BE.BOP: Black Europe Body Politics (2012-2018)

“Be.Bop: Black Europe Body Politics, a project of Art Labour Archives, is a decolonial transdisciplinary and indisciplinary curatorial initiative based in Berlin with an international impact through presentations in major cities across three continents.”

“Active in the international cultural arena since 1997, Art Labour Archives has been passionately involved in the production and theorization of performance and the moving image from a Black Diaspora perspective.

In the vision of its founder, Alanna Lockward, disciplines are meant to facilitate each other’s dismantling by means of constantly challenging its own claims to legitimacy. This paradigm inversion places collective knowledge creation as a central ambition. In this sense, the optic and praxis of Art Labour Archives is to surpass the expectations of the society of the spectacle and its insatiable appetite for visual and sensorial stimulation. Instead, the dozens of publications, exhibitions, screening programs, workshops and seminars conceptualized and produced by Art Labour Archives in the last seventeen years, have offered liberation, healing and redemption as a viable alternative.

In short: our journey is one of experiencing “art” as a labour of love and mutual examination and recognition beyond geographical, discursive and disciplinary thresholds. Between 2010—2018 Be.Bop has been presented in conferences, seminars and different public events in three different continents thanks to the support and faith of our partners, participants and friends.” be.bop=”” “is=”” an=”” enterprise=”” led=”” by=”” curator=”” alanna=”” lockward;=”” a=”” collective=”” of=”” artists,=”” curators,=”” artivists=”” and=”” activists,=”” social=”” theorists=”” humanists.=”” decolonial=”” project=”” healing,=”” learning=”” love.=”” network=”” with=”” the=”” middelburg=”” summer=”” school=”” aesthesis=”” in=”” bogota=”” durham=”” (duke=”” university)”=”” (walter=”” mignolo,=”” advisor).=”” curated=”” lockward=”” publisher=”” art=”” labour=”” archives,=”” berlin,=”” 2012-2018=”” Publisher

Catalogues:
The Skin Thing, 2012, event website
Decolonizing the “Cold” War, 2013, event website
Spiritual Revolutions & The “Scramble for Africa”, 2014, event website
Chronology, 2012-2015
Call & Response, 2016, event website (2)
Coalitions Facing White Innocence, 2018, event website

Magiciens de la Terre (1989) [French]

Catalogue of an exhibition held 18 May-14 August 1989 at the Centre Pompidou and La Grande Halle-La Villette, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin with the assistance of Jan Debbaut, Mark Francis, Jean-Louis Maubant, Aline Luque, André Magnin and Jacques Soulillou.

“An exhibition loved and hated in equal measure, Martin curated the show to address the fact that there were, as he put it, “one hundred percent of exhibitions ignoring 80 percent of the earth.” He attempted to engage critically with certain aspects of neo-colonial mentality in the West, particularly a resurgent interest in ‘primitivism,’ which Martin felt aestheticized exotic cultures without destablilizing western definitions of fine art, modernism, or identity. The exhibition included works by 100 artists (50 from the so called ‘West’ and 50 from the ‘margins’), attempting to show all on equal footing. The success of this attempt is still disputed and discussed in terms of the exhibition history of the past twenty-odd years, but it remains undeniable that the exhibition enacted an important break with some of the conventions of exhibition-making and strictly defined notions of modernism. Exhibited artists included Marina Abramovic, John Baldessari, Mike Chukwukelu, Braco Dimitrijevic, Yongping Huang, Boujemaa Lakhdar, Richard Long, Sigmar Polke, Jangarh Singh Shyam, Ulay, Jeff Wall, Jimmy Wululu, etc. ” (Source)

With essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Aline Luque, Mark Francis, André Magnin, Pierre Gaudibert, Thomas McEvilley, Homi Bhabha, Jacques Soulillou, Bernard Marcadé.

Publisher Editions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1989
ISBN 2858504989, 9782858504985
271 pages
via Gioni

Interview with curator (Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Art in America, 1989, EN)
Reviews: 10 French press reviews (1989), more, list of reviews (1989, 30 pp).
Analysis and commentary: Special issue of Les Cahiers du Musée National d’Art Moderne (1989, FR, 101 MB, added on 2019-8-14), Special issue of Third Text (1989, EN), Thomas McEvilley (1990, EN), Cesare Poppi (engage, 2003, EN), Hal Foster et al (2004/07, EN), Daniel Soutif (2005, FR), Reesa Greenberg (Art Journal, 2005, EN), Maureen Murphy (Critique d’art, 2013, FR/EN), Lucy Steeds et al. (book, Afterall, 2013, EN), Pablo Lafuente (2013, EN), Annie Cohen-Solal (Stedelijk Studies, 2014, EN), Adam Jasper (AU&NZ Journal of Art, 2014, EN), Julia Friedel (C&, 2016, EN).
Short documentary (1989)
Wikipedia
Pompidou’s 25th anniversary exhibition (2014)
Film retrospective at Tate (2014)

Exhibition website
Press release (FR/EN), Petit journal (FR)
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (168 MB)

Richard J. Powell: Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (1997)

“The African diaspora—a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade and Western colonialism—has generated a wide array of artistic achievements in our century, from blues to reggae, from the paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner to the video installations of Keith Piper. This study of 20th-century black art is the first to concentrate on the art works themselves, and on how these works, created during a major social upheaval and transformation, use black culture both as subject and as context.

From musings on the “the souls of black folk” in early twentieth-century painting, sculpture, and photography to questions of racial and cultural identities in performance, media, and computer-assisted arts in the 1990s, the book draws on the works of hundreds of artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Lois Mailou Jones, Wifredo Lam, Jacob Lawrence, Spike Lee, Archibald Motley, Jr., Faith Ringgold, and Gerard Sekoto; biographies of more than 160 key artists provide a unique and valuable art historical resource.

Richard Powell discusses the philosophical and social forces that have shaped a black diasporal presence in 20th-century art. Placing its emphasis on black cultural themes rather than on black racial identity, this book is an important exploration of the visual representations of black culture throughout the twentieth century.”

Publisher Thames & Hudson, London, 1997
World of Art series
ISBN 0500202958, 9780500202951
256 pages

Reviews: Deborah Kempe (Art Documentation 1997), Steven Nelson (Art Journal 1998), Kymberly N. Pinder (Art Bulletin 1999), Elizabeth Harney (Nka 1999), Donna Seaman (Booklist).

Author (2nd ed.)
Publisher (2nd ed.)
WorldCat

PDF (59 MB, no OCR)