The first volume in the trilogy consent not to be a single being engages in a capacious consideration of the place and force of blackness in African diaspora arts, politics, and life.
Illustrates the black political ideas that radicalized the artistic endeavors of musicians, playwrights, and actors beginning in the 1960s.
The book suggests new narratives about canonical artworks of the British Black Art movement, such as Lubaina Himid’s Freedom and Change, Eddie Chambers’ Destruction of the National Front and Sonia Boyce’s Lay Back Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain So Great, interrogating their critical agency from an art-historical perspective.
Lepecki surveys a decade of experimental choreography to uncover the dual meaning of ‘performance’ in the twenty-first century: not just an aesthetic category, but a mode of political power. He demonstrates the enduring ability of performance to critique and subvert this power, examining this relationship through five ‘singularities’ in contemporary dance: thingness, animality, persistence, darkness, and solidity.
The collection contains nine performance scripts by established and emerging black and Latina/o queer playwrights and performance artists, each accompanied by an interview and critical essay conducted or written by leading scholars of black, Latina/o, and queer expressive practices.
Booklet documenting the homonymous exhibition. Intro by Maayan Amir.