February 25, 2022, 3:30pm – 5:30pm PST / 6:30pm – 8:30pm EST
In-person at The Kitchen, NYC and live streamed via Zoom.
The Black Aesthetic: An Evening of Film & Conversation with Sadie Barnette, Rodney Barnette, Leigh Raiford of The Black Studies Collaboratory at UC Berkeley, and The Black Aesthetic collective, hosted at The New Eagle Creek Saloon
Join Professor Leigh Raiford of The Black Studies Collaboratory, interdisciplinary creative collective The Black Aesthetic (Jamal Batts, Ra Malika Imhotep, Leila Weefur, Nan Collymore), artist Sadie Barnette, and founder of the original Eagle Creek Saloon Rodney Barnette in an evening of film and conversation. Sadie Barnette and Rodney Barnette will open the evening with a cross-generational dialogue about their ongoing collaboration and the expansive histories therein. This will be followed by a screening of short films and accompanying discussion as organized by The Black Aesthetic and The Black Studies Collaboratory.
This public program provides ASL interpretation and will be presented on-site as well as broadcast remotely. The program contains music, film, and low-lighting. The Zoom webinar presentation will include ASL interpretation, live captioning, and Spanish language interpretation.
The Black Aesthetic: An Evening of Film & Conversation with Sadie Barnette, Rodney Barnette, and The Black Aesthetic collective at The New Eagle Creek Saloon is presented in partnership with The Kitchen and The Black Studies Collaboratory at UC Berkeley. This program is part of Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon, presented at The Kitchen from January 18-March 6 in conjunction with madison moore: Nightlife-in-Residence.
This event is co-sponsored by The Kitchen.
Sadie Barnette’s multimedia practice illuminates her own family history as it mirrors a collective history of repression and resistance in the United States. Recent projects include the reclamation of a 500-page FBI surveillance file amassed on her father during his time with the Black Panther Party and her interactive reimagining of his bar — San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar. Her drawings, photographs, and installations collapse time and expand possibilities. Barnette has a BFA from CalArts and an MFA from University of California, San Diego. She has been awarded grants and residencies by The Studio Museum in Harlem, Art Matters, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Carmago Foundation in France. She has enjoyed solo shows in the following public institutions: ICA Los Angeles, The Lab and the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; MCA San Diego; the Manetti Shrem Museum, UC Davis; the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College; and The Kitchen in New York. Her work is in many permanent collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Pérez Art Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Oakland Museum of California, Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Walker Art Center, as well as a permanent, site-specific commission at the Los Angeles International Airport forthcoming in 2024. The first monograph on the artist’s work, Legacy + Legend, is available now. She lives and works in Oakland, CA and is represented by Jessica Silverman.
Image Description: The image is of four black and white square portraits. The top left photograph is of a Black man smiling. He has natural hair and a beard. He is wearing a light colored, collarless shirt and roundish glasses. The top right photograph is of a Black femme wearing a light colored off the shoulder dress and cat eye glasses, their natural hair is up. They are looking into the camera. The bottom left photograph is of a Black woman facing the left, smiling. They have natural hair and are wearing a dark shirt with a collar. The last photograph is of a Black Trans person with natural hair, shaved at the sides. They are wearing a small earring in their right ear and a light colored sweatshirt. Their background is blurred, and they are looking into the camera.
By working with artists, writers, and filmmakers, The Black Aesthetic cultivates work that invites our audience to consider their relationship to Black creative thought. Through film screenings, performances, and publications we contribute to a growing collection of artistic visions and dialogues that are grounded in place, body, and lived experience. As writers, visual artists, and curators we collaboratively create experiences that unleash Blackness from disciplinary boundaries, be they in form, content, or comportment.
Jamal Batts, PhD is a curator, writer, and scholar. He is currently a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and a Curator-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania. His work reflects on the relationship between Black queer contemporary visual art and the intricacies of sexual risk. He is a 2020 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Scholar-in-Residence, a 2020 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow, and a ONE National Lesbian & Gay Archives LGBTQ Research Fellow. His writing appears in publications such as the catalog for The New Museum’s “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” Open Space, ASAP/J, and New Life Quarterly.
Ra Malika Imhotep is a Black feminist writer and performance artist from Atlanta, Georgia currently pursuing a PhD in African Diaspora Studies and New Media Studies from the University of California. As a scholar and cultural worker, Ra is invested in exploring relationships between queer Black femininities, Black vernacular cultures, and the performance of labor. As a steward of Black Studies and Black feminist thought, Ra dreams, organizes, and facilitates spaces of critical reflection and embodied spiritual-political education. Ra is co-author of The Black Feminist Study Theory Atlas and author of gossypiin (Red Hen Press, Spring 2022).
Leila Weefur (He/They/She) is an artist, writer, and curator based in Oakland, CA. Through video and installation, their interdisciplinary practice examines the performativity intrinsic to systems of belonging. The work brings together concepts of sensorial memory, abject Blackness, hyper surveillance, and the erotic. Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including The Wattis Institute, McEvoy Foundation, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, SFMOMA, San Francisco Art Institute, Museum of the African Diaspora, and Smack Mellon. Weefur’s writing has been published in SEEN by BlackStar Productions, Sming Sming Books, Baest Journal, and more. Weefur is a lecturer at Stanford University.
Nan Collymore is a writer and an inter-disciplinary artist. She is interested in the body and land, and how the two co-exist. Her work is an attempt at creating a language that re-imagines the body as land and as a corporeal topography. Her recent projects are the publication of Alisha B. Wormsley’s, There are Black People In The Future, Soft Material, and the founding of small publishing house L’Habillement.
Accessibility
Spanish interpretation will be available via the Zoom webinar. ASL interpretation will be provided both in-person and via the Zoom webinar.
If you require an accommodation for effective communication and/or physical accommodations to fully participate in this event, please contact Barbara Montano at bmontano14@berkeley.edu or 510-664-4324 with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.