Symposium: How to See in the Dark
Part of the How to See in the Dark project
How to See in the Dark Symposium
How to See in the Dark’s symposium gathers artists, scholars, and activist’s to refract the show’s theme through their various socially engaged, activist, and philosophical practices: music, dance, image making, writing and computational media.
Panel 1: Signs, Signals, Sigils
11-12:30
while (experience == actual){signified = signifying;signifying = signified;}
Processual aesthetic experience is born out of the ab- and adduction of sociopsychical ensembles. Signs, thought to be tethered inextricably to the thing they symbolize, are mutated at the molecular level by their co-imbricated perception and action. The signpost for the thing underway becomes the sign itself, signals sigilize becoming. This panel circumscribes aesthetic experience’s “underway-ness”, and follows its pointers to a literally magical nexus of technics, religion, scientific articulation, poiesis, that beckons ecosophic spiritual practices for a politics yet-to-come.
- Eva Davidova
- Grace Grace Grace
- Muindi Fanuel Muindi
Panel 2: Footwork, Rootwork, and Wakework
1-3:00
Black life has never depended on the promise of light. Ever since the barracoon, the exit through the Door of No Return, the hold of the ship, Black people have learned to navigate the dark—not as deficit, but as depth—because the dual pressures of fungibility and fugitivity demand it. This panel explores how, in evading the perils of the searchlight, flashlight, spotlight, and limelight, Black survival has involved profound creativity in the fields of rhythm, ritual, and remembrance.
- Anna Martine Whitehead
- Angel Bat Dawid
- Thomas Defrantz
Panel: signs, signals, sigils
Eva Davidova
Eva Davidova explores behavior, ecological disaster, and the social implications of technology through performative works rooted in the absurd. She questions what we give for granted, and explores possibilities for agency through uncertainty and play.
grace grace grace
grace grace grace is a Chicago-based sound and media artist, researcher, and theorist. His transdisciplinary work engages Guattarian process theory, politics and the production of collective subjectivity through computational media.
Muindi Fanuel Muindi
Muindi Fanuel Muindi is a social practice artist, philosopher, and poet, with Lacustrine Bantu roots in the Rift Forests of Eastern Congo and the Mara Wetlands in Tanzania. As a social practice artist, Muindi coordinates assemblages of administrative statements, technical implements, built environments, and dramatic elements, which function as laboratories in the Black Arts and Decolonial Sciences.
rootwork, footwork, wakework
Anna Martine Whitehead
Anna Martine Whitehead is an artist whose work troubles the relationships between marginalized bodies, systemic violence, and institutional knowledge, through movement, image, and text.
Angel Bat Dawid
Angel Bat Dawid is a Black American composer, improviser, clarinetist, pianist, vocalist, educator, and DJ. Her work memorializes, expands, and extends radical Black musical traditions through cosmic soundscapes.
Thomas DeFrantz
Directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, group explores emerging technology in live performance applications. Believes in our shared capacity to do better and engage creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, proto-feminist, and queer affirming.
symposium conveners
Muindi Fanuel Muindi
Muindi Fanuel Muindi is a social practice artist, philosopher, and poet, with Lacustrine Bantu roots in the Rift Forests of Eastern Congo and the Mara Wetlands in Tanzania. As a social practice artist, Muindi coordinates assemblages of administrative statements, technical implements, built environments, and dramatic elements, which function as laboratories in the Black Arts and Decolonial Sciences.
grace grace grace
grace grace grace is a Chicago-based sound and media artist, researcher, and theorist. His transdisciplinary work engages Guattarian process theory, politics and the production of collective subjectivity through computational media.
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