DOCSLIB.ORG

Trained As a Curator and Art Historian, Claire Tancons Has Made The

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Trained As a Curator and Art Historian, Claire Tancons Has Made The Trained as a curator and art historian, Claire Tancons has made the traditions and contemporary iterations of carnival, public ceremonial culture, civic rituals and popular movements, the focus of her sustained research. Her work examines and re-assesses ‘the political aesthetics of walking, marching, second-lining, masquerading and parading’, as modes of public address and communality, bringing the genealogy of the modern carnivals of the Americas and their diasporic counterparts to bear on both a history of performance and readings of current popular movements. As a curator she has pioneered processional performance as a critique of the exhibitionary complex. Her project ‘Spring’ was part of the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008); more recently, ‘Up Hill Down Hall: An Indoor Carnival’ (2014) Claire Tancons was staged in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London. Spring [2008] En Mas’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean [2014] Up Hill Down Hall: An Indoor Carnival [2014] 164 165 Claire Tancons How do you define your work as a curator? his main artistic practice from it – much as his work to trace than it is to formulate external legitimiz- on the other side of the Atlantic, from the eighteenth [CT] Much like my academic path, which seems to have later led me to envisioning the possibility of curating ing claims; so that, in Brazil, carnival’s artistic direc- century onwards, which is when diverse cultural been well thought-out in advance, but was, in fact, carnival and to do so as public processional perfor- tors are known as carnavalescos while in Trinidad they traditions from different populations – Native rather serendipitous, driven by interest and instinct mance. So, obvious though it might seem now, at first are known as masmen. And, of course, there is a grow- Americans, Africans and Europeans and later Asians rather than planning and timing, my curatorial work it required providing an art-historical lineage and ing score of contemporary artists of Caribbean and – cemented into what we continue to call ‘carnival’. might seem quite coherent, whereas it also came devising a curatorial framework as preconditions for African descent who draw from carnival, masquerade I’m in part following in the footsteps of Joseph out of personal interest and life experience followed its visibility within an art context – something that and public ceremonial culture at large, to create Roach’s definition of circum-Atlantic performances by empirical research and experimentation. So I don’t I am now questioning. works of performance including Marlon Griffith and derived from Paul Gilroy’s conceptualization of the define my work. I direct it. Indeed, one could say that Hew Locke, Meschac Gaba and Dominique Zinkpè, Black Atlantic. But I am also questioning the appro- I curate in a directorial fashion more akin to the fields to mention only a few whose work I’ve recently priateness of the very word ‘carnival’ to account for of theatre, dance, opera or, indeed, carnival. In any curated or written about. the variegated practices it came to encompass and event, my work is always research-driven, context- As to your last question, carnival always has an that by far exceeded the European frame within specific and, to a large extent, collaborative, in various To use an anatomical artistic aspect but is also always at the same time, which it continues to be placed. degrees, and at different stages in the process. I like potentially, in addi- to allow for a mix of rigour and nimbleness at the metaphor applied tion to a performance ‘Spring’, your project for the same time. art form and an exhibi- Gwangju Biennale, marked To use an anatomical metaphor applied to the to the field of dance: tionary mode, a ritual a moment of protest. Are field of dance: I build projects around a strong core of resistance and a carnival and protest inex- so as to leave the members free to flow around it. I build projects around festival of otherness. tricably linked? I also think of my practice in terms of different bodies As a polyglot practice, [CT] ‘Spring’ was conceived of work. So, for instance, my interest in carnival, a strong core so as to carnival might not use in direct response to performance, civic rituals and public ceremonial all its tongues at the the context of crea- culture developed into a ten-year body of work, one leave the members free same time but they tion of the Gwangju which I may continue pursuing or return to. I have are always available Biennale as a tribute now begun engaging with another body of work to flow around it and ready to articulate to the city’s 1980 around piracy, self-governance and infrastructure the language or speak Democratic Uprising that I very much look forward to delving into. the patois appropriate and to South Korea’s to or required by the nationwide protest at What drew you to carnivals, and how do you formulate them circumstances. the time, in the sum- in your research? mer of 2008, against [CT] I was slowly pulled towards carnival in Trinidad the reopening of the beef trade with the US. in 2004. I didn’t arrive in Trinidad with preconceived The turning point in the conceptualization of the ideas or a pre-existing interest in carnival. But as Actor Boy: Fractal Engagement, project was when, upon reviewing close-up images I carried out studio visits with a wide range of con- Charles Campbell, part of ‘En Mas’: Carnival of the protests in Seoul, I recognized its carni- temporary artists, it quickly became apparent that and Performance Art of the Caribbean’ valesque tropes and decided to bring together these carnival was not only central to Trinidad’s cultural [2014] vernacular street performances and South Korea’s identity but also played an important role in contem- democratic protest traditions with carnival’s own. porary artistic practice, whether in terms of the Another important moment was when I recognized materials or techniques artists used, the subject the May 18 Democratic Square (which I was dismayed matters they drew from or the installation strategies to see disfigured by the construction of the Gwangju they devised. How do you see carnivals and artistic practice coming Kunsthalle a couple of years later) as one of those Despite a long and well-established artistic tra- together? Are there specific artists who work with carnivals ‘vortices of behaviour’, to quote from Roach – a site dition in the Trinidad Carnival, colloquially known as a medium? Or is all carnival-making explicitly artistic? of performance – and elected it as the site for ‘Spring’. as mas’, short for masquerade, and the tower- [CT] Your first question is almost exactly the same question Finally, each artist invited in the project drew from ing achievement of carnival designer and artist that was formulated to me by Dan Cameron when their own experiences, histories and practices: Peter Minshall, carnival was both that towards which he asked me to write an essay about ‘the relationship for instance, Marlon Griffith from the Canboulay riots artists were attracted and that which they resisted. between carnival and contemporary art’ for the catalo- How important is it for you to establish the carnival tradition in late nineteenth-century Trinidad, Jarbas Lopes It seemed safer to establish oneself as an artist to gue of Prospect.1 New Orleans. It became The Greatest as a non-Western-centric form of modernism? from contemporary protest against the pollution of photograph, film or paint carnival than to actually Free Show on Earth: Carnival from Trinidad to Brazil, [CT] Part of my current preoccupation is to establish the Amazonian forest, or Caecilia Tripp, the project’s ‘do’ carnival or, rather, ‘make mas’. One of the artists Cape Town to New Orleans and, honestly, it’s a pretty carnival’s modern genealogy through the experience filmmaker, who realized Spring in Gwangju, in homage who was beginning to dare and was coming out of bad case in point about the pressure of legitimizing of the Middle Passage, in the aftermath of slavery to Fassbinder’s Germany in Autumn. ‘Spring’ was a the carnival closet, so to speak, was Marlon Griffith, for the mainstream. It feels particularly preposterous and colonization, which includes the independence good example of how I conceive of carnival not as with whom I have worked extensively for the last from a place like New Orleans, where public ceremo- movements of the late 1950s, postwar migration and a theme but as a discipline or a field within which decade, ever since including his work in ‘Lighting nial culture and its assortment of carnival parades, retrocolonization processes in former colonial centres related artistic practices can unfold and as a critical the Shadow: Trinidad in and out of Light’ at CCA7 second lines and funeral processions are the cultural in the second half of the twentieth century, etc. frame through which to address issues related to Gallery in Port of Spain. As he recently recounted mainstream and museum culture is marginal. It is obviously not about excluding the influence of the the notion of civil society or to access the practice of (in an interview with Nicholas Laughlin for Caribbean Your second question can be answered more West, which is central to these enterprises. It is rather the commons. Beat), my own conceptual inquiries into carnival specifically in terms of local lineages of artistic about placing the emphasis on what became of carnival, But there is another element of answer to what gave him confidence in the possibility of drawing traditions, which are more important and urgent on a much greater scale than in Europe at the same time, constituted mindful resistance and watchful vigilance 166 Transcending Boundaries 167 Claire Tancons rather than protest in the making of ‘Spring’.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 2020-2021 Newsletter Department of Art History the Graduate Center, Cuny
    2020-2021 NEWSLETTER DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY THE GRADUATE CENTER, CUNY 1 LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE OFFICER Dear GC Art History Community, The 2020-21 academic year has been, well, challenging for all of us at the GC, as I imagine it has for you. The building—boarded up in November for the elections—is still largely off-limits to students and faculty; the library is closed; classes and meetings have been almost exclusively virtual; and beyond the GC, many of us have lost friends, family, or jobs due to the pandemic and its repercussions. Through it all, we have struggled to keep our community together and to support one another. I have been extraordinarily impressed by how well students, faculty, and staff in the program have coped, given the circumstances, and am I hopeful for the future. This spring, we will hold our rst in-person events—an end-of-year party and a graduation ceremony for 2020 and 2021 Ph.D.s, both in Central Park—and look forward to a better, less remote fall. I myself am particularly looking forward to fall, as I am stepping down as EO and taking a sabbatical. I am grateful to all of you for your help, advice, and patience over the years, and hope you will join me in welcoming my successor, Professor Jennifer Ball. Before getting too excited about the future, though, a few notes on the past year. In fall 2020, we welcomed a brave, tough cohort of ten students into the Ph.D. Program. They have forged tight bonds through coursework and a group chat (not sure if that's the right terminology; anyway, it's something they do on their phones).
    [Show full text]
  • “Prospect 3: Notes for Now,” Or P.3, The
    Bright Prospects Linda Yablonsky October 31, 2014 Artforum International THERE’S ALWAYS A GOOD REASON to be in New Orleans. Last weekend, the draw was “Prospect 3: Notes for Now,” or P.3, the resonant third edition of the international biennial that Dan Cameron created in 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina doused city and spirit. Under artistic director Franklin Sirmans, P.3 opened with work by fi fty-eight artists from the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East planted in eighteen venues around town. On Thursday, October 23, a few visiting dealers and collectors joined a veritable congress of American museum curators to track them down. During a press conference at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center, where Sirmans and P.3 executive director Brooke Davis Ander- son introduced the biennial, the fi rst people I saw were the Mu- seum of Modern Art’s Stuart Comer and Thomas Lax. Spread across the room were the Whitney’s Christopher Lew, Andy Warhol Museum director Eric Shiner, Bronx Museum director Holly Block, and Carnegie Museum curator Dan Byers. The Artist Tavares Strachan Speed Museum curator Miranda Lash, ICA Philadelphia exhibi- tion director Ingrid Schaff ner, and Jewish Museum deputy director Jens Hoff mann would soon appear, along with both Rita Gonzalez and Christine Y. Kim of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where Sirmans heads the department of contemporary art. All gave the same reason for being there: “Franklin.” Despite the support, Sirmans seemed nervous when he spoke of the anchors for his citywide show: Walker Percy’s 1961 New Orleans novel of displacement, The Moviegoer; a Gaugin-in-Tahiti painting; and the cultural cannibalism of the early twentieth-century, Brazilian Antropofágico movement.
    [Show full text]
  • Taking It to the Streets
    TAKING it to the STREETS Lorraine O’Grady, Art Is . , photo still, public performance during the African American Day Parade, Harlem, New York, 1983. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York Journal of Contemporary African Art • 34 • Spring 2014 60 • Nka DOI 10.1215/10757163-2415213 © 2014 by Nka Publications TAKING it to the STREETS African Diasporic Public Ceremonial Culture Then and Now Claire Tancons Tancons Nka • 61 n this article I wonder not “How do collabora- highlights individual artists, or at least artists who tives created by cultural practitioners of African have been credited as such, but whose practices have I descent provide new perceptions, understandings, been concerned with, or in some instances created, and forms of practice?” — the question asked by the black collectivities. conference conveners — but, rather, “Why make this First, the bold assertion of a black collective iden- inquiry now?” Why should we focus on black col- tity summons up the idea of the black radical tradi- lectivities at a time when black artists have entered tion. According to David Scott, “Part of the attrac- the mainstream art market, having established their tiveness, perhaps, of the idea of a tradition that is names and the value of their work, particularly over ‘black’ and ‘radical’ is the way in which it offers an the last decade, which might be called “the F decade,” idiom of belonging, a vantage point from which to one inaugurated by the Studio Museum in Harlem in narrate a shared past and a perspective from which 2001 with Freestyle and ending, maybe, with the 2012 to imagine a common future.”1 Further, African dia- Fore exhibition focused on performance? sporic aesthetic and political practices epitomize the My article will not, of course, entirely answer this notion of the collective, which is nowhere more vis- question; that, to my mind, is the collective endeavor ible and audible than in mass displays, sometimes of this conference.
    [Show full text]
  • CAPE09-Programme-Pp24-37-1
    A WALK INTO THE NIGHT INTRODUCING A WALK INTO THE NIGHT Borrowing its title from the acclaimed novel by Capetonian author Alex La Guma, A Walk Into the Night is an innovative project inspired by the history of the Cape Town Carnival. It is centered around a one hour-long procession with new work by visual artist Marlon Griffith, music composed by Garth Erasmus and curated by Claire Tancons. Inspired by the traditions of the Cape Town and Trinidad carnivals and West African shadow puppets it was conceived by Marlon Griffith as an “invisible masquerade”. A Walk Into the Night is a processional shadow play, with various elements worn or carried by a multitude of a hundred participants, casting shadows onto horizontal and vertical planes along the itinerary of the procession, from hand-held 1cape09_programme_walkintothenight.indd 2 2009/04/24 12:04 PM white screens, to buildings, the sidewalk and the ground, participants and audience members. MeeT ClaiRE TaNCONS A native of Guadeloupe, French West Indies, Claire currently lives and works in New Orleans as a curator, writer and scholar. Claire has showed a sustained interest in the work of performance artists and artists crossing the boundaries between the visual and performing arts. She has been the recipient of various curatorial and research grants from the American Center Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Foundation for Arts Initiatives and the Prince Claus Fund. For the last five years, Claire has been pursuing both historical research and curatorial experimentation with Carnival. She has written for Nka, Third Text and Small Axe as well as for a host of exhibition catalogues.
    [Show full text]
  • Press Release → June 1, 2012 1St Annual Artistic Landmarks In
    Museum of Modern Art in New York and the exhibition publication Hide/Seek. Difference and Desire in American Portraiture published by Smithsonian Books and Random House) to the role artist play in extending the thoughts and actions of Press Release → June 1, 2012 contemporary art. The Pakistani contemporary miniature artist Imran Qureshi and the German Susan 1st Annual Artistic Landmarks In Contemporary Hefuna both engage the public space with work that Experience - Alice Awards Winners Announced echoes the Arab Spring. And last but not least, Operation Paydirt/Fundred Dollar Bill Project The Drawing Center and the Museum of Modern Art (Paydirt/Fundred) of the American multidisciplinary in New York win both first Alice Awards and Alice artist Mel Chin creates a model to support Public's Voice Awards. Belgium professor of modern environmental health across the United States. art theory and contemporary art theory Thierry de Duve special achievement honoree. Other Highlights of the 1st Annual Awards include winners of both the Alice Award and the Public's The biggest contemporary art sensations and Voice Award: Rosângela Rennó, Brazil: Best institutions – the New York-based Museum of Modern Political Art; Astrid Mania and Gerrit Gohlke, Art, The Drawing Center, the Whitney Museum of Germany: Best Short-Form Writing in Contemporary American Art, the Qasr Al Hosn, Cultural Quarter Art; Claire Tancons, Guadeloupe: Best Emerging Hall in Dubai, the Sharjah Biennial in Arab Emirates, Critic; Reinhard Braun and Maren Lübbke-Tidow, as well as the
    [Show full text]
  • Tancons, Claire, “Carnival and the Artistic Contract,”
    6_tancons:nka_book_size 2/28/10 6:26 PM Page 106 CARNIVAL and THE ARTISTIC CONTRACT SPRING IN GWANGJU CLAIRE TANCONS Mario Benjamin (Haiti), The Banquet, in SPRING, May 18 Democratic Plaza, Gwangju, September 5, 2008. Curated by Claire Tancons for Gwangju Biennale ’08. 200 participants, 90 min. Photo: Akiko Ota. 106•Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art Nka•107 6_tancons:nka_book_size 2/28/10 6:26 PM Page 108 Can a Masquerade Salvage Humanity’s The Adoration of Hiroshima had first been per- tacle sold out to the diktat of entertainment. becoming a lingua franca—not least because of Declining Star in the Era of Spectacular formed earlier that year during the annual Indeed, it should come as no surprise that a carni- the opposing yet concomitant currents of accrued Power? Trinidad Carnival. As a proponent of Mas’, the val designer whose first carnival band was individual freedom on one hand and increased artistic component of the island’s national festival, Paradise Lost (1976) would question the strategies state media control on the other. To Washington’s Feathers for Smoke Peter Minshall was the leading masman of the of the spectacle. His approach was much like the posthumous nuclear guilt, Minshall offered a In 1985, a group of Trinidadian artists calling 1980s and 1990s. His mas’ were characterized by San Francisco-based activist group Retort, whose buoyant parade of sins. To Bush’s purported anti- themselves “Project MAS” (referring to both an unabashed critique of society rooted in the tra- book rallying against spectacular politics, Afflicted nuclear crusade against Iraq, Washington antiwar “Masquerade” and “Mutually Assured Survival”) dition of old-time carnival characters and Ole Powers, also borrows its title from the verses of the protesters retaliated with placards and banners contributed a carnival procession to the peace Mas, brought up to contemporary relevance seventeenth-century English poet John Milton.1 bearing threatening messages of peace.
    [Show full text]
  • Curating Carnival? Performance in Contemporary Caribbean Art
    CLAIRE TANCONS CURATING CARNIVAL? PERFORMANCE IN CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN ART Every first Monday of September since 1969, Caribbean Carnival celebrations have turned Labor Day observances into leisurely pageantry on Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway, its main parading ven- ue. Having first moved from the ballrooms of the Harlem Renais- sance to the streets of the old New Negro neighborhood, before migrating to Crown Heights post-Civil Rights Movement, the history of Carnival was never any less complicated in the United States than it was in the Caribbean. Nor is its place within the arts, complex at home and abroad, as exemplified by the relation- ship between the West Indian American Day Parade, as it is now known, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, to which it was only ever granted limited access in four decades spent at its doorsteps. Carnival made a prominent debut at the Brooklyn Museum in 1990 with the exhibition ‘Caribbean Festival Arts,’ organized 37 Layout_Caribbean.indd 37 17.04.12 13:58 Curating Carnival? by John Nunley and Judith Bettelheim. That exhibition’s dis- course and display, however, were largely anthropological, pre- senting Carnival, along with Hosay and Junkanoo, as folkloric emanations of historical diasporic cultures more so than vibrant artistic manifestations of contemporary global networks.1 Carni- val made a promising re-entry at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, in the form of a lecture, “Minshall and the Mas,” and a perfor- mance “The Dance of the Cloth,” presented by legendary Trini- dadian artist Peter Minshall, a formidable proponent of the rec- ognition of the artistic status of Carnival.
    [Show full text]
  • At Tate Modern by Varala Maraj
    September 11th, 2014 Mas in the museum? ‘Up Hill Down Hall – An Indoor Carnival’ at Tate Modern By Varala Maraj Varala Maraj reviews ‘Up Hill Down Hall – An Indoor Carnival’, guest curated by Claire Tancons for London’s institute of contemporary art, Tate Modern. Trinidadian-born Marlon Griffith leads his procession of masqueraders in his performance ‘No Black in the Union Jack’ across the River Thames. Hew Locke, who was raised in Guyana but lives in London reflects on the changes of Notting Hill Carnival over the years with his piece ‘Give and Take’. This ‘BMW Tate Live’ one-off event celebrates 50 years of Notting Hill Carnival and simultaneously pushes the boundaries of Carnival as an art form. But does mas belong in the museum? Promotional graphic used for ‘Up Hill Down Hall – An Indoor Carnival’ To read this article online, please visit http://bit.ly/1uHoEoK What does Carnival look like? Wired bras, sequined bikinis, feathered headpieces, metal tiaras, glittered sneakers, coloured boots, strappy stilettos, skin-coloured stockings, ripped stockings, no stockings. Port of Spain, Notting Hill, Rio. There is no one true picture of Carnival. From its inception to the present day, Carnival has proposed its uncertainties. Is it a festival or a parade? Is it a form of celebration or a work of art? Does it belong in the streets or in a museum? The latter debate in particular, is one that still confuses some of those involved in ‘Up Hill Down Hall: An Indoor Carnival‘ (UHDH). The event, which took place at London’s Tate Modern, was orchestrated by the pioneering work of guest curator Claire Tancons who was invited by BMW Tate Live Seriescurator Catherine Wood.
    [Show full text]
  • MAS Press Release.Pdf
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: JOHANNA TAYLOR 718.875.4047 EXT. 11 JTAYLOR @BRICONLINE.ORG B R I C R OTO T UNDU N D A GAG A L L ERE R Y 33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 ph 718 875.4047 fax 718 488.0609 briconline.org/rotunda BRIC Rotunda Gallery presents MAS’ FROM PROCESS TO PROCESSION Caribbean Carnival as Art Practice Guest Curated by Claire Tancons September 12 – October 20, 2007 Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 12 from 7 to 9 pm Panel Discussion: Thursday, September 20 at 7pm MAS’ Procession: Saturday, October 6 at 2pm MOKO JUMBIES: TheMOKO JUMBIES: Dancing of Spirits Trinidad © Stefan Falke from his book Brooklyn, NY (Aug. 6, 2007) – BRIC Rotunda Gallery is pleased to present MAS’: From Process to Procession , an exhibition about Caribbean Carnivals as art practice curated by Claire Tancons. MAS’ features Laura Anderson Barbata , Nicolás Dumit Estévez , Stefan Falke, Marlon Griffith, Karyn Olivier, Caecilia Tripp, Superior Concept Monsters / (Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles) , eight artists ranging from performance and processional artists to masmen (masqueraders). Coming from and/or having worked in the Caribbean, all the artists in the exhibition recognize Carnival as a potent vehicle for contemporary artistic practice with a public reach and a global appeal. MAS’: From Process to Procession captures the creation process of contemporary Caribbean Carnivals from preparatory drawings and works-in-progress to final street processions. Short for masquerade, Mas’ is synonymous with Carnival, and is a common name for the living art that is central to the annual festivities in Trinidad. Carnival customs and practices from Trinidad and other countries, including the Dominican Republic and Curaçao, are represented in the exhibition through drawing, costume, sculpture, installation, photography and film.
    [Show full text]
  • The Visual Art Performances of Robin Rhode
    CLAIRE TANCONS PARK BENCH (photo documentation), 2000 CAR THEFT (still), 2001 BREAK IN (still), 2004 Four phases can be identified within the period that spans Robin on a monitor left on the floor alongside the ephemeral drawing for instruments such as a trumpet, drums, and a bass dripping in Rhode’s artistic trajectory from 2000 to 2009, phases that mark the duration of the exhibition. In the third phase, starting in 2004– Life Performs Art paint, in a manner reminiscent of American abstract expressionist the evolution of Rhode’s work and signal shifts in its critical 5, medium-based exhibitions featured Rhode’s work as drawing (I In her seminal introduction to performance art, Performance: painting and the works of the Japanese Gutaï group. But The reception against the larger backdrop of the global art world, Still Believe in Miracles, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Live Art since 1960, RoseLee Goldberg wrote that her research Score was also a musical act. In it, Rhode made pointed references from the Johannesburg biennials of the mid-1990s, which he 2005), photography (New Photography, Museum of Modern Art, “showed me how certain ideas in a painting or a sculpture, to the history of jazz and to entertainment as a stereotypical site attended as an art student, to Prospect.1 New Orleans, the latest 2005), or video and video animation, as a result of Rhode’s slow which as a traditional art historian I might have looked for in of black representation. Rhode kept his back obstinately turned and largest biennial in the United States, in which he participated departure from live performances and increasing production in other paintings or sculptures, often originated in some sort to the seated audience (in the antispectacle fashion adopted by as an artist.
    [Show full text]
  • 17 16 Claire Tancons Claire Tancons Nicolás Dumit Estévez Opens A
    16 17 Nicolás Dumit Estévez opens a disused folkloric Caribbean tackled Carnival, Junkanoo, and sec- museum in Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros to a ond lines—African diasporic street masquerading Vodoun-spirited masking practice on a Sunday in and parading practices—directly or tangentially, late January (C Room), keeping the spiked masks critically or subversively. They charted the course of the whip-yielding lechones outside; Christophe of the 2014 Caribbean Carnival season, calling at Chassol films and mixes audiovisual fragments of Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros, Fort-de- robin songs, creole speech, beachside rap, and cos- France, Port of Spain, Kingston, New Orleans, tumed parades in and around Fort-de-France London, New York, and Nassau, drafting a new circa late February/early March (BIG SUN) while cartography of performance practices in the pro- monkey impersonators taunt him through his car cess. The artists chosen for EN MAS’ have had a windshield; Marlon Griffith leads a nocturnal pro- long history of engagement with Carnival and car- cession shining a towering light over Port of Spain nivalesque masquerading practices. They come on the second Tuesday of March (POSITIONS + from radically distinct yet undeniably linked his- POWER), as ubiquitous bikini-and-beads mas- torical backgrounds and artistic formations that queraders run countercurrent; Charles Campbell do not preclude yet cannot be subsumed under the invites select guests to follow a guided tour and canonical histories of artistic performance, which attend an event behind masks in a downtown are aligned with narrow Western modernist narra- Kingston neighborhood on Easter Monday (Actor tives long debunked by black Atlantic countercul- Boy: Fractal Engagements), reinserting Actor Boy tural networks.
    [Show full text]
  • Center 39: Record of Activities and Research Reports, June 2018–May 2019
    CENTER39 NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY IN THE VISUAL ARTS CENTER39 CENTER39 NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY IN THE VISUAL ARTS Record of Activities and Research Reports June 2018 – May 2019 Washington, 2019 National Gallery of Art CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY IN THE VISUAL ARTS Washington, DC Mailing address: 2000B South Club Drive, Landover, Maryland 20785 Telephone: (202) 842- 6480 E- mail: [email protected] Website: www.nga.gov/casva Copyright © 2019 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law, and except by reviewers from the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Produced by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and the Publishing Office, National Gallery of Art, Washington ISSN 1557- 198X (print) ISSN 1557- 1998 (online) Editor in Chief, Emiko K. Usui Deputy Publisher and Production Manager, Chris Vogel Series Editor, Peter M. Lukehart Center Report Coordinators, Danielle Horetsky, Jen Rokoski Managing Editor, Cynthia Ware Design Manager, Wendy Schleicher Print and Digital Production Associate, John Long Typesetting and layout by BW&A Books, Inc. Printed on McCoy Silk by C&R Printing, Chantilly, Virginia Photography of CASVA members and events by the department of imaging and visual services, National Gallery of Art Frontispiece: “The Black Modernisms Seminars,” October 12, 2018 CONTENTS 6 Preface 7 Report
    [Show full text]