Performative Lecture by Mandy Harris Williams

**Masks and proof of vaccination are required to attend this event. Recent negative co-vid tests will not be accepted.

Mandy stars as host, expert pundit, celebrity feature, and musical guest in a late-night show made of critical theory dreams. In Mandy's World, it's not the most viral, whiter and lighter influencers and artists who represent and perform Black culture–– it's those who favor Black Culture's progenitors. Mandy martials an edu-taining blend of lecture, slideshow, performance, humor and music to deconstruct the 'gram––that is, both the gramophone and Insta, alike––to investigate the ways technology and algorithms dictate the rhythms we groove to. How are music sharing and social media platforms influencing and influenced by the decidedly un-hip legacy of racial capitalism? Who is winning? Who is wailing?

The increased access to music and musical artists on social media — and the immediacy of access via streaming networks that use algorithms to bring new artists into our purview — has created a digital divide for Black music and Black musical artists. Who gets their share, who gets celebrated, and who profits has long been subject to racialized hierarchies. With digital media reaching viewers further and faster now than previously possible, the extraction of Black music traditions — especially where darker skinned people are concerned — is more common than ever.

This lecture-performance draws on Williams’ popular #BrownUpYourFeed movement, which examines how algorithms on digital platforms parse and classify content by producers of color. 

Mandy Harris Williams is a theorist, multimedia conceptual artist, writer, educator, radio host and internet/community academic. She is from New York City and currently lives in Los Angeles. She focuses on desirability privilege as a real and mythological market and political force. Mandy graduated from Harvard, having studied the History of the African Diaspora, as well as the mass incarceration crisis, and other contemporary black issues. She received her MA in Urban Education and worked as a classroom teacher for 7 years in low income communities. She integrates a holistic and didactic style into her current creative practice.

Learn more about the Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI exhibition and related programming here.

Host or Publisher Oxy Arts