Part VII: Black Arts Movement: Then and Now CONFERENCE DAY 3
10AM - 11:30AM
Poder Latino featuring Felipe Luciano, Lois Elaine Griffith, & More
In this discussion, Felipe Luciano, poet, activist, journalist, a former member of The Last Poets, and founding chairman of the Young Lords Party; and Lois Elaine Griffith, artist and writer whose work is grounded in her Afro-Caribbean roots, longtime professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY), and one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Café, explore the Afro-Latinx cross-cultural influence on the intersection of European colonialism and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the complexities of the Afro-Latinx relationship to the Black Arts Movement.
11:30AM: Lunch (First Come, First Served)
12 – 1:30PM
Portrait of Jason by Shirley Clarke Film Screening
In Collaboration with Maysles Documentary Center
Described by Ingmar Bergman as “the most fascinating film (he) had ever seen in (his) life),” Portrait of Jason is an experimental documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Shirley Clarke. Filmed in one night over 12 consecutive hours on December 2, 1966, in the Chelsea Hotel apartment of its director, the cinema vérité film's sole subject, Jason Holliday né Aaron Payne (b. 1924-1998), is a self-described black cabaret performer, houseboy, and gay sex worker who seamlessly weaves together tales about the highs and lows of his life while becoming increasingly inebriated. What begins as a fascinating and often times hilarious performative documentary results in a heartbreaking portrait of a tortured soul, berated and provoked to despair off-screen with increasing hostility by the film's director and her then partner, actor Carl Lee.
2:30PM - 4PM
Crisis of the Negro Intellectual featuring Harmony Holiday, Michael Sawyer & Dominic Taylor, moderated by Margo Crawford
Historian Harold Cruse's controversial book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, published in 1967, has been praised as a groundbreaking intellectual history of Black radicalism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement, as well as a monument of historical-critical analysis of the Black intellectual tradition and its many schools of critical thought and scholarly perspectives. The work has also been dismissed by some as a flawed and ruthless attack on Black intellectuals, artists, civil rights liberals, Communists, and Black Nationalists (Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Ossie Davis, and Lorraine Hansberry, among others) and what he deemed to be their inherently doomed integrationist approach towards American pluralism.
This panel, including writer, dancer, and experimental filmmaker, Harmony Holiday; Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, Michael Sawyer; and Professor of African American Studies and Theater at UCLA, as well as scholar of African-American theater and writer-director, Dominic Taylor; moderated by Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Margo Crawford, whose scholarship encompasses the Black Arts Movement and exploring new ways of understanding Black radical imaginations; looks at Cruse’s critique of inclusive Black radicalism, then and now, and his prescriptive theorem that Black nationalism should be rooted in a Marxist approach to Black liberation principles.
4:15 – 5PM
Closing Plenary:
Carl Hancock Rux
Harlem Stage Associate Artistic Director/Curator-in-Residence Carl Hancock Rux offers closing thoughts at the conclusion of the Black Arts Movement: Then and Now Conference, reflecting on the conversations held during the convening, the impact of the Black Arts Movement and the seminal role played by Amiri Baraka, and how the Black Arts Movement will continue to influence current and future movements around Black culture and arts.
7:30PM
Performance (The Armory), Curated by Carl Hancock Rux, Tavia Nyong’o, and Vernon Reid, with contributions from Carrie Mae Weems, Stefanie Batten Bland, and Dianne Smith
HAPO NA ZAMANI
Join us at Park Avenue Armory for Hapo Na Zamani (translated from Swahili as “once upon a time”), the star-studded culminating event of Harlem Stage's yearlong Black Arts Movement: Examined series and its Black Arts Movement: Then and Now Conference. This co-presentation with the Armory is an immersive transmedia installation event, fusing video, vocal performance, sculpture, sound installation, fashion, and movement as a radical reimagining of Black Art and Culture, Past, Present, and Future. Curated by Harlem Stage Associate Artistic Director/Curator-in-Residence Carl Hancock Rux, Park Avenue Armory curator Tavia Nyong'o, and GRAMMY Award-winning musician Vernon Reid, with contributions from celebrated artist Carrie Mae Weems, Stefanie Batten Bland, and Dianne Smith, among others, this mega “happening” explores the contribution of Black art and culture in conversation with light, sound, and multimedia.
Funded in part by a grant from the New York City Tourism Foundation.
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Inspired, imagined, and curated by Harlem Stage Associate Artistic Director/Artist-in-Residence, Carl Hancock Rux, the Black Arts Movement Conference is a three-day event featuring a keynote address by poet, music critic, and arts administrator A.B. Spellman. The conference includes panels, discussions, essays, and performances, featuring pioneers and visionary artists including Angela Davis, Nona Hendryx, Sonia Sanchez, Henry Threadgill, Toshi Reagon, and more, as well as a closing-night concert co-presented with Park Avenue Armory, curated by Carl Hancock Rux, Tavia Nyong’o, and Vernon Reid, with contributions by Carrie Mae Weems, Stefanie Batten Bland, and Dianne Smith.
Employing roundtables, public dialogues, and screenings, the convening will explore controversial areas of tension between the intellectual, ethical, and commercial imperatives of the Black Arts Movement. In conversations between pioneers of the Black Arts Movement and a contemporary generation of artists and scholars, the Black Arts Movement Conference centers itself within a dialogue that is both historically and culturally relevant in our ever-changing world.