other.explicit.bodies.

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, a 2011 Fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a certificate candidate at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University. Recently, Kosoko published "Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit" (Old City Publishing).

He is poet, curator, arts marketer, and contributing writer for Dance Journal and the Broad Street Review in Philadelphia. Visit: www.philadiction.org for more information.

I created this blog last fall as a way to begin having a deeper critical conversation with the artists that inspire me. I’m finally performing the work “other.explicit.body.” at Harlem Stage (Gatehouse) this weekend on Friday, April 27 at 7:30pm. I’m so excited to share this work which feels so much like an evolution in my thinking and visual articulation as an artist. I invite you to join me at Harlem Stage. There will be a reception after the show. Click here for Tickets.

Also, I will be begin publishing more of my own writings on this blog this summer. So come back and back again.

LONG LIVE KING 2PAC!

Fifteen years after his death, we finally have the technology to resurrect the dead, in hologram form at least. It’s kinda scary. The interesting thing is how 2PAC feels stuck in time somehow, his mannerisms have not advanced with the change in times. It’s as if gangsta rap is still a real art form?

2pac is alive (In Hologram) performs @ Coachella Hail Mary 2012
2PAC ALIVE as a hologramm Feat Snoop Dogg in Live at COACHELLA 2012

I’m performing a work in progress of “Songs to Make Your White Girl Cry” (REDUX)

Scratch Night: Thursday, April 12, at 7 PM, LAB, Philly

by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Songs to Make Your White Girl Cry (REDUX) is a work that unearths the innermost physical, psychological, and performative structures embedded in my current solo creative practice. Part social commentary and part historical self critique, this work references issues related to racial insensitivity, misogyny, and the patriarchal construct of masculinity.

The Live Arts Studio
919 N 5th St
Philadelphia, PA 19123
Free onsite parking + abundant neighborhood street parking

For more information: http://livearts-fringe.org/lab/scratch-night.cfm

Zebra Katz f/ Njena Reddd Foxxx: “Ima Read”

The first great rap song of 2012, “Ima Read” could work as a taunt directed towards Lil B, whose forgettable I’m Gay (2011) hedged around sexuality with the tact and humor of a twelve year-old. Here is an actual proclamation of identity, an ode to voguing and the drag ball culture of ’80s NYC coronated with an extended mix played over the Rick Owens collection at Paris Fashion Week. Like Paris Is Burning, the 1991 documentary which immortalized the ball scene, “Ima Read” is infectious because of its self-regarding intensity. You’re in or you’re “read,” and the song makes being in (or out, in this case) enviable.

With nothing to the production but a dancehall bass line bouncing into the void, “Ima Read” can seem like a weightless joke at first. But the dead-eyed refusal to add percussion or melody is the first sign that something is up. “Ima read that bitch / I’m gonna take that bitch to college / I’m gonna give that bitch some knowledge,” intones Katz (née Ojay Morgan), and the unfamiliarity of the lingo can be disorienting. It’s overt and funny in its overtness—the music video features some library dance numbers—but a serious undertone gives “Ima Read” a surprising depth and versatility. While the declasse appeal of Lil B is that he cannot distinguish between good and terrible, occasionally combining the two in invigorating ways, Zebra Katz can in four words write a “fuck you” that works as a tribute to a generation of forgotten artists who died of AIDS, as an absolutely great rap song that openly identifies as homosexual amidst a still-prevalent homophobic stain on the genre (see also, maybe: “212”), as a silly-scary viral video, and as an indelible, danceable, superior response to every asshole spouting this “no homo” bullshit.

language taken from: http://www.cokemachineglow.com/dailyops/6867/zebrakatz-imaread-2012

pictured: Nora Chipaumire in The Last Heifer

Eva Yaa Asantewaa, one of my favorite dance critics, recently published her full review of the Parallels: 2012 at Danspace Project! Read more below.

PLATFORM 2012: Parallels
Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church, NYC
February 2–March 31, 2012

By Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Parallels—a two-month series commissioned by Danspace and curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones—is arguably the most significant event of the current dance season. A provocative survey of innovative black choreographers, some veteran and some emerging, who work within non-mainstream dance, Parallels revisited and updated a program, also calledParallels, created by Houston-Jones 30 years ago. That series focused on an earlier generation, such as Blondell Cummings, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Fred Holland and Houston-Jones himself. “Black dance” is a quick, easy label to say and write, but what, if anything, does it mean, and what does it mean, now, to be a black choreographer? Read the full review.

Watch The Last Heifer

Did You Hear/Attend TEDxHarlem?

In an effort to provide the best possible access for all of the Harlem community and supporters, the organizers of the TEDxHarlem conference slated for Tuesday March 27 at the Apollo Theater, have moved the event. TEDxHarlem will now be held at Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive, Harlem, NY.

Visit http://tedxharlem.com/ for details.

Drawing from an eight-year project by New York-based movement artist Ralph Lemon (b. 1952) in conjunction with Little Yazoo, Mississippi resident Walter Carter (1907–2010), 1856 Cessna Road explores a friendship that evolved into a close collaboration and features digital animation, large-scale color photographs and a film installation.

http://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibition/ralph-lemon-1856-cessna-road

JUXTaPOSE
Studio 34 in partnership with The Philadiction Movement, a member of anonymous bodies art collective
Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 7:30pm
Studio 34, 4522 Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19143

Purchase Tickets [Here]!

JUXTaPOSE at Studio 34 exists to support the work of post-emerging, post-disciplinary, hybrid artists by offering them a platform to present their work while connecting it to audiences who are willing to interact with challenging, ground breaking ways of experiencing contemporary art from artists based in and outside of Philadelphia.

Featured Artists:

Marcel Foster (Host with the Most)
Eun Jung Choi
Meg Foley
Jillian Harris
Jungwoong Kim
Jessica Morgan

Dance Party with DJ Rucyl Mills immediately following the performance.
Your ticket purchased on Dance Box Office includes admission to the dance party.

Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Art

Historic Role Reversal.