Lake Studios Berlin

Stefano Harney: With a soft spirit and sharp wit, Stefano makes a case for the power of unconventional gatherings. He introduces us to his long collaboration with Fred Moten and their work championing The Undercommons and Blues Universities.

Marquis Bey: Marquis’ talk “In the Shadows of Binaries” destroys solid notions of gender and binaries and re-builds them as social/relational processes full of potential. Marquis invokes Foucalt, Derrida, and their own reflections that invite irreverence toward binaries.

Elle Barbara: This talk starts by introducing “The House of Barbara” a Montreal based neo-ballroom event series for young, black queer artists – a house where art meets family support structures. From there it turns to a long and fruitful conversation on Haitian spirituality, black male masculinity, hierarchy, whimsy, and creating art in spaces of vulnerability.

Julian Reid: The intricate intelligence of Julian Reid is once again at it in this talk that touches on colonialism in relation to power, arts, and queer theory. Throughout the talk, Julian introduces us to seminal books that support and further the conversational themes. (see the Bibliography for a list of these books)

Maggie Nelson: The final talk of the 2022 About Dance Season took us out with a bang. Maggie reads from her latest book “On Freedom” and then joins hosts Marten and Alex in a rich conversation, that covers topics from care, creative process, the film “Easy Rider”, writing as a practice of choreography, and artistic “groove”.

SPECIFIC BOOKS

Chandler, David & Reid, Julian. 2019. Becoming Indigenous: Governing Imaginaries in the Anthropocene.

Harney, Stefano & Moten, Fred. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. 

Harney, Stefano & Moten, Fred. 2021. All Incomplete.

McCann, Anthony. 2019. Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff

Scott, Julius Sherrard. 2018. The Common Wind.

Snorton, C. Riley. 2017. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity.

ALSO CHECK OUT

Baraka, Amiri (formerly LeRoi Jones): writer, poet, eassyist.

Lemebel, Pedro: Chilean essayist, chronicler, and novelist.

Woods, Clyde: black studies, wrote about New Orleans and Blues Universities.

*BONUS! JULIAN REID’S LITERARY REVIEW*

Amin, Kadji. 2017. Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History

Bersani, Leo. 1996. Homos.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge.

Descola, Philippe. 2005. Beyond Nature and Culture.

Genet, Jean. 1986. Prisoner of Love.

Ingold, Tim. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture

Lawernce, T.E. 1926. Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Robinson, Cedric. 1983. Black Marxism.

Zuboff, Shoshana. 2018. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Jorge De Hoyos is an American dancer/performer and choreographer living and working in Berlin, Germany since 2012. http://www.jorgedehoyos.com/about.html

Stefano Harney is a teacher and writer who works collaboratively and collectively in the classroom, in research, and in social practice. He is a black studies scholar who has taught in the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, art criticism, American Studies, and business & management. He is currently professor transversal aesthetics at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Stefano is co-author with Fred Moten of The Undercommons: fugitive planning and black study (2013) and of All Incomplete (2021). He is also co-author of The Liberal Arts and Management Education (2020), with Howard Thomas.

Marquis Bey is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English at Northwestern University. Their work focuses on blackness and fugitivity, transness, and black feminist theory. Bey is particularly concerned with modes of subjectivity that index otherwise ways of being, utilizing blackness and transness—as fugitive, extra-ontological postures—as names for such otherwise subjectivities. Recent publications are of Black Trans Feminism (Duke, 2022) and The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Gender (Minnesota, 2020). 

Elle Barbara is a Montreal-based avant-garde singer-songwriter song selector (TS Ellise) speaker writer director curator artist and pinup whose musical output combines elements of soul jazz psychedelia and underground. A lover of the odd dark and overlooked elements in pop music they find inspiration in unexpected sources like off-the-radar acts Su Tissue Kashif Francis Bebey and obscure New Wave duo Rexy in addition to mainstream luminaries like Mary J. Blige. Rising from artist-run spaces such as La Brique and Drones Club Elle Barbara has seen their work soar to enduring acclaim in Japan and Europe in a short career whose highlights include duets with Laetitia Sadier and R. Stevie Moore. In recent years Barbara’s efforts have been partly centered around trans community organizing as well as event planning. In recent years Barbara’s efforts have been partly centered around trans community organizing as well as event planning. Their band (Black Space) whose lineup is solely made of musicians of Sub-Saharan African descent aims to re-center blackness and reject anti-black tropes within music & art spaces.

Julian Reid is Chair and Professor of International Relations at the University of Lapland, the northernmost university in the European Union, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, where he has lived since 2007. Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Reid previously taught at the Universities of London (SOAS and King’s College) and Sussex. He was Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol in 2014. In 2018, he is the Visiting Research Fellow at Virginia Tech (USA). His most recent book is The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptivity and Vulnerability, which he co-authored with David Chandler. 

Maggie Nelson is the author of several books in multiple genres. Her six books of nonfiction include On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021), The Argonauts (2015), global best-seller and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; a landmark work of cultural, art, and literary criticism titled The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011), which was named a NY Times Notable Book of the Year; the cult classic Bluets (2009), which was named by Bookforum one of the 10 best books of the past 20 years; a memoir about her family, media spectacle, and sexual violence titled The Red Parts (2007); and a critical study of painting and poetry titled Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007). Her books of poetry include Something Bright, Then Holes (2007), Jane: A Murder (2005), The Latest Winter (2003), and Shiner (2001). She has been the recipient of a Creative Capital Literature Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and an Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant. In 2016 she received a MacArthur „genius“ grant. She writes frequently about art, and currently teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.