Episode 4: Freedom is a Constant Struggle
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
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Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
A performed film lecture exploring how the ‘Rumberas’ of Caribbean cinema of the 40’s and 50’s subverted demeaning images of themselves through dance, sound and a sociality that insisted on blackness as being a cultural performance, not simply due to skin colour.
A conversation between Philip and Moten: how do we read NourbeSe’s anti-narrative poetic lament in Glasgow today, given the city’s role in the history of slavery?
For day five of Ultra-red’s project, the investigation will review the previous work undertaken together, and perhaps draw up a summary of reflections and pose some future questions.
Complex ways of understanding our complex times. Maths & Poetics. Gesture & Physics. Collectivist Struggle & Desire. 5 days of performances, discussions, screenings and study sessions.
From really simple, open instructions, An Unrhymed Chord creates a kind of half-way point between composition and improvisation.
Los Glissandinos work with clarinet and sine tones beating and thrumming in your middle ear, all beautifully paced and serene, but with just enough steely menace broiling under the surface to keep you on edge.
A recording session for BBC Radio Scotland under the M74 ‘Ski Jump’ extension ramp, a secion of motorway that doesn’t go anywhere, one of several such structures that populate the motorway system in the centre of Glasgow.
60 cycle hums, jagged static cracklings, and clipped electron pinpricks, mutating them into sublime, post-techno grooves
A specially commissioned performance for organ. “The course of the stars were to be put to sound.”
Heat-mapped bodies, found porn films, Korean psyche-folk, creepy police intrusion and self-defence.
An extravagant debauch of huge pianos, plush toys, cognac and ritual.