Now as much as ever, radical gathering spaces for rumination on Black embodied freedoms are crucial. From February 23 - 27, 2021, Black Spatial Relics (BSR) is hosting its second annual convening.

Building on our work to create Black spaces for creation, exploration, and community, this will be a free and virtual convening that will feature our 2020 artists-in-residence and several other Black radical performance makers and scholars from around Philadelphia and beyond.

Featuring keynotes from Ebony Noelle Golden and Germaine Ingram, original work by Viktor L. Ewing-Givens, workshops and an artist talk from Misty Sol (Philadelphia, PA), Danielle Deadwyler (Atlanta, GA), Ada Pinkston (Baltimore, MD), and Crystal Z Campbell (Tulsa, OK), a BSR commissioned Philly Black Caribbean Zine Workshop and Share Out curated by Shanel Edwards (featuring work by - Tahnee Jackson, Charlyn Griffith-Oro, Angela Salmon and Nikolai McKenzie Ben Rema)  and a Black Diaspora Artist Salon hosted by Jumatatu Poe, this digital convening is celebrating and learning from the centuries-long Black freedom dialectic between the Caribbean and Philadelphia, as we launch new spaces in our residency program for artists in the Caribbean.

This convening is presented in partnership with the Center for Experimental Ethnography (CEE) at Penn and Howlround.
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Project support provided by Added Velocity which is administered by Temple Contemporary at  Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University and funded by the William Penn  Foundation.  

Download the Press Release Here

​Convening Schedule

February 23
Ebony Noelle Golden | Opening Keynote and Welcome Event
4:30 PM EST

Opening offerings by Black Spatial Relics Director, Arielle Julia Brown, Viktor L Ewing-Givens, Center for Experimental Ethnography Director, Dr. Deborah Thomas, and a featured keynote from Ebony Noelle Golden!
Register here

February 24
Artist Talk - Moderated by Arielle Julia Brown
6:30 PM EST
Join our 2020 Artists-in-Residence, Misty Sol (Philadelphia, PA), Danielle Deadwyler (Atlanta, GA), Ada Pinkston (Baltimore, MD), and Crystal Z Campbell (Tulsa, OK) for a conversation about the intersections of their work, moderated by Black Spatial Relics Director, Arielle Julia Brown. 
Register here


February 25
Workshop With Danielle Deadwyler
11:00 AM EST
In this workshop experience, we will engage a documentary offering, then use its visual language to locate and develop communal and personal gestures of labor, ritual, and redaction.
Register here


Workshop With Ada Pinkston
3:00 PM EST
Join this workshop for a screening of the performance, "and there were other stories...." (a work in progress in response to the Hampton National Historic site) and conversation/listening/talkback.
Register here


Caribbean Zine Workshop Share Out
Hosted and Curated by Shanel Edwards
6:00 PM EST
This offering is a zine workshop centering Black Caribbean folks rooted in Philadelphia, their stories, their songs, their spirits. Featuring work by Tahnee Jackson, Charlyn Griffith-Oro, Angela Salmon and Nikolai McKenzie Ben Rema.
Register here

​February 26
Workshop With Misty Sol
11:00 AM EST
In this workshop, we will explore the ways afro-futurist consciousness was preserved and incubated in Black women's' kitchens, gardens, and private spaces. Through breathing, movement, memory, and baking, we investigate how to incorporate the Black ways of knowing, into our creative and educational practices.
Register here


Workshop With Crystal Z Campbell
3:00 PM EST
An interactive sound-centered workshop will be led by artist Crystal Z Campbell and a sonic specialist. Working with a range of archival and contemporary prompts and engaging the performative possibilities of sound within and of the body, we'll develop a series of recordings. The collaborative recordings generated by the workshop will be used for the experiment feature film SLICK's soundtrack. 
Register here


Black Diaspora Artist Salon
Curated and Hosted by Jumatatu Poe
6:00 PM EST

Join our Black Diaspora Artist Salon featuring critical conversations and work sharing by artists from around the Black Diaspora. 
Register hereFebruary 27
Germaine Ingram | Keynote and Closing Event
12:00 PM EST
Join Black Spatial Relics for closing remarks, engage in a closing offering by Viktor L Ewing-Givens, and a closing keynote by Germaine Ingram.
Register here
Project support provided by Added Velocity which is administered by Temple Contemporary at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University and funded by the William Penn Foundation.

BLACK SPATIAL RELICS is a national residency program, founded and directed by Arielle Julia Brown. The Black Spatial Relics Residency is made possible with support from the JKW Foundation, Velocity Fund, W. Trust, Black Seed, Leeway Foundation, Monument Lab, and independent donors. Black Spatial Relics is a fiscally sponsored project of both Fractured Atlas and Notch Theatre Company. For more information about the 2020 artists in residence, their work, past artists in residence, and the 2021 convening, visit www.blackspatialrelics.org. 

Arielle Julia Brown | Founder + Director
Joseph Tolbert Jr. | Convening Producer
Malkia Okech | Associate Producer 
Cesali Morales | Graphic Designer

This year’s theme focuses on the complexities associated with race and inequity that have historically defined social systems in the U.S. and globally. Ethnographic research has created interdisciplinary pathways to think expansively about how culture is understood, entwined with related concepts, and revised to weigh critical questions of race, racism, and multiple forms of inequality. Ethnographic scholarship has examined the everyday lives, hardships, and forms of resistance within historically marginalized communities and has provided nuanced analyses that delineate the intersections of these issues with problems of educational access and social (in)equity.

REGISTER HERE: The Forum will be a free and online program. 

On Thursday, February 18th  at Noon for a virtual Third Thursday event, where Ricardo Bracho will be in conversation with Jennifer Ponce de León. Ricardo will be discussing current projects. Participants can register here on the EVENTBRITE PAGE.
 
Ricardo A. Bracho is currently Sachs Artist-in-Residence in the Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies program here at Penn, where he teaches creative and critical writing. His plays have been staged read, workshopped, and premiered in theaters and at universities nationwide.  He has a committed focus on working with feminist, queer, Latiina/o, community-based, and experimental theaters including Mabou Mines, INTAR, and Company of Angels. His plays have also been staged read and workshopped at Vassar, Stanford, DePaul University, and the University of California campuses at Riverside, Berkeley, Irvine, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara.  His past academic appointments include Artist/Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara and the Multicultural Faculty position at The Theatre School at DePaul University.  His plays include The Sweetest Hangover, Sissy, Mexican Psychotic, and Puto.  He has worked in independent film and video as an art director, in casting, and as a script, grant, and editorial consultant, primarily with queer, black, and brown makers, including Augie Robles, Cauleen Smith, and Ela Troyano.

As a producer and dramaturge, he has helped stage anti-gentrification street theater in Boyle Heights and the works of Lisa Thompson, Brian Bauman, and Sigrid Gilmer. He began this theater career some thirty years ago as Assistant Director to Cherrie Moraga’s DramaDIVAS, writing for a performance workshop for queer and trans youth of color.  He was a co-founder of Proyecto ContraSIDA Por VIDA, a San Francisco based Latina/o LGBT HIV service agency.  He has also worked on curriculums, media campaigns, research and funding for FIERCE!, AIDS Project Los Angeles, and Center for AIDS Prevention Studies.  He was a researcher on The H.I.P. H.O.P. Project (Health in Prison, Health Outta Prison) for young men in San Quentin Prison. He was interviewed on The Blunt Project in New York. He is developing two chapbooks of poetry, The Salt of Him and Under Quarantine.