Artists Space

If improvisation could serve as a manual,
if gesture could serve as a guide

Discussion
May 26, 2022, 7:30pm

11 Cortlandt Alley

Please join Artists Space in conjunction with Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art for an evening of artistic performances and queries into If improvisation could serve as a manual, if gesture could serve as a guide, hosted by Vleeshal’s nomadic curators Nomaduma Rosa Masilela and Thiago de Paula Souza in conversation with artists Jace Clayton, Sonia Louise Davis, Prince Grace, and Shala Miller, with reenactment of work by Jota Mombaça.

Presented in collaboration with Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art

Digitally manipulated image of a cypress knee on a pink background. In the top left corner, "artists space / vleeshal center for contemporary art" is written in black text. In the centre “If improvisation could serve as a manual, if gesture could serve as a guide” is written in black text. In the bottom right corner “Thursday May 26 / 7:30pm 11 Cortlandt Alley” is written in black text.
Flyer for If improvisation could serve as a manual, if gesture could serve as a guide. May 26, 2022, Artists Space. [Digitally manipulated image of a cypress knee on a pink background. In the top left corner, "artists space / vleeshal center for contemporary art" is written in black text. In the centre “If improvisation could serve as a manual, if gesture could serve as a guide” is written in black text. In the bottom right corner “Thursday May 26 / 7:30pm 11 Cortlandt Alley” is written in black text.]

If Improvisation could serve as a manual, if gesture could serve as a guide is an evening of performance and conversation that serves as the inaugural session of the two-year nomadic curatorship that Nomaduma Rosa Masilela and Thiago de Paula Souza have begun at Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art. The nomadic program takes place beyond the walls of Vleeshal's Middelburg home base, and is guided by the following question, which currently frames the core of their collaborative curatorial practice: How do we learn to love each other while we are embattled on so many fronts? This evening, which converges around ideas of improvisation and gesture, serves as an opening gesture towards a publication that will emerge from the two year program, and which will serve as an inconclusive manual, a how-to, a guide: how does one share? how does one survive? how does one fight? how does one repair? how does one nourish?

Born and raised in New York City, Sonia Louise Davis is a visual artist, writer and performer. She has presented her work at the Whitney Museum (NY), ACRE (Chicago), Sadie Halie Projects (Minneapolis), Visitor Welcome Center (LA), Ortega y Gasset (Brooklyn) and Rubber Factory (NY), among other venues. Residencies and fellowships include the Laundromat Project’s Create Change Fellowship (NY), Civitella Ranieri (Italy), New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (Brooklyn), Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice (NY), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Artist in Residence Program (NY), Studio Immersion Project Fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Print Making Workshop (NY) and STONELEAF RETREAT (NY). Her newest book, “slow and soft and righteous, improvising at the end of the world (and how we make a new one)” was released in 2021 and published by Co—Conspirator Press, a publishing platform that operates out of the Feminist Center for Creative Work in Los Angeles. An honors graduate of Wesleyan University (BA, African American Studies) and alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Sonia lives and works in Harlem.

Prince Grace is a transdisciplinary researcher and doctoral candidate at Northwestern University exploring undisciplined inquiry in the age of disciplined study. Wandering the space between social research, information work, and artistic and curatorial practice, his science/fictions stage experimental performances of detection, gathering, and ordering across online and offline spaces. His ongoing projects include a critical lexicography of race-futuring and an ethnography of thresholds and futility in the wake of climate change.

Jota Mombaça is an interdisciplinary artist whose work derives from poetry, critical theory, and performance. The sonic and visual matter of words plays an important role in their practice, which often relates to anti-colonial critique and gender disobedience. Through performance, visionary fiction, and situational strategies of knowledge production, they intend to rehearse the end of the world as we know it and the figuration of what comes after we dislodge the Modern- Colonial subject off its podium.

Shala Miller, also known as Freddie June when she sings, was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio by two southerners named Al and Ruby. At around the age of 10 or 11, Miller discovered quietude, the kind you’re sort of pushed into, and then was fooled into thinking that this is where she should stay put. Since then, Miller has been trying to find her way out, and find her way into an understanding of herself and her history, using photography, video, writing and singing as an aid in this process. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied photography, film, video and writing.

Jace Clayton is an artist and writer based in New York, also known for his work as DJ/rupture. He is the author of Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Music and Digital Culture (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and was awarded a 2020 Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant to support Behold the Monkey, his upcoming book on contemporary art, faith, and social media. Clayton is currently Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University and Interim Director of the Sound Art Program.

Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art organises exhibitions of contemporary art and an accompanying public program at Vleeshal in Middelburg, the Netherlands. Under the directorship of the current director Roos Gortzak, artists such as Cally Spooner, Ola Vasiljeva, Simone Forti, Andrea Éva Györi, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Paul Maheke have developed new works. Since 2015, Vleeshal has extended its aim to provide space for experiment beyond its walls by embarking on a global journey. In that year, Vleeshal kicked off the Nomadic Program, to further research what it means to present artworks in unconventional places and unusual contexts – for artist, curator and audience. www.vleeshal.nl

Support is provided by Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol 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 City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, Imperfect Family Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Willem de Kooning 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, Arison Arts Foundation, The David Rockefeller Fund, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, The Jill and Peter Kraus Foundation, The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation.

    Over a black background, “terminology / BLACK** / adj. / 1. Having the very dark color of the night sky or the eye’s pupil / 2. Of or relating to any various population groups of especially African ancestry often considered as having dark pigmentation of the skin but in fact having a wide range of skin colors / 3. Of or relating to Black people / 4. Dirty, soiled / 5. Characterized by the absence of light / 6. Served without milk or cream / 7. Indicative of condemnation or discredit / 8. Heavy / 9. Connected with or invoking the supernatural and especially the devil” is written in white text. Certain words are underlined and appear in grey.
    Prince Grace, Of Black, 2021. [Over a black background, “terminology / BLACK** / adj. / 1. Having the very dark color of the night sky or the eye’s pupil / 2. Of or relating to any various population groups of especially African ancestry often considered as having dark pigmentation of the skin but in fact having a wide range of skin colors / 3. Of or relating to Black people / 4. Dirty, soiled / 5. Characterized by the absence of light / 6. Served without milk or cream / 7. Indicative of condemnation or discredit / 8. Heavy / 9. Connected with or invoking the supernatural and especially the devil” is written in white text. Certain words are underlined and appear in grey.]