#liquidblackness

We are excited to announce our next public event “Gathering with liquid blackness,” a four-week screening and reading series hosted by Community Books (@community_books_ga ); concept by Corey Couch (@kelpfoot ). The purpose of this series is to facilitate an open conversation about gathering as a political praxis situated within the field of black studies and within the liquid blackness methodology. Each week we will introduce a reading from liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies (open-access, @dukeuniversitypress ) and screen short films created by the artists who have been in conversation with our study, including but not limited to Elissa Blount-Moorhead (@ebmoorhead ), Bradford Young, Jenn Nkiru (@jennnkiru ), Kahlil Joseph, and Darol Olu Kae (@darolkae_ ). Because liquid blackness makes no distinction between a gathering that takes place in person and one that occurs on screen—both are informal and enact comparable aesthetic forms—we hope to discuss with the public some of the resonances we identify between selected films and material practice. The discussion topics have been loosely categorized across the four-week period as the reason and stakes for gathering, implementation of the practice, and the passing of knowledge through gathering. Flyer by @djoneshiphop Link to Readings - /document/d/1bF-KpfkN6GBuiizh62xwmhScqjOs9ozC0-pzIWY4JVc/edit?usp=sharing Authors: @mbeverly2 @laurenmcramer @jonathanjleal #jonathanbrooks @alessandraraengo #liquidblackness #gatheringaspraxis #filmstudies #blackstudies

ANNOUCING LIQUID BLACKNESS: JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND BLACK STUDIES ISSUE 9.2, “FAIR USE”! Image Credit: Screenshots taken from Summer of Sam (Spike Lee, 1999) Can “fair use” be put to use that's fair? The term traffics equally in enclosures and trespassing, property and impropriety, self-possession and sharing, disbursement and accumulation. Both a pillar of Humanism and an undercommon praxis of upending its very premises, both future-oriented and retroactive, speculative and retrograde, “fair use” knows how primitive accumulation works and can speak to the duplicity of care that affects all creative industries and institutions: who’s the subject and object of care, who/what benefits from it, and how? This issue seeks to stage a conversation between best practices and better praxes as the authors navigate what’s one’s and what’s another’s as well as the difficulty of giving over the adjudication of these distinctions to the law, custom, tradition, common sense, or, perhaps more scandalously, the subjectivity of aesthetic judgement. Their contributions tackle the assumptions and delusions that may accompany claims to “fairness,” as well as what it means to defend a claim that seeks to enforce either sharing or the policing of property. Overall, the issue is interested in understanding the way in which the question of IP is unavoidably folded into our scholarly and creative practices and the way in which it interferes with our black study—the very black study that sustains the praxis of this journal. #liquidblackness #chiplinscott #johnwroberts #jordanchrietzberg #jennawilson @alessandraraengo @laurenmcramer @hwsanchez_phd @dukeuniversitypress

At the end of April, liquid blackness founder @alessandraraengo and artist in residence @annaeriksonwinter flew out to San Francisco to interview Passing Through (1977) director Larry Clark for a second time to discuss the legacy of the film, black aesthetics as critical mass, and creative kinships for the journal’s upcoming issue “For the Record.” Many thanks to Larry for the generative discussion, Ian Soroka (@akorosnai ) for the cinematography and technology hookups (and for showing the lb team around town!), Cain Czopek for the lights and grip assistance (@cainsugar ), and Brian Woods (@bubudzuki ) at bubudzuki studios for letting us rent out and use the studio. We hope to keep the conversation open to prepare for our next event on sound design. #liquidblackness #fortherecord #larryclark #passingthrough #multigenerationalstudy

During the liquid blackness retreat, we received the exciting news that lb journal co-editor Lauren McLeod Cramer (@laurenmccramer ) was awarded tenure and had the chance to celebrate her incredible work on deck. Congratulations, @laurenmccramer ! We are so proud of you. #liquidblackness #laurenmcleodcramer

The liquid blackness team held our first annual retreat this week. We reflected on our work over the last year; adjusted roles, practices and expectations to support long-term sustainability; and scheduled out the next year together. The days were peppered with food, drink, stretch breaks and ended with friends over for pizza! @laurenmcramer @djoneshiphop @_h0m0s_ @alessandraraengo @annaeriksonwinter @kelpfoot #liquidblackness #gathering #motleycrew

Last week, liquid blackness creative fellow @djoneshiphop had the pleasure of attending the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation (@modernancientbrown ) event “Chroma Keys: Film Density & Color Science.” The event consisted of a live conversation between artist and filmmaker Kya Lou (@kyalou ), cinematographer Bradford Young, and legendary film chemist and laboratory executive Beverly Wood. He describes the experience as “a communal celebration of Bev’s cinematic legacy, her formative ties to Lou and Young, and the vital lineages that sustain black study.” Thank you to everyone involved and to @periodicals__shop for hosting the event. #liquidblackness #chromakeys #color #thebside #multigenerationalstudy

From liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies, Issue 9.2 “Fair Use”… “Poetic Proliferations: The Insurgent Aesthetic Experimentation of Camonghne Felix” by Jenna Wilson This essay begins with the question, What might poetry do with/to the theater of violence that is a court trial? To approach but not necessarily answer this question, I explore four poems by Camonghne Felix (@camonghne ) that renarrate the court trial of George Zimmerman following his murder of Trayvon Martin. I consider how Felix’s poetry offers a space in which free associations proliferate and expand meaning across time and contexts, challenging the courtroom’s desire to contain and exclude affect, information, and perspectives. Through her poetry, Felix offers an alternative sociality that is not built on the right to exclude, as is the courtroom, but the right to connect, slip, and feel together — an alternative sociality that cannot be accommodated by the law. In doing so, Felix asks her readers to consider what is and is not possible in a courtroom, bringing the legitimacy of the entire legal system into question. As such, I read Felix’s poetry as an abolitionist praxis of its own kind — as one way to reread, renarrate, and confront criminal law itself. Image Credit: for Trayvon Martin (Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski and Oakland's Community Rejuvenation Project, 2012), photographed by Daniela Kantorova. #poetics #abolition #liquidblackness #fairuse #jennawilson @dukeuniversitypress

From liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies, Issue 9.2 “Fair Use”… “Motion Practice (with Portrait of Jason)“ by Jordan Chrietzberg Repurposing the forms of legal writing (its motion practice), this essay deploys black studies and Marxism — specifically Theodor Adorno’s and Fred Moten’s respective writings on art’s law of motion — to consider both the statutory fair use test under United States federal law and Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967), a film about a screen test. Both tests, the author argues, enact systems of judgment, or interpretation, that ask those who judge thereby — whether as spectators or officers of the court — to make evaluative judgments regarding art, economics, subjectivity, and race. The author then demonstrates that this judging — or reading — is a form of labor, often to the profit of whiteness and capital, but also toward what may end them, provided we work this work as a kind of discovery procedure. Finally, the author shows that this judging labor transforms with the arrival of Post‐Fordism and that Portrait of Jason, unlike the fair use test, helps us move with this desired change, its practice. Image Credit: Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke, 1967). Frame grab. #fredmoten #theodoradorno #liquidblackness #fairuse #jordanchrietzberg @dukeuniversitypress

From liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies, Issue 9.2 “Fair Use”… “Appraising Summer of Sam” by John W. Roberts Although nominally about the Son of Sam killings, Spike Lee’s (@officialspikelee ) 1999 film Summer of Sam is typically interpreted as an auteurist allegory for racial scapegoating. Such allegorical reading raises a question about the nature the film’s textual properties vis‐à‐vis the textual nature of intellectual property in American jurisprudence. This essay argues that Summer of Sam poses an immanent critique of the concept of property, as refracted through the more capacious concept of arbitrage capture: the speculative positing of difference and the subsequent appropriation of that difference via identification. Through its narrative and aesthetic form, the film systematically, reflexively, and critically stages processes of capture between characters, their personal properties, and the semiotic and phenomenal properties of the image as such, consequently aligning the protocols of allegorical interpretation with those of capture. Implicit in the film’s immanent critique of capture are critiques of intellectual property and allegorical reading, ultimately staged as problematically isomorphic within the film. At stake is the possibility of reading for fugitivity, rather than for property. Image Credit: David Berkowitz’s alphabet blocks spell out “KILL THE DOG.” Summer of Sam (Spike Lee, 1999). Frame grab. #spikelee #summerofsam #liquidblackness #fairuse #johnwroberts @dukeuniversitypress

From liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies, Issue 9.2 “Fair Use”… “The Breaks: Drake, Kendrick, and Value at the Edge of Intellectual Property” by Charles “Chip” Linscott. This essay samples the beef between Kendrick Lamar (@kendricklamar ) and Drake (@champagnepapi ) and recent lawsuits surrounding their conflict in order to unearth some “breaks.” In digging through the drama, I posit a type of currency — here called “love” — at the center of an affective exchange that, while not outside capitalism, is an accumulative value nonetheless. Drake’s use of intellectual property claims and defamation complaints against Universal Music Group (@universalmusicgroup ) and online content creators serve as an unorthodox response to Kendrick’s devastating diss track, “Not Like Us.” Drake’s actions and the breaks I play reveal that love serves as both a currency and what it buys in hip‐hop culture. Image Credit: Screengrab from Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 music video, “Not Like Us” (dir. Dave Free @davefre1 and Kendrick Lamar). #KendrickLamar #Drake #defamation #liquidblackness #fairuse @dukeuniversitypress

From liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies, Issue 9.2 “Fair Use”… “A Blunt Instrument: Fair Use and African Artworks in the United States” by Hilary Whitham Sánchez (@hwsanchez_phd ). Tracing the historiography of fair use alongside that of African art history, this article demonstrates how the legal doctrine’s historical origins and definitions at certain times protect and at other times efface the intellectual property of African artists. Examining the naming conventions of academic art history and the art market, a recent sale of two artworks acquired from a conflict zone, and the policies of a museum, the author argues that fair use functions as a blunt and imperfect instrument for facilitating claims of restitution and repatriation. Image Credit: Edo Peoples, Nigeria, Court of Benin, Plaque: Equestrian Oba and Attendants, 1550 – 1680, brass, 49.5 × 41.9 × 11.4 cm. The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller (@therockyarchives ), 1965. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (@metmuseum ). #Africanart #restitution #historiography #liquidblackness #fairuse @dukeuniversitypress