Performance & Project Launch: Joelle Mercedes and A.J. McClenon

Performances

Labratory (Mars): This iteration of Laboratory (Mars) by Joelle Mercedes continues with four core sound compositions that contemplate Lake Michigan, Roger Payne’s album Songs of the Humpback Whale (1970), and scholar Ochy Curiel’s discussion of the Dominican Republic and Haiti as entry points for colonization in the Americas. Laboratory (Mars) is constructed from various auditory textures: field recordings of nature, interviews, archival clips, personal field notes, and citations.

VEGA & Ramo: This excerpt presents an iteration of an ongoing interdisciplinary performance project by A.J. McClenon, developed in collaboration with Zachary Nicol, and centered on the speculative figures VEGA and Ramo. The work mobilizes science fiction as a critical methodology to interrogate systems of containment, surveillance, and futurity.

TWAA is a digital humanties project dedicated to housing ecological performance artworks by black artists. The archive is currently in its developmental stages thanks to support from Northwestern's HAT Lab and The BAC. Mercedes and McClenon will be joined by TWAA co-founders Junika Hawker-Thompson and Madeleine LeCesne for a post-performance Q & A.

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Host or Publisher Black Arts Consortium