Steffani Jemison: A listening session
With sounds drawn upon a wide range of traditions and conventions: 1990s boy bands Vocal and instrumental experimental music, “Quiet Storm” American R&B Free improvisation Black American gospel music Pop songs by conceptual artists Steffani Jemison, in converstion with Mike Ladd, an American hip hop artist from Boston American artist Steffani Jemison animates historical and contemporary cultural forms—vocabularies, languages, images, and movements. Primarily known as a video artist, she also works with sound and performance. In this work, which she situates at the intersection of music and language, Jemison uses scores, scripts, and muses to model modes of singularity and collectivity, kinship, and change. In this listening session, Jemison will share rare sound works and performance documentation spanning a decade, including “Promise Machine,” commissioned by MoMA in 2015, “Mikrokosmos,” commissioned by the festival steirischer herbst and Neue Galerie Graz in 2016, and “Récitatif: Never saying anything at all” (2017), commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary in 2017. Jemison’s work is in the public collections of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, and KADIST. Her solo exhibitions “Plant you now, dig you later” (Mass MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts) and “Sensus Plenior” (Jeu de Paume, Paris, FR) are currently on view. On January 21, 2017, a dialogue between Steffani Jemison and Rizvana Bradley, Professor of Film and Media Studies and African-American Studies at Yale University, will take place in Jeu de Paume’s auditorium in the framework of a Symposium. At the same occasion, she will present a new performance, “Récitatif: I will make your tongue stick” at MABA, Nogent, France, produced by Jeu de Paume in connection with the exhibition “Economy of Living Things,” curated by Osei Bonsu. More info: Accueil Mike Ladd (Boston born, long time New Yorker, now in Paris) has written and produced ten critically acclaimed albums: Easy Listening For Armageddon (Scratchie/Mercury); Welcome to the AfterFuture and Vernacular Homicide (LikeMadd/Ozone); The Infesticons: Gun Hill Road, and The Majesticons: Beauty Party (Big DaDa/Ninja Tune), Negrophilia (Thirsty Ear); Father Divine (ROIR), In What Language (Pi) and Still Life with Commentator (Savoy), both collaborative efforts with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer; and finally Nostalgialator , originally released internationally on legendary European label K7, Definitive Jux. Mike Ladd has collaborated/remixed/performed/toured with several artists including Company Flow, Saul Williams, MURS, Terranova, Slug (Atmosphere), Cannibal Ox, Roots Manuva, William Parker, Vijay Iyer, Roy Campbell, DJ Mehdi, DJ Spooky, Ken Ishii and others. More info: http://www.deezer.com/fr/artist/117138?autoplay=true