Previously at the ICA - Events

E. Jane, Alive (Not Yet Dead), 2015 - selfies by Tabita Rezaire, Jasmine Nyende, Jasmine Gibson (top left to right), Tomashi Jackson, E. Jane and Juliana Huxtable (bottom left to right)

Technology Now: Blackness on the Internet

16 Nov 2016

Curator and writer Legacy Russell leads a panel discussion examining the question: what freedoms can be found in the ‘publics’ realised via the digital for bodies of colour? This panel will build connections between ongoing conversations both within and outside of the UK regarding blackness and the material of the internet. Speakers include academic Rizvana Bradley, writer and curator Taylor Le Melle and writer and editor Derica Shields. This is presented on the occasion of the group exhibition Wandering/WILDING: Blackness on the Internet (IMT Gallery, 4 Nov – 11 Dec 2016, Curated by Legacy Russell).

A call-and-response to The Peril of Black Mobility, a critical essay by Doreen St. Félix, the exhibition Wandering/WILDING: Blackness on the Internet presents seven artists (Devin Kenny, E.Jane, Evan Ifekoya, Fannie Sosa, Hannah Black, Niv Acosta and Tabita Rezaire) whose work mobilises an exploration of race via the material of the internet. Within the exhibitions title, wandering points to the socio-cultural identity of the flâneur, mused on by Charles Baudelaire as ‘a roving soul in search of a body’. Wilding refers to a slang word which came into use in 1980s New York City, a racist dog-whistle used to describe the gang assault of strangers that rose out of the controversial Central Park Jogger case in 1989, when five teenagers of color were jailed for a crime they did not commit. The exhibition situates a spotlight on the privileged white body that Baudelaire’s ‘roving soul’ has historically inhabited. Here, the panel asks: what can the internet do for the black flâneur?

  • Legacy Russell

    Legacy Russell is a writer, artist, and cultural producer. Born and raised in New York City's East Village she is the UK Gallery Relations Lead for the online platform Artsy. Her work can be found in a variety of publications worldwide: BOMB, The White Review, Rhizome, DIS, The Society Pages, Guernica, Berfrois and beyond. Holding an MRes of Visual Culture with Distinction at Goldsmiths College of University of London, her academic and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, idolatry, and new media ritual. Her first book Glitch Feminism will be published by Verso in 2017.

  • Rizvana Bradley

    Rizvana Bradley is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, as well as African American studies, at Yale University.  She received her PhD at Duke University, and was a Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Currently, she is a visiting Research Fellow in History of Art at University College London. As a manuscript, her forthcoming book, Resurfaced Flesh: Black Aesthetics Unbound, received a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.  In addition to serving as guest editor of a special issue of the journal Women and Performance, she has published articles in TDR, Rhizomes, and Black Camera: An International Film Journal, and was also recently appointed Assistant Editor at the journal boundary 2.

  • Taylor le Melle

    Taylor le Melle is a curator, writer and researcher, and holds a BA from Cornell University and an MA from University of Glasgow. Recent exhibitions have been presented at Arcadia Missa, Chisenhale Dance Studio, Assembly Point (all London); and McKenna Museum of Art, New Orleans, as well as a chapter in an upcoming volume, Gender: Space edited by Aimee Meredith Cox. With Imran Perretta, Taylor has initiated C.R.E.A.M., and in January 2017 will launch PSS Press along with editor and publisher Rowan Powell.

  • Derica Shields

    Derica Shields is a writer, editor, and film curator from South London who lives in New York. Her research interests include black visual art, film, and futurisms. She is the Features Editor of Rookie, a feminist magazine for teenagers, and co-founder of The Future Weird, a film screening and discussion series where she curated experimental and speculative films by black and brown filmmakers. She has a BA in English and an MA in Black Studies from Cambridge and Cornell Universities respectively.

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E.g., 11-08-2021
E.g., 11-08-2021