NOW Later: there is no place that cannot be home* (Digital Edition)
Event Information
About this event
[*from ‘School Note’ by Audre Lorde]
Due to popular demand, we are streaming extracts from NOW Later: there is no place that cannot be home in partnership with The Peninsulist Presents. There will be two live performances interspersed with a curated film programme.
NOW Gallery’s ongoing celebration of the heterogeneous Black experience continues this October with there is no place that cannot be home. The curatorial collective i.as.in.we have been commissioned to explore facets of contemporary African diasporic identity through performance. The event coincides with Black History Month this October and NOW recognises the exigency of creating spaces for free expression and interrogative practice.
What is built into an experience of blackness that offers us new horizons for thinking about this world and its possibilities? Deeping the ting and engaging the breath, poetry and movement of the black body, this evening asks us what is needed to create a shared language of liberation. What can we learn from blackness as it expands, ruptures and questions the structures that have historically negated it? Through performance and film, we invite you to vision a new world and interrogate what it will take to arrive there.
Digital Programme:
19.35 - where did we land, dir. Rabz Lansiquot
19.45 - welcoming - i.as.in.we
20.00 - Come Home - Ffion Campbell-Davies (live stream)
20.10 - In Praise of Still Boys, dir. Julianknxx
20:15 - In Hot Time, dir. Leah Solomon + Jesus Hilario-Reyes
20.30 - breathe. - Shawanda Corbett (live stream)
20.50 - Godspeed, dir Sade Abiodun
20.58- BLK Soap, dir. Darryl Daley
21.00 - Balance - Rowdy SS (pre-recorded performance)
View the full programme here.
Throughout the evening, Harold Offeh will be building a sound piece from interactions with the audience to discuss/explore what black futures have the capacity to look, sound and feel like. To participate as part of the digital program please follow this link.
The livestream link will be sent via email 30 mins before the event.
Ffion Campbell-Davies
Main exhibition space
Ffion Campbell-Davies, Photograph by Richard Moore
Come Home
“It’s centring, it’s summoning and quivering, it’s trauma releasing…
Please tell me it’s trauma releasing, for the sake of many lives drowning far beyond the tides.
As ancestors cry, I rise from sleepless nights and forgotten shadows singing to the blind.
Let my feet be ready and my heart be steady for the hard work I embody…”
Ffion performs an invocation in devotion to the ancestors of time, inviting all those witnessing to go inward and ‘come home’ to the inner cradle of life that’s within us all. Embracing the wounded child of our diaspora that we collectively share in our consciousness. Rekindling the power of our alchemy to transform loss into abundance and remember where we come from.
Shawanda Corbett
Mezzanine
Blackbird in Mississippi, Courtesy of Shawanda Corbett
breathe.
I. The beginning
This performance is from a series exploring the ways that we are all connected through breath. As we change the quality of our breath changes, becoming more or less precious at different stages of our lives. By foregrounding the interconnectedness of breath, how might we think differently about the quality of black and brown people’s life? Our breath is always already political before birth; I.The beginning asks how we can capture and honour it before it is rendered less important, suffocated or taken away.
IG: @cyborg_artist
Rowdy SS
Main exhibition space
Rowdy SS, Balance, AGM, Somerset House, 2019
Balance
A solo dance/sound/visual improvisation, an ongoing work in research of uses of space; How are we using space? How is space using us?
Balance is Rowdy SS initiating happenings, performance, and installations as interjections to tour, entangle and/or simplify how we are using and have used spaces, the ‘things’ that do and do not exist in said spaces, the other ways, new ways we can use ourselves, technology and our physicality to communicate, connect/disconnect in and outside of these/those spaces, with live sound text performed by artist Rebecca Bellantoni.
IG: @rowdy_ss
Short Films
BLK Soap by Darryl Daley
The debut short film by South London-based visual artist, graphic designer and art director, Darryl Daley; a three-minute, audio visual exploration of the black body and its movements across the Black Atlantic and a creative response to the current exposure of the black body; both dripped in imagination, yet still being anchored by reality.
Featuring a musical score and appearances from Tupac Shakur, Sampha, Jean Michel Basquiat and a triggering host of those killed at the hands of the police, it is a visual amalgamation of the continuous intertwining themes that bound the black body. Here, Daley places the music at the forefront, mobilising it as the narrator detailing the history, spirituality, suffering, excellence and resilience of blackness.
IG: @darryl_daley
Godspeed by Sade Abiodun
Godspeed is a meditative film that explores the notions of personhood, faith, and intergenerational community. Poetry, music, and visuals converge to lead us through the life of a Black girl as she becomes a Black woman. As she is forced to make sense of the dynamic tension between the child she was and the woman she will be, she draws strength from the one person who knows her best: her mother.
IG: @sade_abiodun
In Hot Time by Jesus Hilario-Reyes and Leah Solomon
Created by Jesus Hilario-Reyes and Leah Solomon, In Hot Time, is the convergence of black diasporic traditions, ritual, pasts, and reimagining utilizing the symbolic space of the whirlwind. An audio-visual coupling of electronic, industrial, and atmospheric sounds from across the diaspora, fusing elements of, dance, performance, text, and archival footage.
IG: @morenxx_x
where did we land by Rabz Lansiquot
where did we land is an ongoing experiment interrogating the effect of images of anti-black violence produced and reproduced in film and media. This iteration takes the form of a 30 minute moving image essay, presenting original images and texts that speak to the problems of the spectacular for Black subjects on screen.
IG: @rabzlan
In Praise of Still Boys by Julianknxx
In Praise of Still Boys is a visual poem created by poet and artist Julianknxx. The narrative tells the story of Julianknxx’s life through the figure of a young boy in Sierra Leone. Expressing local worldviews, the film meditates on change, fate and everyday magic. Visually anchored by the image of the Atlantic Ocean, the poem explores the relationship between Freetown, the Middle Passage, and the African diaspora.
IG: @julianknxx
About i.as.in.we
i.as.in.we is the wayward/motile collaboration between rohan ayinde and yewande yoyo odunubi rooted in a politics of horizontality, blackness, liberation and the practice of radical honesty.
IG: @iasinwe_
Rohan Ayinde is a Chicago and London-based artist, writer and curator. His interdisciplinary work is centred around creating "otherwise" potentials (Ashon Crawley), and in so doing breaking down and simultaneously reconfiguring the ideological architectures that shape our daily and generational lives. The landscapes his work explores are formed through the lens of a black radical tradition committed to imagining freedom as a horizon of possibility. They are an archive of the journey there; maps under continuous construction; refusals to acquiesce to the dominant structures of thought that frame the world we live in. Oscillating between text, video, drawings, photography and collage, Ayinde’s work is in constant negotiation with itself, trying to understand the role it plays in building the worlds it is invested in imagining.
IG: @rohanayinde
Yewande YoYo Odunubi is a dyslexic dancer, curator and cultural producer invested in building environments across mediums that nurture and give space to meaningful and imaginative exchange. Centring her practice around the mantra “I’m not here for a version of me, I’m here for every part of me” she is interested in intersectional frameworks and interventions that seek to rupture the dominant narratives, enactments and occupation of the arts. Powered by a black expansive imagination, Yewande is exploring alternative approaches to traditional curatorial practice and art structures, rethinking and challenging what it means for cultural spaces to function through a communal ethos.
*School note – Audre Lorde
My children play with skulls
for their classrooms are guarded by warlocks
who scream at the walls collapsing
into paper toilets
plump witches mouth ancient curses
in an untaught tongue
test children upon their meaning
assign grades
in a holocaust ranging
from fury down through contempt.
My children play with skulls
at school
they have already learned
to dream of dying
their playgrounds were graveyards
where nightmares of no
stand watch over rented earth
filled with the bones of tomorrow.
My children play with skulls
and remember
for the embattled
there is no place
that cannot be
home
nor is.
Staying Safe During Your Visit: TIER 2
In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we've introduced additional safety measures to keep both visitors and staff safe. We operate a Covid Secure and ask that you familiarise yourself with the below guidelines before you arrive:
● If you are travelling via public transport, ensure that you wear a face mask on the journey, keep your distance from others and where possible avoid peak transport times.
● If you are travelling to the event from outside of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, ensure that you check the Tier status of the area you are travelling from at https://www.gov.uk/findcoronavirus-local-restrictions. Unfortunately, if you are travelling from a Tier 3 area you will not be permitted to attend the exhibition.
● Timed tickets are required for entry to the exhibition, these tickets are available through Eventbrite only. Please ensure you arrive at least 5 minutes before your scheduled time slot, unfortunately, we cannot guarantee entry if you arrive late.
● Please follow the one-way routes and safe distancing measures both inside the space and when queuing for entry. You will need to maintain a distance of at least 2m from other people within the building unless they are part of your household or support bubble.
● You will be only be allowed entry to the gallery accompanied by members of your household only. In the interest of keeping everyone safe if you do arrive with a guest and are unable to provide proof of shared residency, we will be required by law to permit single entry in a socially distant manner.
● We can no longer offer storage for large bags, coats or other belongings therefore we urge visitors to only bring small bags or essentials.
● We've introduced screens, installed hand sanitisers, increased cleaning regimes and decreased touchpoints. Please ensure your hands are cleaned upon arrival, we will ask you to sanitise upon entry and exit.
● Face coverings are now mandatory within gallery spaces. Our gallery staff will be wearing a face covering and we ask that all visitors wear one too (unless exempt) when inside the space to help keep everyone safe.
● Before making your journey to the galley please make sure that you have not been requested to self-isolate and that you do not have any of the following; a high temperature; a new continuous cough; a loss, or change to, your sense of smell or taste. If you do have any of those symptoms do not travel and contact NHS Direct.
● In the event that you start to feel ill on site please keep your face covering on, maintain social distancing and notify a member of gallery staff who will take you outside and advise how to proceed.
We will brief all visitors on our COVID-19 protocols upon arrival and are really looking forward to welcoming you back to NOW Gallery.
