considered peripheral to the optic fantasy and logo-centrism of ‘civilization’ (read whiteness), then how might the sonic present a uniquely enabling modality for thinking, feeling and performing a different historical imagination?
If the fantasy of ‘civilization’ is sustained by imagining and reimagining relationships with the environment, memory and a set of inherent rules which imbricate Whiteness with the sacred, then how does the profane (read Blackness) undertake this task of historical (re)imagination? How do those that face down the catastrophe of history rebuild in its aftermath(s)?
Central to this rebuilding is a certain conception of Heritage and Heresy. Here, heritage is not, intended as a kind of singular cultural, national or continental identity but as praxis or rather, a set of praxes that operate both in relation to and against the logo-centrism of ‘civilization.’ As an expression, Blackness challenges the stability of the sacred-profane dialectic. In so doing, heresy reveals the paradox of the orthodox and enacts the possibility of choice.
Through this heritage of praxis, the ordinary crossfades into the extraordinary and the dissolution of the boundary is itself heretical. The words that comprise The Souls of Black Folk are meaningless without the title’s referent black folk. If logo-centrism posits the word as sacred, these articulations of Blackness (which look beyond the word) become heresy, enacted.
To be clear, the Black Sonic then is not about sound or sonics as content or category, as the cultural ‘by-product’ of the black experience, but sound and sonics as a heritage of heretical praxis; as so many ways of being and becoming. By Black Sonic we thus mean (or rather, call into play) the multiple soundings, dissonances, resonances, rhythmic patterns and diasporic relays that have historically animated and continue to enunciate Black life and create new types of archives. Archives that both store and broadcast the Black Sonic.
Through these broadcasts, the quietude of slavery and colonialism are disturbed across historical time. Similarly, these broadcasts traverse geographical space and amplify the trans-nationality of Black Lives Matter. Taken together, the Black Sonic underscores the dynamic range of Fred Moten’s “black phonic substance” and the ways in which black, brown, femme and queer people from across the African diaspora embody and make shareable its many cadences.
As volume II of The Imagined New / Working through alternative archives, the Black Sonic presents a digital exhibition that will explore the Black Sonic and the heritage of heretical praxis. These praxes are the conditions for new historical imagination(s) across time and space.
The programme includes:
Black Wah, A Cultural Loop by Vernon Reid, Electric Ring Shout by DJ Lynnée Denise, Wololo! Speaking Black to the Future by Dr Kholeka Shange
Click here to access this and more content.
Set 1: Black Phonic Substance is now live. Click here to access it.
Set 2: Radical Imagination of the Ordinary is now live. Click here to access it.
Set 3: Erased Bodies Which Speak is now live. Click here to access it.
Following the online programme, exhibition at FADA Gallery will open and an interactive e-book featuring contributions from artists, curators and DJ scholars included in the programme will be published with Iwalewa Books, as Vol II of a 3-part Imagined New series.
THE IMAGINED NEW (or, what happens when History is a catastrophe?)
WORKING THROUGH ALTERNATIVE ARCHIVES: ART, HISTORY AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
10 - 12 May, 2019 | UJ Arts & Culture Centre | theimaginednew.org/vol-i
In African and African Diasporic art practices, we see the possibility of an alternative set of archives, in which histories and possible futures are reconceived, embodied and performed as radical claims to Black life.
In May 2019, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ), Brown University, and the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg, collaboratively hosted a series of curated conversations and interdisciplinary engagements entitled,The Imagined New (Or, what happens when History is a catastrophe?) – Working Through Alternative Archives: Art, History and the African Diaspora.
The first in a series of three workshops, this gathering of thinkers, curators and artists proposed a rethinking of ‘the archive’ – or rather, of ‘alternative archives’ – in relation to art, history, and the African Diaspora. Inflected by the radical Black imagination implied in the overarching idea of The Imagined New, and its corollary, What happens when History is a catastrophe? key points of discussion centred around Black memory (as performing archives of the imagined new), enactments of refusal (in relation to Black precarity, and creative strategies for living otherwise), and the necessary rethinking of African and African Diasporic sacral art practices. These discussions and conversations were led by Anthony Bogues, Surafel Wondimu Abebe, Tina Campt, Geri Augusto and Saidiya Hartman.
The Johannesburg workshop hosted approximately thirty scholars, artists, curators and cultural workers from South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Brazil, the United States and the Caribbean. In addition to extensive time allotted for conversation and discussion, the programme included an exhibition walkabout of ISISEKELO, by photographer Jabulani Dhlamini; the South African launch of Prof Cheryl Finley’s book Committed to Memory: the Art of the Slave Ship Icon (2018); a performance and screening of sorry not sorry by Alberta Whittle; and a panel discussion convened by Johannesburg Art Gallery Chief Curator Khwezi Gule, focused on challenges facing curators of colour in negotiating the institutionalised logics and exclusions of colonisation.
Drawn from the exceptionally rich engagements facilitated through this initial workshop gathering, the first in a series of three special edition journal publications will be published in Callaloo, the premier journal of literature, art, and culture of the African Diaspora. The following two workshops are scheduled to take place at Brown University, Providence, in 2020 and Addis Ababa University in 2021. As a workshop and journal series, The Imagined New will inform the curation of a major touring exhibition to be launched in South Africa in 2022.
The programme also included:
The South African launch of Cheryl Finley’s recent publication, Committed to Memory – The Art of the Slave Ship Icon (2018, Princeton University Press)
sorry not sorry | A screening & performance by Alberta Whittle
Museums for whom, Museums for what? A panel discussion with Thomas J. Lax (Museum of Modern Art, New York), Ingrid Masondo (Iziko South African National Gallery), Molemo Moiloa (MADEYOULOOK), and Cláudia Rocha (Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro). Facilitated by Khwezi Gule (Chief Curator, Johannesburg Art Gallery).
THE IMAGINED NEW. Workshop rationale & objectives | Facilitated by Anthony Bogues
LIVING HISTORIES. Black memory as performing archives of the Imagined New | Facilitated by Surafel Wondimu Abebe
REFUSAL. Black precarity, and creative strategies for Living Otherwise | Facilitated by Tina Campt
THE EVERYDAY AND ITS OTHER FUTURES. Rethinking African/Diasporic sacral art practices | Facilitated by Geri Augusto (download audio)
CLOSING REFLECTIONS | Facilitated by Saidiya Hartman & Anthony Bogues
Background:
A rich tradition of critical work around African and African Diasporic art and culture was opened up over the second half of the 20th century by the 1956 Paris conference of Black Writers and Artists, and the 1969 Pan African Festival of Algiers - not to mention the work of, amongst others, the Art Society in Nigeria, the Black Arts Movement in the USA, and the Caribbean Artists Movement of the 1960s. On the Continent, dialogues initiated in these radical departures have been further developed through debates that both attended and followed important biennales in Dakar, Bamako and Johannesburg, and more recently Lagos, Kampala and Lubumbashi.
This discursive tradition has been further enriched but also complicated by the growing attention given to modern and contemporary African and African Diasporic art practices, through a range of exhibitions and publications: from contested mega-shows like MOMA’s 1984/5 "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern to the more critical responses of Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Kobena Mercer and others. Negotiating this framework, this first convening ofThe Imagined New sought to shift the conversation through a deeper consideration of how living histories work in Black memory and creative practice, as alternative archives that offer a plurality of imagined futures.
Adopting an intimate and trans-disciplinary format, this gathering brought together a diasporic community of scholars, curators and artists recognised for their work and preoccupations with creative and curatorial practices related to legacies of slavery, colonialism and apartheid – as well as alternative approaches to history-making, the ‘archive’, and the political work of the radical Black imagination.
The programme comprised a series of open, three-hour conversations around a series of key themes. Each of these sessions was facilitated by an invited participant.
Visit The Imagined New website.