“Might we conceive of ‘the unfinished’ as both a condition and a place, a discursive, imaginative site?
The unfinished in this sense is a repository of the irresolution in which Black architects have historically found themselves and their projects. But it is also a haven for reparative rest, in which is retained the possibility of completion.”
In “Black Builders,” Peter L’Official considers what we learn about visions of cities when we think about writing and architecture as mutually defining.
You can read the full essay by @apostropheoh at the link in bio.
PHOTOS via: Schomburg Center; Library of Congress; Internet Archive; Flickr.
Honored to be the first author published in the @places_journal series AN UNFINISHED ATLAS, supported by a grant from the @mellonfoundation which brings together “scholars, cultural critics, essayists, and novelists of color…to enrich the cultural record of place-based narratives across what is now called North America.”
Thank you to every single @places_journal editor, especially the magnificent Frances Richard, without which this labor of love wouldn’t have been possible.
I THINK WE CAN CONTINUE TO BLACKOUT in celebration of the homie @huahsu and STAY TRUE. come thru this thursday evening @calligarisny to hear a wildly cool collection of folks (also me) read fun things in a furniture store. clearly i’m in THE JUNGLE ROOM. “pleasedon’t spill anything on the furniture.” shoutout @harrisongable for the vibey flyer. #youlikehiphop?
friendship is wild, since it can emerge out of the most inconsequential things: liking the look of someone's air max 90s from across the room, or conspiratorially sharing a "WTF" glance when someone *else* says something $@#!* at a meeting. i'll never know what convinced @huahsu to agree to breaking bread at kitchenette (RIP) with a wayward rap writer who shared an affinity for the clipse and young jeezy, but having read STAY TRUE (IN STORES NOW) and "met" 90s hua, i am deeply thankful that he overlooked how wack and totally untutored in the ways of the world i may have been then (and maybe remain today). friendship is an incredible thing, and i've rarely learned more about what it *can* mean than from reading this book.
wish that good news ain’t always have to come with some bad (@desusnice@thekidmero we LUH y’all forever) but i can’t thank @therabkinfoundation enough for this incredible honor and gift. to be named among such a dope crew of writers and editors and critics is energizing and makes me love writing about art even more. congrats to all of you! thank you to all the writers and readers and EDITORS (especially those perpetual internal voices whose influence never wanes) i’ve ever worked with or just loved from afar. shoutout to my friends who put up with me. all love to liz and V and pedro and SYLVIA (❤️🩹). and an eternal, cosmic, spiritual shoutout to the ancestor, @avantgroidd whose work meant the world to whole worlds, including mine.
Show me a Black man who hasn’t been mistaken for a musician...and I will show you a brother from another planet.
Come through to the FIRST EVER ISSUE of the @european_review to read me on the art of misidentification, and to see the genius of @wiegertje@georgehblaustein & Sander Pleij at work and play.
#LouDrenthe #JimmyvanderLak #ArthurMonkau #OnTheTerrace #OpHetTerras
becky suss, *WT, TJ, and Blinky,*
14 1/8 x 18 x 1 1/8 inches, oil on canvas, 202. after james baldwin and yoran cazac, *little man, little man: a story of childhood* (1976, reprinted 2018)
i wrote an essay for an upcoming catalog of the work of the remarkable @beckysuss and @literaryhub excerpted it (link in bio). shouts to @jackshainman@skiraeditore and of course @beckysuss for the love. go read baldwin’s *little man, little man* if you haven’t, and go see becky’s marvelous work @jackshainman before it closes june 18!
“Nobody loves a genius child,” is true in almost every case, except when it came to Greg Tate. We loved Greg because it was clear in every “furthermucking” word he wrote that he loved us, and ~US,~ and *us.* We loved him because it was his own inimitable self-making that, improbably, made a community—that is, made all of us want to make as he made, to love art and music and “Blacknuss” as he loved them, in words and deeds. We loved him because he likely knew he was our inspiration, but was too damn cool to let on that he did. I’m never going to forget watching Greg walk into the exhibition that he co-curated and, in a room full of Basquiats, stop in front of Jean-Michel’s Hollywood Africans—in some ways, the ur-text for a show centered upon the collaged histories and gothic futurities of graffiti and hip-hop. I caught the moment imperfectly, but I almost prefer how the masked figure of Greg seems to meld with the begoggled Rammellzee and the be-baseball-capped Toxic in portrait behind him, while one flyboy genius child floats off to the side, coolly clocking the other.
