Symposia
Bodies, Borders, Fields
22 November–
24 November 2019
Design by Sameer Farooq
Convened by: Denise Ryner and Yaniya Lee
Participants: Lillian Allen, Christina Battle, Raymond Boisjoly, Deanna Bowen, Joshua Chambers-Letson, Keyon Gaskin, Che Gossett, Sean D. Henry-Smith, Imani Elizabeth Jackson, Steffani Jemison, Aisha Sasha John, Jessica Lynne, Charmaine Nelson, M Nourbese Philip, Tina Post, Krys Verrall, Kandis Williams, Bear Witness
A “simultaneous conversation” took place on August 16, 1967 between seven speakers in Toronto and New York with the cooperation of Bell Telephone Company, the CBC and artscanada magazine (formerly Canadian Art). This cross-border conversation was recorded and published in that year’s October issue of artscanada, which was, dedicated to “black” as a concept, painterly medium, symbol as well as socio-political category, expression and status.
Convened by Denise Ryner in collaboration with Yaniya Lee, Bodies Borders Fields is a free, public symposium that re-imagines the 1967 conversation about “blackness” with particular attention to blackness and fugitivity as represented in critical art practices today. Responding to an absence of black experience in the conversation between the 1967 panelists—an absence that has since been examined by writers Fred Moten, Krys Verrall and others—Bodies Borders Fields will dislocate the original panel discussion to contemporary contexts and representations of black and blackness in sound, performance and visual culture with respect to black social life and expression.
Bodies Borders Fields supports ongoing and future discussions of blackness as an ever-shifting, circulating and transforming factor for the survival and destabilization of colonial systems and institutions. All are welcome, especially those who recognize their own stake in contemporary readings of black and blackness as both signifier and lived-experience.
All roundtables, talks and panels are free and open to the public.
Bodies Borders and Fields design by Sameer Farooq.
