Séancers

Lead project artist is surrounded by shiny mylar while wearing dark aviator sunglasses, a long sting of pearls, and a vest-like top with silver streamers.

ABOUT THE GRANT

  • $10,000 to support Séancers (MAP 2017)
  • $2,233 to general operating support for Abrons Arts Center

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Séancers: noun. plural
an ensemble of mediums who convene to receive spirit communications; to make contact with the non-living.

Setting the fugitive experience afforded Black people on fire with majesty, opulence, and agency, Séancers is a performance work that collapses lyrical poetry, psychic movement forms and strategies of discursive and visual performance to investigate concepts of black magic, resurrection, and paranormal activity. Interrogating issues related to American history and terrorism, Séancers journeys into the surreal and fantastical states of the Black imagination as it traverses the ‘fatal’ axis of abstraction, illegibility, and gender multiplicity. The work locates itself inside the spiritual, emotional, and theoretical world with the live performances of sound artist Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and experimental movement artists IMMA and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and a special guest artist-theorist who will help frame the witnessing of each performance.


LEAD ARTISTS

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko