Steffani Jemison & Quincy Flowers: Flight Theater

In conjunction with the exhibition Movements Toward Freedom, Brooklyn-based artist Steffani Jemison presents her newly commissioned performance, Flight Theater. Jemison, in collaboration with writer Quincy Flowers, crafts an interdisciplinary meditation on the fantasy of a God’s-eye-view, the possibility of escape, and the enduring seduction of untethering ourselves from Earth.

Flight Theater centers on two voices in dialogue, discussing topics like the weather, forces of gravity, last-minute escapes, out-of-body experiences, chaotic good, Doppler radar, bad bosses, punching a clock, atmospheric conditions, near misses, desperate escape, torrential rain, and flight. One character is obsessed with meteorology and the impossibility of accurately predicting the only thing we really want to know—whether it will rain tomorrow. Meanwhile, the second character shares a series of near misses and desperate escapes from bad jobs, framing their professional instability as a commitment to fugitivity. Developed in conversation with diverse mythological and artistic references—from Icarus to the “flying African”.

Flight Theater features Steffani Jemison and Quincy Flowers with music by Cellista and lighting design by Kate Bashore.

Free parking is available at North High School.

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About the Artists & Performers

Steffani Jemison is an interdisciplinary artist and writer in Brooklyn, New York. In dialogue with interlocutors (living and ancestral), her work connects mark-making, gesture, proposal, projection, movement, and document.

“How and when might weight be shared between one body and another? Can a body be a figure and a ground? An end and a means? Simultaneously agent and support?”

Jemison has presented solo exhibitions and commissioned performances at JOAN Los Angeles, Greene Naftali, Mass MoCA, Jeu de Paume, CAPC Bordeaux, the Museum of Modern Art, LAXART, and other venues. Her work has been included in significant generational exhibitions, including Greater New York (2021) and the Whitney Biennial (2019), and is part of many public collections, including the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Her novella A Rock, A River, A Street was published by Primary Information in 2022; she has also written for Artforum and The Brooklyn Rail.

Jemison’s collaborative projects include at Louis Place (a writing community co-founded with Quincy Flowers and led with Naima Lowe), Mikrokosmos (a platform for listening and performance with Justin Hicks), Future Plan and Program (a publishing project), and Alpha’s Bet Is Not Over Yet (with Jamal Cyrus). She learns with and from her students at Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts, where she is an Associate Professor.

Quincy Flowers (b.1976, Uniontown, AL) received his Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston, M.A. in American Literature from New York University, where he was a New York Times Fellow, and B.A. in English from Kennesaw State University.

He is a fiction writer whose research is concerned with eighteenth—and nineteenth-century social and cultural practices that emerged around tea, coffee, and wine. He is particularly interested in how they influenced social structures, rituals, commerce, and intellectual circles and how the consumption of these beverages was associated with class, manners, and evolving notions of taste. He is working on a novel about Duke Nelson, the Georgia okra farmer, winemaker, mechanical engineer, and inventor, as well as a collection of essays organized by wine-tasting notes.

Cellista is a Los Angeles-based composer and aerial cellist specializing in static trapeze. Known for her genre-defying "stage poems," she blends multimedia storytelling with political and philosophical themes, drawing inspiration from Jean Cocteau. Her acclaimed works include The End of Time, an interdisciplinary exhibit with visual artist Barron Storey, and Pariah (2021), her operetta which explores themes of exile and othering. Fresh off her Lincoln Center debut, Cellista continues to tour her one-woman show Élégie for aerial cello and cinema.

Kate Bashore is a lighting designer for theatre, dance, and opera, whose work has been presented in New York City and regionally across the US. In addition to her own designs, Bashore has served as an assistant and associate designer for Broadway and off-Broadway productions, national and international operas, as well as various festivals including Lincoln Center Festival and Fall for Dance.

Host or Publisher Museum of Contemporary Art Denver