Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Naked Reality (still), 2016. Courtesy the artist.
BLAQUE ORBIT
Curated by Camm Harrison (Black Revivalist)
LACE Screening Room
Download the Digital Program
Saturday, July 20, 2024, 3–9 PM
Doors open at 2:45 PM, screening begins at 3 PM
Philosophical Research Society
3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Limited free parking available on site
Free admission | RSVP here
The LACE Screening Room presents BLAQUE ORBIT, an in-person film marathon featuring a diverse selection of shorts, feature-length films, and video art, centered around the themes of Black science fiction and Afrofuturism curated by Camm Harrison (Black Revivalist).
The spelling of BLAQUE is inspired by the R&B group of the same name. Throughout their discography in the 1990s and 2000s, the group would regularly incorporate elements of sci-fi and astronomy in their visuals. The cover art used for the 2002 U.S. digital release of their sophomore album Blaque Out resembles images captured by space telescopes at NASA or other renowned space agencies. In the music videos for their hit singles “Bring It All to Me” and “808,” CGI and special effects were used to make the trio appear to levitate, teleport, and ascend into the sky akin to the style of aliens. Besides these visual effects, their videos also highlighted hip-hop dance choreography, Black hairstyles, and popular streetwear fashion of the time. The music group Blaque—similar to the artists and works featured in the program—presented new contexts for the Black body and Black person. The artists’ narratives either predicted impending forms of injustices towards Black people or gave them ultimate versions of liberation, mysticism, and transhumanism—allowing them to journey through space and time with complete and boundless freedom.
BLAQUE ORBIT welcomes viewers to observe and imagine what Blackness may look like in the future or in alternate realities; to dream of Black livelihood without constraints or confinements, where the possibilities for Black people are endless; or to consider how Black and brown oppression of the past and present may impact our futures. Each of the works featured in the program creates a world that looks both like and unlike our own. They transcend the normal circumstances of Black people by presenting parables, allegories, and prophecies through a celestial, fantastical, and Black cultural lens. BLAQUE ORBIT is an invitation to reimagine and rethink Black existence and its greater significance in the cosmos.
The program includes works by John Akomfrah, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, S. Torriano Berry, Wangechi Mutu, Jabu Nadia Newman, Michelle Parkerson, Tabita Rezaire, Cauleen Smith, Standing on the Corner Art Ensemble and Martine Syms; with performances by Black NASA and BAE BAE.
About the Curator
Camm Harrison is a Black art historian, programmer and curator based in Los Angeles. He is the founder of Black Revivalist, a screening series project which showcases an array of underrated and overlooked gems within black cinema. Recently, Harrison served as a jury member for the first annual Crenshaw Dairy Mart Film Festival. The festival took place at the historic Miracle Theater in Inglewood, CA, and showcased 19 short films by different LA-based filmmakers of color. Camm has an extensive resume that features prior roles at multiple renowned art institutions and events throughout the Los Angeles area, including: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Frieze Los Angeles, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, The Cinefamily, and Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair.
About the Artists and Performers
John Akomfrah is an artist and filmmaker whose works examine post-colonialism, Black diaspora, temporality, memory, and aesthetics. In his films, Akomfrah weaves original footage with archival material to create layered narratives that juxtapose personal and historical memory, past and present, and environmental and human crises. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, began in London in 1982 with artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, who he continues to collaborate with alongside Ashitey Akomfrah as Smoking Dogs Films. Akomfrah lives and works in London.
Kumi James, aka BAE BAE, is a Los Angeles based DJ, producer, organizer and multidisciplinary artist. The LA native has risen to prominence within LA’s underground music scene, organizing innovative communal spaces, including the notorious underground party HOOD RAVE. BAE BAE is driven by her commitment to creating safer party spaces for queer black and indigenous folks. Her DJ mixes race freely through global afro diasporic riddims, breaks, club, footwork, juke and beyond, with her lifelong love of R&B never far from the surface. The intuitive selector’s wide-ranging taste combined with a deft hand makes for sensual and emotional sure to get you on your feet and in your feelings. As a DJ, BAE BAE’s selections uplift Black diasporic music and femme voices, while her original experimental productions, slick edits, and shape-shifting remixes have become club essentials. Her original music has been lauded by DJ Mag, Resident Advisor, Tidal, and presenters on BBC Radio, while her mixes have made “best of” lists on Pitchfork and Crack Magazine.
Jean-Pierre Bekolo is an award-winning Cameroonian filmmaker with an international career that spans more than three decades. After receiving his Bachelor of Science in Physics at the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon, Bekolo pursued a Master of Communication at the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), in Bry-surMarne in France and continued his studies on Semiology of Cinema with Christian Metz at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France. He has taught film at Virginia Tech, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Duke University. Bekolo currently lives across France, the United States, and Cameroon.
S. Torriano Berry is an award-winning independent film producer, writer, and director, born in Kansas City. After obtaining a B.A. in Art/Photography from Arizona State University, Berry received an M.F.A. in Film Production from UCLA in 1985. Berry created, and executive produced the anthology series Black Independent Showcase, and Black Visions/Silver Screen: Howard University Student Film Showcase for WHUT-TV 32, in Washington, D.C. His feature films include Rich (1982) and Embalmer (1996). Berry is Professor Emeritus at Howard University’s Department of Media, Journalism, and Film.
Daid Roy, aka: Black NASA (b. 1986 Los Angeles, CA) is a polyvalent artist and maker. Their work, which circulates predominantly through sculpture, sound, performance, painting, and photography is guided by the belief that art is a practice of freedom that should never be estranged from everyday life. Roy is the founder of Black NASA, a space agency committed to conducting rocket science, both technical and social, while promoting the Seven Noble Ideals of Space Exploration: Creativity, Challenge, Courage, Ingenuity, Peace, Unity, and Discovery.
Wangechi Mutu is a contemporary Kenyan artist recognized for her work in drawing, collage, sculpture, film, and performance, through which she explores themes of gender, sexuality, race, ecology, art history, and personal identity. Mutu’s work has centered mutating and fantastical female forms that are hybrids of human, plant, animal, and machine, offering a glimpse at the perversions of the body and the oppression of women, and her decades-long exploration of the legacies of colonialism, globalization, consumerism, and African and diasporic cultural traditions. Mutu lives and works between Nairobi, Kenya, and Brooklyn, New York.
Jabu Nadia Newman is a genre-defying photographer and filmmaker who takes inspiration from traditional forms of African storytelling to create contemporary, colorful, comedic, and visually impactful films exploring alternate narratives around sexuality, gender, race, class, and politics. Inspired by the Rhodes and Fees Must Fall movements, Jabu independently wrote and directed Foxy Five, a web series that celebrates intersectional feminism through the antics of an empowered fictional girl gang. This project launched her career as a director, bringing to light debates around sexism, feminism, racism, and inequality. Newman is based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Michelle Parkerson is an award-winning writer, independent filmmaker, university lecturer, and performance artist since the 1980s, focusing on feminist and LGBT issues. She has served on the faculties of Temple University, the University of Delaware, Howard University, and Northwestern University. She was awarded the Prix du Public at the Festival International de Creteil Films de Femmes and the Audience and Best Biography Awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival. As a member of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, she wrote and directed Odds and Ends (1993), a science-fiction short about Black Amazon warriors. Parkerson currently heads her own DC-based production company, Eye of the Storm Productions.
Tabita Rezaire is a new media artist of French Guianese and Danish descent. Her cross-dimensional practices envision organic, electronic, and spiritual network sciences as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness. Navigating digital, corporeal, and ancestral memory as sites of struggles, she digs into scientific imaginaries to tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality and the protocols of energetic misalignments that affect the songs of our body-mind-spirits. Inspired by quantum and cosmic mechanics, Tabita’s work is rooted in time-spaces where technology and spirituality intersect as fertile ground to nourish visions of connection and emancipation. Rezaire is a founding member of the artist group NTU, half of the duo Malaxa, and the mother of the energy house SENEB. She is based in Cayenne, French Guyana.
Cauleen Smith is a filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Operating in multiple materials and arenas, Smith roots her work firmly within the discourse of mid-twentieth-century experimental film. Drawing from structuralism, third world cinema, and science fiction, she makes things that deploy the tactics of these disciplines while offering a phenomenological experience for spectators and participants. Smith was born in Riverside, California and grew up in Sacramento. She earned a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television. Smith is currently a professor in the Department of Art at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture.
Established in 2016, the New York-based avant-garde music and art ensemble Standing on the Corner is led by artist Gio Escobar. They have performed at MoMA PS1’s Warm Up music series in 2018 and venues including the Serpentine, London; Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collection, Paris; Blank Forms, New York; Performance Space New York; and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York. Their albums include Function OST (2021), Red Burns (2017), and Standing on the Corner (2016). They have collaborated with musicians such as Danny Brown (2021), Solange (2019), Earl Sweatshirt (2018), and MIKE (2018, 2017).
Martine Syms is an artist who has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humor, and social commentary. Raised in and around Los Angeles, she spent her formative years in the city’s rich DIY scene working at Ooga Booga bookstore and exploring experimental cinema at the Echo Park Film Center. Syms attended community college for two years before moving to Chicago to study art and technology at SAIC. Using a combination of video, installation, and performance, combined with explorations of technique and non-linear narrative, Syms examines representations of Blackness and its relationship to vernacular, feminist thought, and radical traditions. She is a cofounder of Golden Age, a bookstore and project space in Chicago, and founder of Dominica Publishing, an LA-based, artist-run press centered around Black arts and aesthetics.
About the LACE Screening Room
The LACE Screening Room is a moving image series organized by LACE and curated by guest curators at Philosophical Research Society while LACE’s home on Hollywood Boulevard is under renovation. Click here for more information on LACE’s gallery. Support for the LACE Screening Room is provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance.
