A remix of the traditional lecture or panel, In-Session is a critical interdisciplinary salon that incorporates reading, conversation, and performance together. The salons are focused on a selection from a shared reading list which is compiled based on a theme. After the conversation on the selected works, it is activated by performance and participation—music, song, poetry, dance or movement. This season’s theme is Bearing Witness.

We contemplate what it would mean to bear witness to that which makes our soul sing. How do we cultivate the courage to witness radical possibilities for others and ourselves? Through communal witnessing, how might we dream up practices and worlds that have yet to come into being? By bearing witness to that which is most authentic and life-giving to our humanity, we allow ourselves to remember what we always recognized to be true inside of us. We hold fast in knowing that thriving in the layeredness of everyday existence is, in itself, an act of resistance.

Sobre En-Sesión

En-Sesión es una remezcla del conversatorio tradicional. Es una charla crítica e interdisciplinaria que incorpora lecturas, conversaciones y performance. Los conversatorios se enfocan en una selección de lecturas basadas en un tema específico. Después de una discusión sobre las lecturas, la charla es activada por un performance y la participación de les asistentes en forma de música, canción, poesía, danza o movimiento. El tema de esta temporada se llama “Atestiguando”.

Contemplamos lo que significaría el ser testigues de lo que hace canta a nuestra alma. ¿Cómo cultivamos el coraje para ser testigues de las posibilidades radicales para nosotres y otres? A través de el ser testigue en comunidad. ¿Cómo podemos soñar con prácticas y palabras que aún no existen? Siendo testigues de aquello que nos es más auténtico y que le da vida a nuestra humanidad, nos damos permiso para recordar lo que siempre hemos reconocido como verdadero dentro de nosotros. Nos aferramos en el saber que el prosperar en las muchas facetas de la vida cotidiana es un acto de resistencia en si mismo.

Jordan Brown and Kezia Waters present: The Fellowship Hall.

Join artists Jordan Brown and Kezia Waters for “The Fellowship Hall”, an evening of myth, memory, and queer Black community inspired by the work of Zora Neale Hurston.

Together, we will imagine the past-present-future of the Black Church and its relationship to Black queerness. Using the tools of oral transmission and storytelling, we will generate a collaborative folklore about the Black Church, guided by Zora Neale Hurston’s research of the Black South. Participants will leave with an introductory understanding of mythmaking and folklore as liberatory technologies that can bear witness to re-imagined, empowered timelines.

Please arrive in your Sunday Best (whatever that means to you) and with a small offering to our collective ancestor Zora Neale Hurston. This can be a small gift, thoughtful words, or a creative tribute.

Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/in-session-the-fellowship-hall-tickets-861735844107?aff=

About the artists

Jordan Brown is a visual artist and writer based in Chicago, IL. His interdisciplinary practice in sculpture, installation, textile, video, and collage assembles personal mythologies from old clothing, text, and found objects. Born and raised in the DC-metropolitan area, he holds an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Kezia is a multidisciplinary Griot and Director. I think of my work as trying to find that which is holy, whole, holistic and/or holds within Black performance functionality. I do this aesthetically through spiritual surrealism and traditional folkloric techniques and have created/ fostered techniques based on mythological archetypes, African American Southern Rituals, Underground Queer performance culture and Visual Conjurin’.

In-Session Programming will be in hybrid format (presented in-person and on Zoom). There is limited capacity and we will utilize a waitlist to manage interest that exceeds our attendee count. Salons will recorded for archival purposes and photographed for documentation. Spanish interpretation will also be offered. Should someone need ASL interpretation, please contact us at insession@three-walls.org.

In-Session is supported by the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Official Website

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Tags: Chicago, In-Session | The Fellowship Hall, Jordan Brown, Jordan Brown and Kezia Waters: The Fellowship Hall, Kezia Waters, Logan Square, Logan Square Creative Studio, The Fellowship Hall, threewalls