Artist Reflection: Black Spatial Matters
Video of the event here
This conversation will center on the relationships between architecture, ecology and humanism. Given that space in the Americas has historically been shaped by racial and colonial power, how could the experience of African diaspora inform the creation of spaces that are more livable and free? Bogues, Dyson and Gooden draw on their research as thinkers and practitioners to imagine a critical humanism, and its relevance for an expanded notion of environmental justice. They will also reflect on how processes of abstraction (artistic, architectural, and conceptual) have been used within the realm of black spatial matters.
This conversation is part of Unkeeping, a solo exhibition by Torkwase Dyson, current research Resident at Eyebeam. Unkeeping expands the traditional definition of technology to also include constructions like architecture, data and race.
Tony Bogues
is a writer, scholar, curator, who grapples with the history of freedom as a practice in the context of racial and colonial power. He is author of Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire and Freedom, andBlack Heretics, Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals and has published extensively on the work of George Lamming, Sylvia Wynter, Edouard Duval-Carrié and C.L.R. James. He is a professor at Brown University and directs the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University.
Torkwase Dyson
is an artist and current Research Resident at Eyebeam. She deconstructs natural and built environments to investigate the liminal spacebetween un-keeping place and place-making. She is a lecturer in painting/printmaking at Yale School of Art.
Mario Gooden
is an architect and partner in the firm of Huff + Gooden Architects. He is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. He is author of Dark Space: Architecture, Representation, Black Identity, which illuminates compelling ways of translating the philosophical idea of the African Diaspora's experience into space.