Visualizing Abolition is organized by Professor Gina Dent, Feminist Studies and Dr. Rachel Nelson, Director, IAS, with support from the Mellon Foundation. The events feature artists, activists, and scholars united by their commitment to the vital struggle for prison abolition.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged, but not required for entry.Parking is available in the Arts Lot #126. Purchase a permit or use ParkMobile. Hesterian Musicism is the creative process through which Karlton Hester, composer, flautist and saxophonist, brings together musicians, visual artists and poets in collaborative synergy to create a sonically riveting and […]
Dance artist and equity activator Gerald Casel will present Not About Race Dance, a collaborative, choreographic response to the racial politics of U.S. postmodern dance. Despite postmodernism’s popularity, its racial dynamics have gone largely unacknowledged. In Not About Race Dance, Casel and his collaborators occupy a space that has been historically defined by white artists to present a contrasting vision of where Black and Brown bodies belong.
Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi and Ntone Edjabe will discuss the recent publication of FESTAC ’77, an innovative book and mixtape which is the product of years of research helmed by Chimurenga—a magazine based in Cape Town, South Africa, and one of the most important cultural journals on the continent—in collaboration with Afterall, the London-based journal. Listen to the FESTAC '77 mixtape here.
This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.
Afronauts, a 2014 short film by Ghanaian-born filmmaker Nuotama Frances Bodomo, follows a team of astronauts as they train for a mission to the moon. This video was inspired by the Zambian space program in the 1960s and follows then-17-year-old astronaut Matha Mwamba, the woman at the center of this historic mission. Led by schoolteacher and revolutionary Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy began as an unofficial program with aspirations to beat the Soviet Union and the United States to the moon.
A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrete sounds. Join us May 14, 2022 at 7 p.m. for a live music performance by this world-renowned musician, joined also by Alex Wand, Seth Glickman, Odeya Nini, Archie Carey, Brock Stuessi, Kyle Bruckmann, Vanessa Ruotolo, and William Winant for a uniquely collaborative concert.
In 1964, Edward Makuka Nkoloso, a member of the Zambian resistance movement and the founder of the Zambia National Academy of Science, began to train the first African crew to travel to the moon. Although space travel was not realized, the Zambian Space Program has since captured the imagination of contemporary artists and filmmakers on the African continent and beyond. Nuotamo Bodoomo, Larry Achiampong and Aaron Samuel Mulenga will talk about how imaginings of space travel are utilized in their disparate practices. The discussion will center on the politics and possibilities the artists and filmmakers find in the creative transcendence of space and time.
As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment—halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are not only the central histories of feminist—usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color—organizing that continue to cultivate abolition but a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence.
Performed in site-specific locations and onstage, Raissa Simpson will be performing an excerpt of EMME YA: Expedition, which applies a conceptual underpinning of Afro-technoculture through movement and media. This ongoing exploration includes various frameworks to reimagine paths of survival that are born out of moments of collective trauma and the reclamation of Afrofuturism as a creative metaphor for healing.
“Reasonable Doubts: Making an Exoneree” is taught by Professor Sharon Daniel, UCSC Film and Digital Media, in collaboration with Professor of Government and Law at Georgetown Marc Howard and his childhood friend, Adjunct Professor Marty Tankleff, who was himself wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for almost 18 years before being exonerated. Howard and Tankleff developed Georgetown’s Making an Exonoree course in 2018, and its students have already won the release of three men and made significant progress in the legal prospects of several others.
his event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.
