GREG TATE: THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK ART, POLITICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

MAY 4, 2010 | 8:30 PM

presented by REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater California Institute of the Arts : THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK ART, POLITICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2010 | 8:30 PM

Co-presented with the CalArts graduate Aesthetics and Politics Program

The longtime Village Voice cultural critic, pioneer of hip-hop journalism and adventurous music director is on hand for an illuminating talk that locates a crisis today in black creative self-concep- tion and representation—an exigency now being countered by new black theater, Afropunk and young black visual artists. Tracing a history of the recent past, Tate’s incisive analysis connects the depoliticization and disenchantment of black performative expression to the hypercapitalist mass-marketing of black cultural output that boomed in the 1990s. Tate has contributed to nu- merous magazines, journals and museum catalogues; his books include Flyboy in the Buttermilk and Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture. He is currently working on a new book about the Godfather of Soul, provisionally entitled James Brown’s Body and the Revolution of the Mind. Tate is introduced by award-winning poet and performer Douglas Kearney, who also leads the post-lecture Q&A.

ABOUT GREG TATE Greg Tate was a Staff Writer at The Village Voice from 1987-2005. His writings on culture and politics have also been published in , , Artforum, , VIBE, Premiere, Essence, Suede, The Wire, One World, Downbeat, and JazzTimes. He was recently acknowledged by The Source magazine as one of the ‘Godfathers of Hiphop Journalism’ for his groundbreaking work on the genre’s social, political, economic and cultural implications in the period when most pundits considered it a fad. His published interviews include dialogues with , George Clinton, Richard Pryor, Carlos Santana, Lenny Kravitz, Sade, Erykah Badu, Wayne Shorter, Joni Mitchell, Lisa Bonet, Samuel R Delany, Ice Cube, Dexter Gordon, Betty Carter, King Sunny Ade, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Cassandra Wilson, Jill Scott, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Ornette Coleman, Henry Threadgill and of . Tate has also written for the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, ICA Boston, ICA London, Museum of Contemporary Art Houston, The Studio Museum In Harlem, The Gagosian Gallery, Deitch Projects and the Tate Museums London and Liverpool. His writing about visual art includes monographs and essays about Chris Ofili, Wengechi Mutu, Jean Michel Basquiat, Ellen Gallagher, Kehinde Wiley and Ramm El Zee. His books include Everything But The Burden, What White People Are Taking From Black Culture (Harlem Moon/Random House, 2003), Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and The Black Experience (Acapella/Lawrence Hill, 2003); Flyboy In The Buttermilk, Essays on American Culture (Simon and Schuster, 1993). Duke University Press will publish Flyboy 2:The Greg Tate Reader. He is now working on a book about the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, for Riverhead Press. Working title: James Brown’s Body and the Revolution of the Mind. His play My Darling Gremlin (with live music score by Lawrence Butch Morris) was produced at Aaron Davis Hall in 1993 and at The Kitchen in 1995. His short feature sci-fi filmBlack Body Radiation was produced in 2006. He also once collaborated on the librettos for Juluis Hemphill’s opera Long Tongues (Apollo Theatre Production) and for Leroy Jenkins’ Fresh Faust (Boston ICA Production). Tate is musical director for the 13 to 35-plus member conducted-improvisation ensemble , The Arkestra Chamber. The band regularly performs in Europe, Canada and the United States. Burnt Sugar has released fifteen albums on their own TruGROID imprint since 1999. Their recordings and live performances have won them enthusiastic acclaim from Rolling Stone, Downbeat, The Wire, The Village Voice, Straight No Chaser, Signal To Noise and The New York Times. They can be reached via myspace.com and www.burntsugarindex.com. In February 2010, Burnt Sugar appeared in Paris as the pit band for Melvin Van Peeble’s operatic restaging of his filmSweet Sweetback’s Badass Song.

ABOUT DOUGLAS KEARNEY Douglas Kearney’s first full-length collection of poems,Fear, Some, was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. His second manuscript, The Black Automaton (Fence, 2009), was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series. In 2008, he was honored with a Whiting Writers Award. Also a librettist, he has collaborated with the composer Anne LeBaron on the opera Sucktion, which received a MAP Fund grant and premiered at the New Original Works Festival in Los Angeles in 2008 and has since been staged in Europe. His one man opera, Mordake with composer Erling Wold, premiered in 2008 at the San Francisco International Arts Festival. Crescent City, another collaboration with LeBaron, was featured in the 2009 Opera’s VOX program. An Idyllwild and Cave Canem fellow, Kearney has performed his poetry across the country. His poems have appeared in journals such as Callaloo, jubilat, nocturnes, Ninth Letter, Washington Square and Gulf Coast. Born in Brooklyn, now living in California’s San Fernando Valley with his family, he has a BA from and an MFA in Writing from the California Institute of the Arts, where he teaches courses in African American poetry, myth, and opera. UPCOMING PERFORMANCES AT REDCAT May 5 Party for Betty! May 6–8 CalArts Film/Video Showcase May 10 Starting to Go Bad: New Narratives by Pat O’Neill May 14–15 The Next Dance Company May 15 Teen Animation, Photography, Puppetry and Video Screening May 16 Ring Festival LA: Considering Wagner featuring Villa Aurora Composers-in-Residence May 20–23 Lionel Popkin: There is An Elephant in This Dance June 2–3 Partch: Even Wild Horses June 4–5 Dance Camera West June 5 CAP/Sony Pictures Media Arts Program Screening June 13–14 Studio: Summer 2010

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