Artists Space

Artists Space Dialogues:
Jackie Wang with Moor Mother & Brandee Younger

Conversation
November 24, 2020, 8pm

Sonic Legacies and Afro-Futures

For her third conversation, Jackie Wang will bring together electronic musician Moor Mother (Camae Dennis of the Black Quantum Futurism Collective) and harpist Brandee Younger, both artists that truly contain multitudes. Brandee Younger is a performer, composer, educator, and concert curator, who works in both jazz and classical traditions, bringing together influences as varied as Carlos Salzedo, Dorothy Ashby, and Alice Coltrane. Moor Mother has described her music as "low fi/dark rap/chill step/ blk girl blues/witch rap/coffee shop riot gurl songs/southern girl dittys/black ghost songs." Topics covered in this conversation include their paths to music-making, their philosophies of sound, their relationship to their instruments, and the musical legacies that influence their work.

A splitscreen image. In the left-hand image, a color image of a figure leaning against an iron railing on the steps of a brick building looking away from the camera, gazing outside the frame. On the right, a black-and-white image of a figure with their mouth opened looking down with a hand on a harp and an indistinguishable white light in the background.
[A splitscreen image. In the left-hand image, a color image of a figure leaning against an iron railing on the steps of a brick building looking away from the camera, gazing outside the frame. On the right, a black-and-white image of a figure with their mouth opened looking down with a hand on a harp and an indistinguishable white light in the background.]

Artists Space Dialogues is an ongoing series in which an invited curator brings together influential figures in contemporary art and culture to join them in a series of three in-depth public discussions. Our fall series is organized by Jackie Wang, a black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, musician, and author of Carceral Capitalism (Semiotext(e), 2018).

This program will be streamed online via Zoom as part of Artists Space Dialogues.

Artists Space Dialogues: Jackie Wang with Moor Mother & Brandee Younger. Dialogue Documentation. Tuesday, November 24, 2020, 8pm. Artists Space, New York. [Video documentation of multiple individuals engaged in dialogue with the use of imagery.]

Jackie Wang is a student of the dream state, black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, performer, and trauma monster and is currently a Heilbroner Center Fellow and Assistant Professor of Culture and Media Studies at The New School’s Eugene Lang College. She is the author of Carceral Capitalism (Semiotexte / MIT Press), on the racial, economic, political, legal, and technological dimensions of the US carceral state. In her most recent work, she has been researching the bail bonds industry and the history of risk assessment in criminal justice. A collection of her poetry, The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us From the Void is forthcoming from Nightboat books.

A prolific voice in the Philadelphia arts community, Camae Dennis has digitally released more than a dozen EPs as Moor Mother and Moor Mother Goddess since 2012. Additionally, she has performed in the punk band, The Mighty Paradocs and is also the co-founder of Rockers! Philly, an event series and festival focused on marginalized artists. More recently, she has been an active member of Black Quantum Futurism Collective, a literary and artistic collaboration with Rasheedah Philips (The Afrofuturist Affair).

Known as a hybrid harpist, Brandee Younger is classically trained and active in jazz and popular music. She is noted for her work with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and is heavily inspired by the works of Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby. She has worked with Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden, Bill Lee, Pharoah Sanders and Reggie Workman and has recorded with popular artists including Lauryn Hill, John Legend, Common (Finding Forever), Ryan Leslie, Drake and is featured on the Grammy Award – nominated album New York: A Love Story by Mack Wilds.

Program support for Artists Space is provided by The Friends of Artists Space, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Cy Twombly Foundation, The David Teiger Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York Community Trust, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Willem de Kooning Foundation, The Danielson Foundation, The Fox Aarons Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, The Destina Foundation, The Luce Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, VIA Art Fund, Arison Arts Foundation, The Chicago Community Fund, The David Rockefeller Fund, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, The Jill and Peter Kraus Foundation, The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation.