Lonnie Holley, Cyrus Moussavi I Snuck Off the Slave Ship (still), 2019 Digital Video Color, sound 20 min. Courtesy of the artists

Lonnie Holley, Cyrus Moussavi, I Snuck Off the Slave Ship (still), 2019. Digital video, color, sound. 20 min. Courtesy of the artists

Screening Room

New Labor Movements

Contemporary filmmakers explore acts of movement as a profound catalyst for societal and individual change in American and Black life.

New Labor Movements is a collection of short films that explore contemporary visions of America and concepts of transnational Blackness. Through a compositional discourse that extends across four hour-long “movements,” the program navigates the philosophical, psychological, and emotional landscapes that manifest in the lives of slavery’s descendants and those living in the aftermath of slavery’s indirect, proximal effects.

Curator Leila Weefur organizes the program to consider the question of “What is America today?” as inspired by Lessons of the Hour, Isaac Julien’s immersive film and photographic exhibition on the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass. Evidenced in the selection of films are thoughtful articulations of movement that reveal the nuance of global political critique and a profound broadness of Black life across borders. The act of movement is a structurally fluid principle that shapes the program and its explorations of film construction and narrative; the distribution of labor and power; the trans-Atlantic movements of goods, capital, and people; and one’s movement through a gallery or in a theater. Taken together with the multi-sensorial, meditative qualities of Lessons, the program engineers a gender diverse, intergenerational dialogue amongst Black filmmakers that explores the creation of cinematic narrative and Black political history.

Movements I and II are on view continuously in 2020. Movement III is on view in the Screening Room in 2021. Movement IV is screened as an online-only presentation in February 2021.

PROGRAM RUNNING ORDER

Movement I. Assembly

Kevin Jerome Everson, Claudrena N. Harold
Hampton, 2019

Garrett Bradley
AKA, 2019

Mitch McCabe
Civil War Surveillance Poems (Part 1), 2019 

Christopher Harris
Halimuhfack, 2016

Onyeka Igwe
Specialised Technique, 2018

Movement II. Resistance/Selfhood 

Lonnie Holley, Cyrus Moussavi
I Snuck Off the Slave Ship, 2019

Morgan Quaintance
South, 2020

Eden Tinto Collins, Adrien Gystere Peskine
Womxn, 2018

Movement III. Freedom/Liberation

Darol Olu Kae
I ran from it and was still in it, 2019

Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
Black Composer Trilogy Part I: A Quality of Light, 2019

Terrance Daye
Cherish, 2018

Elegance Bratton, Jovan James
Buck, 2020

Charlotte Brathwaite
Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars, 2017

Movement IV. Creation/Emergence

Jenn Nkiru
REBIRTH IS NECESSARY, 2017

Terrance Daye
Cherish, 2018

Keisha Rae Witherspoon
T, 2019

Onyeka Igwe
Specialised Technique, 2018

Elegance Bratton, Jovan James
Buck, 2020

FEATURED ARTISTS

Garrett Bradley
Charlotte Brathwaite
Elegance Bratton
Terrance Daye
Adrien Gystere Peskine
Claudrena Harold
Christopher Harris
Lonnie Holley
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich

Onyeka Igwe
Jovan James
Kevin Jerome Everson
Mitch McCabe
Cyrus Moussavi
Jenn Nkiru
Darol Olu Kae
Keisha Rae Witherspoon
Eden Tinto Collins
Morgan Quaintance

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Leila Weefur (She/They/He) is a trans-gender-nonconforming artist, writer, and curator whose work in video and installation brings together concepts of the sensorial memory, abject Blackness, hyper surveillance, and the erotic. Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Smack Mellon, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Wattis Institute, San Francisco. Weefur is a recipient of the Hung Liu award, the Murphy & Cadogan award, and the Walter & Elise Haas Creative Work Fund. They are a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of The Black Aesthetic. Weefur received their MFA from Mills College and is based in Oakland, CA.

New Labor Movements is guest curated by Leila Weefur. The program was commissioned on the occasion of the West Coast premiere of Lessons of the Hour at McEvoy Arts.

Media Partner: frieze Magazine