new artists, new sites

Check out these two young Los Angeles-based black women photographers.


Glynnis Reed

I have been working in photography and photo based media for over ten years and with digital imaging for about eight years. In my work I explore issues of identity and place and I am interested in the ways social environments shape our notions of the self. I have photographed and been inspired by the imagery of cities for some time. I investigate urban landscapes as sites for revealing complexities in social interactions and relationships. I also explore dynamics of intimate relationships, investigating how gender, race, sexuality, and power figure into people’s experiences
within the physical and social geography of the city.





Ancel S. Hall

Ancel S. Hall is a recent graduate of Brooks Institute in Santa
Barbara, CA. Her specialty is portraits and fashion (check her site for a more detailed bio).

Aperture West Book Prize

The Aperture West Book Prize was generated as an opportunity to to highlight artists living and working west of the Mississippi. An esteemed group of tastemakers in the west each nominated up to five artists who they thought would be worthy of an Aperture publication. Those 103 nominees were invited to submit work; over 70 responded. From that diverse and strong pool the ten portfolios featured here were chosen, with the final book project Prize going to Hank Willis Thomas.

Look for Hank's first monograph, Pitch Blackness, from Aperture this year.

A Knowledge beyond Text. Looking at each other, sharing interrogations
14-20 November 2009 - Paris, Musée de l'Homme

Presentation in English / Presentation en français

CALL FOR PAPERS / CONTRIBUTIONS

The Comité du Film Ethnographique is organizing an International seven-days Conference to be held in Paris in November 2009. This Conference is to honor the scientific and cinematographic work of Jean Rouch, his founding father and leader.

Our purpose is to explore the many research works and investigations pursued to improve the imagetic languages for anthropology in the fields Jean Rouch has pioneered and initiated.
This call for contributions is open to filmmakers, critics, teachers, researchers, and students concerned with the different ways to experiment and to translate the "real" through various audiovisual languages.

Propositions have to focus on one of the chosen topics:
• The colonial ordeal and a contemporary's anthropology.
• The "real" as imaginary, the fiction tells the world.
• A shared anthropology.
• Direct cinema and a making of the "real".
• A new Anthropology, a today's anthropology.

Abstracts of 1500 characters maximum have to be sent electronically to the Comité du Film Ethnographique, together with the applicant information form, by September 15th 2008. The definitive programme will be set on November 1st, 2008. All accepted participants will be expected to submit a full draft of their paper (text and audiovisual documents for a 20 minutes maximum length) by 31st of May, 2009, to allow their circulation among Conference participants.

Please find attached the applicant information form and a detailed presentation of the Conference purpose, partners and proceeding.

Important Dates:
September 15, 2008; Deadline for abstracts
November 1st, 2008; Notification of acceptance
May 31st, 2009: Submission of Final Papers
September, 2009: Conference programme

Contact :
Comité du Film Ethnographique
Musée de l’Homme
17 place du Trocadéro – 75116 Paris – France
Tél. : 33 (0)1 40 79 36 82 - 33 (0)1 47 04 38 20
colloquejeanrouch@...
www.comite-film-ethno.net

I vote no...

...on this photo series in which Malcolm X's troubled grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, recreates some of his grandfather's famous photographs:

http://www.giantmag.com/content.php?cid=1413

What do you think (thanks, Lauren, for the link)? There's also an interview/article.

Autograph ABP in association with The Centre for the Study of Human
Rights at the London School of Economics presents:

DOCUMENTING DISAPPEARANCE:
Algeria, state terrorism and the photographic image

Panel discussion
Thursday 15 May 2008 6.30 – 8.00
at the New Theatre, LSE, East Building, Houghton Street
London, England

	Barkley L. Hendricks Find the new video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9IvTZJj0CA

The Barkley L. Hendricks exhibition and related programs are sponsored in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation and the North Carolina Arts Council with funding from the State of North Carolina.

Nasher Museum exhibitions and programs are generously supported by the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Mary D.B.T. Semans and the late James H. Semans, The Duke Endowment, the Nancy Hanks Endowment, the K. Brantley and Maxine E. Watson Endowment Fund, the James Hustead Semans Memorial Fund, the Marilyn M. Arthur Fund, the Victor and Lenore Behar Endowment Fund, George W. and Viola Mitchell Fearnside Endowment Fund, the Sarah Schroth Fund, the Margaret Elizabeth Collett Fund, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Office of the President and the Office of the Provost, Duke University, and the Friends of the Nasher Museum of Art.

SAVE THE DATE!

ZOE STRAUSS

Sunday, May 4th, 2008
1pm to 4pm
under I-95
Front St. and Mifflin St.
in South Philadelphia

http://zoestrauss.blogspot.com/

Photographer and installation artist Zoe Strauss will exhibit 231 new
and selected works on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 from 1pm to 4pm under I-95 at
Front St. and Mifflin St. in South Philadelphia. The exhibition is free and
open to the public. Selected pieces of Ms. Strauss's art will be available
as color photocopies for purchase at 5 dollars each. The event will happen
rain or shine. It's going to be off the hook.


This is the 8th year of Ms. Strauss's ongoing 10-year photo installation in
South Philadelphia. Within the last 8 years Ms. Strauss has shown in the
2006 Whitney Biennial, had an acclaimed solo show at Silverstein
Photography, is shooting for a book of her photography to be released in
October 2008, been commissioned to create a ramp project at the
Philadelphia ICA, had 8 prints purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art
for their permanent collection, received a Leeway grant and become a member
of the Leeway advisory council,shown a slideshow at the Philadelphia ICA and
won "friends of Arcadia award" for her piece in the Arcadia Works on Paper
Show.

Of all this fanciness, the 95 show is really the big thing in Ms. Strauss's
opinion.


Zoe Strauss is the executive director of the Philadelphia Public Art Project


For more information on the May 4 exhibit or on the Philadelphia Public Art
Project please visit http://zoestrauss.blogspot.com
or
contact Zoe Strauss at
info@zoestrauss.com

Check out images from Sheila Pree Bright's Young Americans series, which is currently on view at the High Museum in Atlanta (which opens this Saturday!), here:
http://projects.accessatlanta.com/gallery/view/arts/bright0425/?cxntlid=aa-hp-rtr

including a very sweet image of Sheila, who I know doesn't like to be photographed:

In a few months, Mainstay Press will publish the groundbreaking first
issue of Liberation Lit, the journal of progressive and revolutionary
fiction, and other libratory art.

At link below, the cover collage for the forthcoming print anthology.
The cover illustrations originate mainly from The Masses magazine of
early last century, and posters from the WPA Federal Theater Project:
http://liblit.org/

Also see Guidelines: http://liblit.wordpress.com/guidelines/

Liberation Lit publishes online in rolling fashion and annually in
print. We continue to seek additional works for the first issue.

Tony Christini
Andre Vltchek
Co-editors
Liberation Lit
http://liblit.org/

Stand Up! The New Politics of Racial Uplift
A Public Philosophy Symposium

Temple University

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

9am to 5pm

Kiva Auditorium and Tuttleman Learning Center, Room 101

For information about participants, schedule, and work by participants and material relevant to symposium themes, go to our website:

http://www.temple.edu/philosophy/standup/

Purpose of Symposium:

The Millions More Movement, Cosby's 'call-outs,' and other recent trends renew an old approach to black political thought and practice. The racial uplift tradition tries to improve the conditions of black life by insisting on moral refinement and race-based organization. Uplift ideology and practice have a long and storied past, but critics of the tradition worry over its limitations. Some express concern that it is anti-democratic, intolerant, elitist, sexist, and heterosexist. Others think it focuses too much on personal morality and cultural pathology and not enough on social justice and political economy.

The participants in the 'Stand Up!' symposium will think through the risks and rewards of this new racial uplift politics. This interdisciplinary exercise in public philosophy will explore the implications of a social phenomenon with broad ethical significance. The new politics of racial uplift emerges from a widely shared conviction that something is deeply wrong in American society. Our public philosophy conference will take this judgment seriously, and subject this politics to searching and critical scrutiny.

Confirmed Participants:

Angela D. Dillard, Afroamerican and African Studies and Residential College, LSA, at the University of Michigan

Kenyon Farrow, essayist, organizer, media and communications specialist, and board co-chair for Queers for Economic Justice

Kevin Gaines, Afroamerican and African Studies and History at the University of Michigan

Kathryn T. Gines, African American and Diaspora Studies and Philosophy at Vanderbilt University

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University and the Jamestown Project

Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Women’s Research and Resource Center and the Women’s Studies at Spelman College

Joy James, Humanities and Political Science at Williams College and Senior Research Fellow in the Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas-Austin

Adolph Reed, Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania

Jared Sexton, African American Studies and Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine

Aishah Shahidah Simmons, AfroLez® Productions and award-winning African-American feminist lesbian documentary filmmaker, international lecturer, writer, activist, and producer, writer, and director of the internationally acclaimed documentary NO!

Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr., Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University Law School and the Jamestown Project

Paul C. Taylor, Philosophy at Temple University and the Jamestown Project

Sponsors:

Temple University Department of Philosophy, the Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts, the Center for Humanities at Temple, the Ira Lawrence Family Fund, and the Jamestown Project

The symposium is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Tamara K. Nopper, assistant organizer, at tnopper (at) temple.edu

Kalia Brooks @ WMA, New York

(this sounds fantastic. be there if you can!)

Kalia Brooks will be presenting a paper entitled, e-racial at the Whitney Independent Study Program Symposium at the Whitney Museum.

The paper will consider the avatar in Second Life as a type of electronic race.

When: Thursday, May 22, 7pm

Where: Whitney Museum of Art

945 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10021

Association for Critical Race Art History [ACRAH] : The Grapevine Newsletter

This newsletter is compiled by Camara Holloway. Lots of great information and black artists--case in point, I had no idea Maud Sulter died, and I was so excited to see her image prominently used for the current exhibition at the Hood Museum. She was so young.

Check out the current newsletter, and subscribe if you're interested to receive it.

grapevine%20II.2-1.pdf










Maud Sulter, Terpsichore, 1989, dye destructions print. Arts Council Collection, London. Photograph courtesy of Maud Sulter and the Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. On view in the exhibition Black Womanhood.

support this (especially if you're a writer)!

Rather than paraphrase I copied this from Tayari Jones' blog. The auction still has between 5 and 6 days to run. Help if you can:

Let's Help The Dunbar Village Survivors!

The ebay auction is up! Go there now to bid on manuscript critiques by me, George Saunders, Nichelle Tramble, Sarah Schulman, Laila Lalami, Joy Castro, Martha Southgate, D. Nurkse, and Honoree Fanonne Jeffers! Carleen Brice is offering to critique your non-fiction book proposal. (Having sold three books this way, she knows how it's done!) There are books up for grabs-- a full set of George Saunders titles and a set of memoirs and a collection of debut novels. Natasha Trethewey is giving a signed hardcover of her Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Native Guard. Erika Dreyfus, the "Practicing Writer", has offered her three e-books on how to find paying markets for what you write! This is just in: Rachel Eliza Griffiths will take your photo if you live the NY area. (Trust me. You want her to take your photo.)

We got the good stuff.

If you'd like to contribute directly to the victims of the Dunbar Village tragedy here's the info.

Individuals who would like to donate money to the victims can go to any Wachovia Bank and donate to the St. Ann’s Victim’s Assistance Fund. Donations will go directly to the mother and her son.
St. Ann’s Catholic Church will accept donations. Checks can be made payable to the "Dunbar Village Victim Assistance Fund - St. Ann’s".
Donations can be mailed to: St. Ann’s Catholic Church, 310 N. Olive Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL 33401

If you go this route, let me know. At the end of the week, I want to post the results of our hard work and I want to make sure I include you.

On that note, I received the first contribution last night at KGB Bar. Alicia, a member of our blog community, slipped me some cash. "This is for Dunbar Village," she said.

Ashe.

run, don't walk

I can't believe I'm missing this (I had a conflict)! As the kids say, I stan for Zanele, but also look at the rest of this lineup. The symposium is this weekend at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, in conjunction with the exhibition which recently opened (there's a catalog, too).

Zanele Muholi, Miss D'vine

http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/frenchstudies/events/index.asp?id=9407

Diasporic Bodies and Visual Culture: Contemporary African and African Diaspora Art Perspectives
A Department of History of Art and Visual Studies Annual Graduate Symposium Program Friday, April 11 2:00 p.m. Amanda Gilvin Welcome Symposium Co-organizer 2:05 p.m. Professor Shirley Samuels Opening Remarks Chair of the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies Guest Speaker 2:15 p.m. Dr. Anthony Downey Beyond Identity Politics: Excessive Identities in the Work of Yinka Shonibare, Aimé Ntakiyika, and Samuel Fosso Program Director of the M.A. in Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Institute of Art, London 3:15 p.m. Break Session One Moderator: Professor Diane Butler Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University 3:30 p.m. Dwan McClendon Wangechi Mutu: Female Figures and the Discourse of Destruction Kent State University, Ohio 4:00 p.m. Rose Oluronke Ojo Disrobing the Hero in Renee Cox's "Raje" and Yinka Shonibare's "Diary of A Victorian Dandy" Series School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London 4:30 p.m. Break Keynote Address 5:00 p.m. Professor Salah Hassan Keynote Introduction Lalla Assia Essaydi Continuity and Change: Veiled Realities Artist 6:30 p.m. Reception Saturday, April 12 10:00am Coffee and Tea Session Two Moderator: Professor Iftikhar Dadi Assistant Professor, Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University 10:30 a.m. Zakiyyah Jackson The Perversity of Power and Violence in Kara Walker's 'Battle of Atlanta: Being a Narrative of a Negress in the Flames of Desire' University of California, Berkeley 11:00 a.m. Jon Senchyne Face, Race, Revolution: Facial Representation in Alain Locke's The New Negro and Richard Wright's Native Son Cornell University 11:30 a.m. Gabriel Peoples "Slavery Cannot Be Destroyed, But Only Change Form": Implications for the Status of Black Men in the Public Media in Hank Willis Thomas's B®anded and Unbranded Exhibitions Cornell University 12:00 p.m. Lunch Break Session Three Moderator: Professor Dagmawi Woubshet Assistant Professor, Department of English, Cornell University 1:00 p.m. Zanele Muholi Gay(zing) Body, Image, Beauty, and Landscape Ryerson University 1:30 p.m. Danielle M. Snoddy "I Am an Activist First—Then an Artist": The Photographic Work of Zanele Muholi University of Iowa 2:00 p.m. Kevin Dumouchelle Beyond the Body Boundary: Queer{y}ing the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Samuel Fosso Columbia University 2:30 p.m. Break Session Four Moderator: Professor Maria Fernandez Assistant Professor, Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University 2:45 p.m. Jessica Hurd Breathing Body, Winding Snake: A Reevaluation of Body Symbolism in Dogon Art, Performance, and Village Design Indiana University 3:15 p.m. Laila Shereen Sakr On Performing Arab New Media University of California, Santa Cruz 3:45 p.m. Dan Jakubowski Julie Mehretu and the Global Community Graduate School of the History of Art and Design at the Pratt Institute 4:15 p.m. Closing Remarks
	Africana Studies and Research Center, the GPSAFC, Department of Anthropology, Department of Art, Institute of European Studies, Institute for German Culture Studies, Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance, Department of German Studies, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Society for the Humanities, Rose Goldsen Lecture Series, and the College of Art, Architecture, and Planning
	April 11, 2008 - through - April 12, 2008

Black Womanhood: Icons, Images, and Ideologies of the African Body

http://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/exhibitions/blackwomanhood/bwpressrelease.html

I'm totally fascinated by this idea

As a writer and editor, language is something I revel in, something I love. Of late there has been a discussion on the BlackIvy listserv about the creation of language--specifically the word "conversate," and whether or not its usage (by black people especially) is acceptable. I've been mildly interested--I've heard that discussion before--but this one was new to me, and fascinating.

English is dead

My glee in the destruction of my own spoken language isn't entirely inspired by knowing language history

By Annalee Newitz

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION By the time English truly is a dominant language on the planet, it will no longer be English. Instead, say a group of linguists interviewed in a recent article by Michael Erard in New Scientist, the language will fragment into many mutually-unintelligible dialects. Still, some underlying documents will supply the grammatical glue for these diverse Englishes, the way Koranic Arabic does for the world's diverse Arabic spinoff tongues. English-speakers of the future will be united in their understanding of a standard English supplied by technical manuals and Internet media.

People like me, native English speakers, are heading to the ashcan of history. By 2010, estimates language researcher David Graddol, 2 billion people on the planet will be communicating in English — but only 350 million will be native speakers. By 2020, native speakers will have diminished to 300 million. My American English, which I grew up speaking in an accent that matched what I heard on National Public Radio and 60 Minutes, is already difficult for many English-speakers to understand.

Hence the rise of Internet English. This is the simple English of technical manuals and message boards — full of slang and technical terminology, but surprisingly free of strange idioms. It's usually also free of the more cumbersome and weird aspects of English grammar.

For example, a future speaker of English would be unlikely to understand the peculiar way in which I express the past tense: "I walked to the store." Adding a couple of letters (–ed) to the end of a verb to say that I did something in the past? Weird. Hard to hear; hard to say. It's much more comprehensible to say: "I walk to the store yesterday." And indeed, that's how many non-native speakers already say it. It's also the way most popular languages like the many dialects of Chinese express tense. The whole practice of changing the meaning of a word by adding barely audible extra letters — well, that's just not going to last.

When I read about the way English is changing and fragmenting, it has the opposite effect on me than what you might expect. Although I am the daughter and granddaughter of English teachers and spent many years in an English department earning a PhD, I relish the prospect of my language changing and becoming incomprehensible to me. Maybe that's because I spent a year learning to read Old English, the dominant form of English spoken 1,000 years ago, and I realize how much my language has already changed.

But my glee in the destruction of my own spoken language isn't entirely inspired by knowing language history. It's because I want English to reflect the lives of the people who speak it. I want English to be a communications tool — like the Internet, a thing that isn't an end in itself but a means to one. Once we all acknowledge that there are many correct Englishes, and not just the Queen's English or Terry Gross's English, things will be a lot better for everybody.

I'll admit sometimes I feel a little sad when my pal from Japan doesn't get my double entendres or idiomatic jokes. I like to play with language, and it's hard to be quite so ludic when language is a tool and nothing more. But that loss of English play is more than made up for by the cross-cultural play that becomes possible in its stead, jokes about kaiju and non-native snipes at native customs. (My favorite: said Japanese pal is bemused by American Christianity, and one day exclaimed in frustration, "God, Godder, Goddest!")

For those of us who spend most of our days communicating via the Internet, using language as the top layer in a technological infrastructure that unites many cultures, the Englishes of the future are already here. In some ways they make a once-uniform language less intelligible. In other ways, they make us all more intelligible to one another.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd whose English is obsolete.

Wednesday April 2, 2008