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An exhibition exploring queer possibilities of affirmation, extravagance, and extinction
A public programming series organized in conjunction with Love and Oblivion
Slought is pleased to announce Future / No Future, a public programming series exploring queer possibilities of affirmation, extravagance, and extinction, presented from August 5 to August 31, 2021. Curated by Arien Wilkerson of Tnmot Aztro, the series includes a rave, a livestream performance, and a concluding conversation, and will feature performing artists, musicians, and writers including Zygote, Domsentfrommars, Nu Mafia, Malkia Okech, and TK Smith.
Future / No Future takes on the potentiality and poetics of oblivion as an approach to our precarious futures. Oblivion, understood as the state of being unaware or forgotten, reflects the existential realities of a marginal queer and trans life. Who will hold this body, who will bury this body, who will remember this body?
Amid a global pandemic and the constant threat of ecological disaster, the world is now confronted with the questions that queer and trans people contend with every day. Future/ No Future will problematize the philosophies and aesthetics of futurism to unpack the artworks exhibited in Love and Oblivion and offer a challenge to Afrofuturism, Afro pessimism, and ruination.
August 5, 2021, 7:30pm-12am
Rave with Zygote, Domsentfrommars, Arien Wilkerson/Tnmot Aztro, and Nu Mafia
August 26, 2021, 9pm
Livestream performance of HUBRIS with Domsentfrommars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MEcN1SMlLo
August 31, 2021, 7pm
Public conversation with Malkia Okech, TK Smith, and Arien Wilkerson of Tnmot Aztro
Arien Wilkerson (They/she) is a Philadelphia-based gender fluid, black queer choreographer, performer, filmmaker, and installation artist, and the founder of Tnmot Aztro. Wilkerson has received numerous nominations and awards, including The National Endowment for the Arts "Big Read" Grant (2018), the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund award (2018), and was a New England Foundation for the Arts Rebecca Blunk Fund Awardee (2018).
TK Smith is a Philadelphia-based curator, writer, and cultural historian. His curatorial projects include Roland Ayers: Calligraphy of Dreams at the Woodmere Museum, and the 2021 Atlanta Biennial exhibition Virtual Remains at the Atlanta Contemporary. Smith's writing has been published in Art in America, the Monument Lab Bulletin, and ART PAPERS, where he is a contributing editor.
Malkia Okech is a Philadelphia-based researcher, cultural producer, and community archaeologist. She is interested in multi-modal archaeology, art, technology, cultural heritage, anti-capitalism, and liberation. Okech is the founder and curator of Memory Studio, a maker-space reckoning with decolonial knowledge accumulation, production, and speculation.
ZYGOTE is an experimental sound duo comprising Zaaqqara Trinity Powell and Travis Golden.
Domsentfrommars is an interdisciplinary artist and performer, who works at Tnmot Aztro and is directing work with the company for 2021.