A duet of performative lectures on migration, movement and desire by J’Sun Howard and Khadija Kysia, set alongside the digital soundscapes of artists A.J. McClenon and Jared Brown. This performative lecture will be organized and poetically framed by undisciplined creative Amina Ross.

Guiding Work: Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWuPLxMBjM8)

A celestial body is eclipsed when another larger body passes, floats, or drifts into this celestial body’s source of illumination, submerging the smaller body in shadow; in darkness. An eclipse can also be defined as a reduction or loss of status, reputation or power. Those lacking power are cast into darkness. The concept of the eclipse exposes common associations with night and darkness, and may reveal the way dark and night spaces provide a place to challenge dominant and oppressive systems, structures and ways of seeing.

Desire as it is learned, internalized and projected is a system of power one must navigate internally and spatially. Migration, as it is defined, is “movement from one part of something to another,” artists within ECLIPSING claim the agentive qualities of motion as dark beings, finding alternate sources of power beyond “light,” migrating into their own greatness.

Khadijah Kysia, is a licensed acupuncturist, writer and scholar with four decades worth of experience navigating the world in a black femme body. Khadijah will share with us her (counter)narrative and strategies for cultivating internal power and moving through the world whilst actively healing herself and others. Khadijah’s narrative will be set alongside the sounds of Jared Brown, the self-proclaimed “high priest of sounds for the girls at night.”

J’Sun Howard is a master of movement, navigating the politics of desire both on and off stage J’Sun’s (counter)narrative will be set alongside the work of A.J. McClenon, a multimedia sound artist who blends archival sound bites and personal narrative that, in AJ’s own word “level hierarchies of truth.”

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. Our first In-Session theme is migration. Artists, curators and community members curate the In-Session, selecting the reading and the performers. After the conversation on the selection, it is activated by performance—music, song, poetry, dance or movement.

This performative lecture will be organized and poetically framed by undisciplined creative Amina Ross. This program functions in conjunction with ECLIPSING: the politics of night, the politics of light (January 31,2018 – Feb 2018) a multi-pronged exhibition and performance festival at Links Hall organized as a part of Amina Ross’ 2017-2018 Curatorial residency at Links Hall.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Tags: A.J. McClenon, Amina Ross, Chicago, Eclipsing - Migration Movements and Desire, Humboldt Park, In-Session, J'Sun Howard, Jared Brown, Khadija Kysia, threewalls