Looking through the lenses of three Black art forms—the queer street style of vogue, the Afro-Boricua dance and drumming tradition of bomba, and gospel music—World After This One is a 45-minute solo piece that uses movement and spoken word to examine how Black people have historically reclaimed the materials of empire to construct portals to impossible futures. Blurring the lines between the secular and the sacred, celebration and mourning, the past and the yet-to-pass, World After This One imagines Black liberation not as a metaphor but as a possibility. A talkback with Kemi Alabi will follow this performance.

Benji Hart is an interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator whose work centers Black radicalism, queer liberation, and prison abolition. Their words have appeared or are forthcoming in anthologies from Oxford University Press, Beacon Press, Haymarket Books, Pluto Press, and have been published at Time, Teen Vogue, The Advocate, The Funambulist Magazine, and elsewhere. They have led popular education and arts-based workshops for organizations internationally, including Project NIA, Forward Together, SisterSong, and Dissenters, and presented at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, the American Repertory Theater, the National Museum of African American History & Culture, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Their performances have been featured at the Poetry Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Den Frie, and Museo del Chopo. They have received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and are a Kistenbroker Family Artist in Residence at the Lab School.

Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022. Alabi’s poems appear in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review and Best New Poets. As Head of Creativity & Impact of the reproductive justice organization Forward Together, Alabi builds cultural power with organizers and artists. They are coeditor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021) and a Periplus Collective mentor. Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, they now live in Chicago, IL.

This performance is generously supported by the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC) at the University of Chicago.

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Tags: Arts + Public Life, Benji Hart, Chicago, Green Line Performing Arts Center, Kemi Alabi, Washington Park, World After This One, World After This One: A Performance by Benji Hart