Level Ground

Just logging on to give y’all a glimpse of what’s in store for Level Ground from now until summer of next year 👀 mark your calendars beloveds! We have so many exciting programs for you to tap into: 🧪 Social practice labs featuring book clubs, workshops and exhibitions with @tamisha_tyler @Kennyoubelieve @perennialmemorylab @bj_mims @marooningbodies @_kylathecreator_ @time.bianca 📽️ Film Salons @juniorhigh 🫂 Membership events / retreats / drives 🖼️ Artist-in-residency shows @laartcore & more! We can’t wait to dive in & make magic together ✨ What are you most excited about? 🎨 @bird_of_paradigm

Who’s your fairy Divamother?🎤💅🏽 Take a guess. Then take the quiz on our latest Substack post by Sion-Raze (@csrcalloway ). “I once said on one of the social medias that as a young gay man, I chose my own Fairy Divamother. I needed someone larger than life and aspirational to bring recurrent magic into my life. A female singer, with hair up to there and down to here, and outfits equally outrageous as they are fashionable. I found her when I was four years old, and she has served me well.” - Sion-Raze 🔗 in bio as always divas 😉

June 6, come play with us at our next workshop: Marooning Bodies: A World Building Game for Our Collective Dreams facilitated by @bj_mims 🎲🤸🏾‍♂️🌟 🫱🏼‍🫲🏽💭 We’re so proud to partner with Marooning Bodies (@marooningbodies ) to extend the themes of Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn into an immersive experience of gameplay, worldbuilding, and imagining better futures. ➡️In the game, players are guided through a series of questions and scenarios about how a society might organize itself. Together, you will make decisions about shared resources, community rituals, responses to harm, and systems of care. Along the way, you will be invited to reflect, discuss, and create through simple writing, drawing, movement, or storytelling prompts.⁠ If you missed out on our sold out Octavia’s Archive event, this is a great way to tap into our Social Practice Labs Module 2 workshops based on “Dawn” by Octavia E. Butler. Come as you are. Bring a friend. Leave having built a world with strangers🌐🌠 🔗 Tickets are $10. Link in bio to grab yours! 📆 June 6, 2-4:30PM 📍Pieter Performance Space 2701 North Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90031

We need your support! We are raising funds for the 3rd annual Octavia’s Solstice — a fan celebration of the life, work, and wisdom of speculative fiction author Octavia Estelle Butler on June 27 at @philosophical_research_society ✨ We want this year to be better than ever! Your donations will help us with venue fees, paying local performers/practitioners, our annual altar, and supporting the event organizers! There are so many ways to help. Share this post! RVSP (free) for the event and make a donation or buy some limited edition merch (link in bio). Don’t live in LA? You can still order merch to support the campaign. It will be shipped to you after the event! Send our campaign to: fans of Butler, afrofuturism, and sci-fi who want to support the next generation of LA artists. This year's theme is “Parable of the Trickster”, the third unpublished novel in Butler's “Parables” series. Our line-up engages the wisdom and research embedded in her notes on the unpublished novel. How will you help re-write the future? Presented by @urbanecologyconservatory , curated by @the_schessa of @firebrand.house , and co-sponsored by @levelground

What do The 5 Heartbeats and Octavia Butler have in common? Find out in my latest post on our Level Ground Substack. This is just the beginning of a larger project I’ve been thinking through for a while. I hope you enjoy the series! You know where to find the link.

This essay is late and a long time coming; part love letter to Sinners, part Oscar hit piece, all disrespect to PTA. But the reason this writing exists is because like yall I’m angry and tired about so much happening and I wanted to take that, along with my observations from this year’s Academy Awards race and explore the long tradition of cultural work that uses “the vampire” to ask a difficult question - how do we live, love, and exist freely with Remmicks at the door? TY to the homies @levelground.co for the space to share (substack link is in that bio). it’s long, listenable version is coming soon 😅🙏🏾❤️

▶️ UPDATE: This event is now at capacity! You won’t want to miss our next workshop, Octavia’s Archives: World Building with What We Have happening 5/17! 🌍🛠️✨ 🌟 For Module 2 of our Social Practice Labs, we’re excited to partner with Kennedy Arnette of Perennial Memory Lab to extend the themes of Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn into an interactive workshop focused on world building with what we have. 📝 Creative prompts guided by the visual language of Octavia Butler’s archives and written legacy. We invite you to WORDWEAVE, WORLDMAKE, and STORYTELL through modern chaos using the author’s timeless and self-determined drafting style. 🌐 Link in bio for free RSVP (grab them while they last!) 📆 Sunday, May 17, 4-6PM 📍Black Lantern Books @blacklanterncoop 6533 West Boulevard, Inglewood, CA 90302 🎨 flyer by @bird_of_paradigm

Congrats to the entire UNION team on their Emmy nomination for Best Documentary! 🏆🎖️ If you haven’t seen the film yet, want to re-watch it, or are interested in hosting a community screening this May Day, it’s still available to rent, stream, and share on multiple platforms. Visit unionthefilm.com for direct links.  🎥 ABOUT THE FILM 🎥 Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.  Led by the charismatic but underestimated @chris.smalls_ , the group finds itself up against a tech industry giant with unlimited resources, without major support from national unions or politicians, and while navigating internal divisions within their own ranks.  Documenting the struggle from day one, the film offers a gripping human drama about the fight for power and dignity in today’s globalized economic landscape ✊🏾 Directed by @brettstory and @mainmaing / Produced by @samanthacurley and @marsverrone / Cinematography by @martinthesupernaut and @mainmaing / Edited by @lil_theory , @malikazw , and @mainmaing / Music by @kirlianauras . @unionthefilm is a @levelground production, in association with @impact.partners.docs , @povdocs , @fordfoundation , and @hyperobject_industries .  🏆 The News & Documentary Emmy Awards will take place on May 28 in NYC.

📸🎨 Moments from our collective outing at ✨sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles✨ We were so inspired by the sculpture park as a monument to South Central, the neighborhood where artist Lauren Halsey (@summaeverything ) and her family have lived for generations. What a powerful way to take the work away from white Institutional walls and into the heart of community💖

📣 DEADLINE EXCLUSIVE 📣 We’re overjoyed to announce the launch of Level Ground’s Filmmakers Fellowship, created in collaboration with @navamau ! “Time and time again, I am faced with the reality that the film and television industry can be a site of isolation and systemic disempowerment for artists of color, queer and trans creatives, and anyone who doesn’t fit a very specific mold determined by the dominant class. This fellowship is an exploration and an experiment to see what happens when we plant seeds outside the studio system and beyond the mainstream.” -Nava Mau Level Ground’s Filmmakers Fellowship supports a cohort of trans and queer filmmakers and filmmakers of color in creating their next short films. Through a series of film salons, 1:1 mentorship, a stipend, and fiscal sponsorship, we’re exploring new models of making and sharing work with emerging filmmakers motivated by innovation and creative risk. 🎥 Congrats to the 17 filmmakers who are part of our inaugural fellowship cohort: @andy.james.garcia @amaxey422 #AvrielleGallagher @fakingprofessionalism @chica_barbosa @emorychaojohnson #EvelynAngelicaMartinez @gerrymaravilla @hansenbursic @orange.mooon @jd.shields @nicolemdizon @paolojriveros @rrainehanson @csrcalloway #TaegenMeyer The 4-month fellowship launched this month and is presented by Level Ground and @samanthacurley , curated by @navamau , with support from Shane King Zackery and @chasejoynt . Read more at the link in our bio.

We’re officially half-way through our Social Practice Labs: Season of Awakening. 🪐📚 For the past few weeks, Dr. Tamisha A. Tyler (@tamisha_tyler ) has been leading us through a slow, intentional reading of Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn, which offers us a new perspective on navigating first contact novels in a post-apocalyptic setting. 👽🧪 Shout out to everyone that’s been a part of this lab and our host @philosophical_research_society . It’s been such a joy communing together and digging into the power of Octavia Butler’s visions. ✨ 📸 @ambernichole09

🎞️ “Why do dizzyingly problematic films—particularly projects like One Battle After Another—win so often at this awards show? The question of OBAA‘s problems as a film and its victory in the Oscar voting, points to something deeper than a single genre-bending chase comedy from a ‘beloved’ director ‘long overdue’ to win in this specific academy contest year. It compels me to ask if we should even concern ourselves with this award ritual at all, and also what does it mean that we will anyway? To attempt to answer this we need to travel deeper into the Delta and eventually down to the archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.” 💥 An absolute banger of a contribution from @yemididit for Level Ground’s Collectivizing Culture Substack series. Link in bio!