National Keynote Artists: Alisha B. Wormsley with collaborator Lisa E. Harris
Alisha B. Wormsley (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Wormsley views her art as a rebellion. In the same way being a Black womxn in America is an act of rebellion. Her work contributes to the imagining of the future of arts, science, and technology through the black womxn lens, challenging contemporary views of modern American life through whichever medium she feels is the best form of expression, creating an object, a sculpture, a billboard, performance, or film. The work is a bridge for social engagement, activism, redistribute wealth, science fiction, public art and film and media to reveal lesser-known histories and fantasize about alternative futures. Wormsley’s work has received a number of awards and grants to support programs namely the Children of NAN archive, There Are Black People In The Future and most recently Sibyls Shrine. Her work has exhibited globally. Over the last few years, Wormsley has designed several public art initiatives including Streaming Space, a 24 foot pyramid with video and sound installed in Pittsburgh's downtown Market Square, and AWxAW, a multimedia interactive installation and film commission at the Andy Warhol Museum. Wormsley created a public program out of her work, There Are Black People In the Future, which gives mini-grants to open up discourse around displacement and gentrification and was also awarded a fellowship with Monument Lab and the Goethe Institute. In 2020, Wormsley launched an art residency for Black creative mothers called Sibyls Shrine, which has received two years of support from the Heinz Endowments. Wormsley has an MFA in Film and Video from Bard College and currently is a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University to research and create work rooted in matriarchal leadership and mysticism in the African-American community.
Lisa E. Harris
Lisa E. Harris, Li, is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, creative soprano, performer, composer, improvisor, writer, and researcher from Houston Texas. Recognized by Huffington Post as “one of fourteen artists transforming Opera '', Li's work resists genre classification as she focuses on the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit and place. Using voice, theremin, photography, movement, improvisation, meditation, and new media to explore spatial awareness,substantivalism, relationalism, intuition, panoptic surveillance, sonification and personification, Li maintains a focused concentration on healing in performance and living. She is the founder and creative director of Studio Enertia, an arts collective and production company in Houston Texas. Studio Enertia is the producer of Harris’s recently completed 10 year durational work, “Cry of the Third Eye, a new opera film in Three Acts” that archives the effects of gentrification on her Houston neighborhood.Li is the 2021 recipient of the Dorothea Tanning Award for Music/ Sound, awarded by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and a 2021 Texas Vignette Artist Grant winner.
Recent commissions include "Give It a Rest: X Lullabies in Support of Black Rest/Unrest" for the contemporary classical duo Mazumal, and “ A Black Woman Told Me and I Believe Her. A Movement'', commissioned by Harvard University for the 2020 Freshman Seminar with Professor Claire Chase. She is a current Monroe Research Fellow at Tulane University's Center for the Gulf South where she is developing her environmental justice research project “Onshore Trilling: What to Do When the Earth Sings the Bruise.
When: Friday, August 13, 4:30 PM MDT
Where: In-Person in Five Points at Spangalang Brewery
Local Keynote Speaker: Dr. Ellamaria Ray
Ellamaria Ray hungers for the day when people, particularly Black people, can walk fully self-expressed, creatively manifesting their unique brilliance while sculpting multiple empowering futures. As a professor of Africana studies and humanistic anthropology, a student of the Jamaican Rastafari movement, and a performing and interdisciplinary visual artist, Ray looks at humanity from intersectional lenses to tease out a deeper understanding of our complex experience. Ethnographic data, literature, and visual art are her foundational tools.
Ray earned a B.A. from Colorado College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University. She has studied figurative and conceptual ceramic sculpture independently with Arthur González. She has taken sculpture classes from Jean Van Keuren (Davis Arts Center), Arnold Zimmerman (Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass, Colorado), Gayla Lemke, and Barry Rose (Art Students League of Denver). Marie EvB Gibbons (Marie EvB Gibbons Studio) played a pivotal role in Ray’s ceramic development.
Ray’s early sojourns led her to Cortona, Italy, as an artist-in-residence for the University of Georgia’s Study Abroad Program. Fellowships from the University of California, Davis, and Colorado College allowed her to analyze her Rastafari ethnographic data, explore their decolonizing diasporic philosophy and create several bodies of artwork that highlighted their Africanity. Fieldwork took her to Jamaica, Botswana, and the midwestern and southern United States. Always, she seeks the African roots of contemporary diasporic African cultural manifestations. Currently, she is creating a body of ceramic quilts that privilege Octavia E. Butler’s literary legacy. This body of work will serve as a portal through which viewers can witness how Butler insisted on putting people of color in the future while masterfully weaving connective tissue between issues of identity, racism, classism, gender, ageism, and ableism in time and space.
As an anthropologist, artist and educator, she strives to teach and understand the complex vision diasporic Africans create for themselves and all of humanity as we walk even further into the twenty-first century.
When: Friday, August 13, 2:00 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
Featured Musical Artist: Kayla Marque
Kayla Marque is an unstoppable force in the music industry. Her soul, R&B, and funk roots run deep with a musical family pedigree that stretches back to legendary supergroup Earth, Wind & Fire. Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Marque was Voted Best Singer/Songwriter in the Denver Westword and released her second studio album "Brain Chemistry" in 2020. Brain Chemistry is the culmination of years of work consisting of two EPs — Right Brain and Left Brain and a slew of visuals. For Kayla Marque, music is a means of expression that is better when shared, and this is a cause she is set to champion as she sets her sights on the coming years and those beyond.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “Evening Performances” begins at 5:30 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
Black Actors Guild - Civic Discourse: The Game Show!
The Black Actors Guild believes that every individual holds a unique story, and that telling that story can make a real difference. Whether it’s comedy, storytelling, improv or script-writing - we see it as our duty to use those mediums to create a better world.
Presentation: Civic Discourse: The Game Show!” is a production that highlights, challenges, and celebrates the issues, ideas and platforms that make up the political industrial complex. From Senate hearings to the performative nature of opinion sharing on social media, politics have become a theatrical production. This production is both timely and needed during this adversarial political climate and the racial unrest across the country as well as right here in Denver.
When: Friday, August 13th, 7:00 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
R. Alan Brooks - Afrofuturism Book Club Guide
R. Alan Brooks teaches writing for Regis University’s MFA program, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop. He’s the writer/creator of “The Burning Metronome” and “Anguish Garden” - graphic novels featuring social commentary, as well as The Colorado Sun’s weekly comic, “What’d I Miss?”. He also hosts the popular “MotherF**ker In A Cape” comics podcast, which focuses on marginalized members of the geek world, and has written comic books for Pop Culture Classroom, Zenescope Entertainment, and more. In addition, Alan is a musician and noted stage host, regularly emceeing celebrated events, like the DINK Awards Show, and Arise Music Festival.
When: Saturday, August 14th, 2:30 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine with pre-registration required
Robert Franklin II - Personal Stories About Black Hair
Robert Franklin, II is an Edu-tainer whose passion for youth, difference, challenge and opportunity has launched several self-awareness programs, courageous conversations, training and facilitation. In his work as a youth developer, Robert worked alongside youth, adults and families in classrooms, government agencies, private organizations to create meaning from educational opportunity. In his consultancy and as a performer, "Mr. RAWbert" blends learning, teaching and connecting with all types of audiences using his R.A.W. (respect and wonder) approach to deliver customized messages for all communities.
Presentation: For most people, hair is a fundamental feature of identity. For centuries, Black hair has been a currency of life experience. I tell life's stories so I never forget the historical trauma of my ancestry and do my hair because it carries a legacy that has yet to be.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “10 Minute Talks” begins at 1:00 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
Chelvanaya Gabriel - Creative Resilience Dialogues
Chelvanaya Gabriel (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artivist and resilience facilitator with a science background. A prolific self-taught visual artist, they found an Audre Lorde-inspired form of self-care and healing-survival through painting after the 2016 election. This art practice has since expanded to become interwoven with their social and spatial justice work. They create space through their work where stories of wellness, intergenerational trauma, disability, and neurodiversity, especially of QTBIPOC folx, can be witnessed and collectively processed. Their work is guided by actively decolonized contemplative/somatic practices and an embodied awareness of ancestral knowledge/healing. With an afroqueerfuturist/disability justice lens, they ask “Whose stories aren’t being told?” With an interdisciplinary and intentionally collaborative approach, they pose this question and step into an audacity to hold space for all the complex stories that must be told.
Workshop: Creative Resilience Dialogues are a series of workshops, community-engaged art presentations and consultation work designed with creative non-verbal expression as the entry point to community building, relational change and exploring ideas about wellness, identity, and resilience. These experiences are integrated with decolonized contemplative and somatic therapeutic practices and all workshops/trainings, regardless of topic, are designed with a liberatory social-justice framework. In every Dialogue workshop, we co-create a space where everyone has the opportunity to feel both brave and safe to share their experiences of grief and/or trauma with each other. Participants are then given prompts to use for a short art-making activity and these art pieces are then shared as non-verbal communicators of meaning and experience, along with verbal sharing of the same in both small and large group “circles.” Participants will have multiple opportunities to be heard, to be seen and to bear witness to others. The final activity will allow the group to collectively explore ways that the broad themes raised in the space can inform how we move through the world, and in our communities, beyond the workshop.
Participants can use whatever art materials they have available: pens, markers, watercolors, acrylics, etc.
When: Saturday, August 14, 11:00 AM MDT
Where: Online via Zoom with pre-registration required
Shannon Galpin in Conversation with Mona Etahawy - F*ck the Patriarchy
Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues and global feminism. She is based in Cairo and New York City. She is the author of “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution,” and “The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls”. She is a contributor to the New York Times opinion pages. Her commentaries have appeared in several other publications and she is a regular guest analyst on various television and radio shows.
In November 2011, Egyptian riot police beat her, breaking her left arm and right hand, and sexually assaulted her and she was detained for 12 hours by the Interior Ministry and Military Intelligence. Newsweek magazine named Ms Eltahawy one of its "150 Fearless Women of 2012", Time magazine featured her along with other activists from around the world as its People of the Year and Arabian Business magazine named her one of the 100 Most Powerful Arab Women. Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Ms Eltahawy was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years, including almost six years as a Reuters correspondent and she reported for various media from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China.
Mona was born on Aug. 1, 1967 in Port Said, Egypt and has lived in the U.K, Saudi Arabia and Israel. She calls herself a proud liberal Muslim. In 2005, she was named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement and she is a member of the Communications Advisory Group for Musawah, the global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family.
Colorado based, creative and activist, Shannon Galpin, worked for over a decade on women’s rights projects in Afghanistan alongside Afghan men and women. In 2009, she became the first person to mountain bike in Afghanistan and four years later she found herself supporting and training the first Afghan Women’s National Cycling team and helping to build and support the burgeoning right to ride movement. Shannon is the author of two books, her memoir, Mountain to Mountain: A Journey of Adventure and Activism for the Women of Afghanistan, and a photography book Streets of Afghanistan based upon her 2012 traveling street art installation of the same name. She is a producer of the documentary film, Afghan Cycles, and has acted as field producer in Afghanistan on other productions.
The International Olympic Committee awarded Shannon an Honorary Achievement Diploma in 2015 for her work promoting gender equity through sports, and Shannon is a recognized Fellow with the Explorer’s Club and with the Royal Society of the Arts in England. A passionate believer in public art as activism, Shannon creates murals in multiple countries about climate justice, women’s rights, and is working on a immersive gallery installation about brain trauma and memory loss, Terra Incognita
Shannon speaks internationally about social justice issues at venues such as the United Nations, The Harvard Club, The Explorer’s Club, National Geographic Headquarters, the Italian Parliament, multiple TEDx stages, and keynotes corporate conferences. She has been featured in national and international media such as; Outside Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Dateline NBC, BBC Radio, Bicycling, The Sunday Times, Huck Magazine, The New York Times. Multiple films and books have been made about her work, including the most recent with Global Cycling Network in the UK, Trailblazers about the 130 years of women’s cycling history. Shannon is a sexual assault survivor and two-time traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivor.
When: Friday, August 13, 3:00 PM MDT streamed and screened at RedLine
Where: Online via Zoom with pre-registration required
Quincy Scott Jones - Afrocentric Performance Poetry
Quincy Scott Jones has earned an M.A., an M.F.A., and $200 once working as a supermarket clown. His work has appeared in the African American Review, The North American Review, Love Jawns: A Mixtape, and The Feminist Wire as well anthologies such as Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky, Let Loose on the World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75, and Black Lives Have Always Mattered: A Collection of Essays, Poems, and Personal Narratives. With Nina Sharma he co-created the Nor’easter Exchange: a multicultural, multi-city reading series. His first book, The T-Bone Series, was published by Whirlwind Press in 2009 and his first comic, Black Nerd, is coming soon.
Presentation: This reading will consist of a series of performance poetry - some more narrative, some spoken word – that look Afrocentric history and the presence of African Americans in science fiction pop culture in both serious and satirical ways. My work is influenced by Sonia Sanchez, Robert Hayden, The Last Poets, Octavia Butler, and Dwayne McDuffie.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “Virtual Talks & Performances” begins at 10:00 AM MDT
Where: Online, exclusively on RedLine’s Facebook and Instagram pages
Joe Kanzangu - Black Individualism and the Black Renaissance
Hi my name is Joe Kanzangu, I write under the pseudonym, J.K. Tobleman with aspirations to be published by the end of the year. I've studied creative writing. I’m currently working on a piece for UnDark Magazine as why there is hesitance in the general black population when it comes to exploring natural spaces and the great outdoors. I am actively influenced by the world around me. I am working on a collection of short stories loosely based on mine, and many people that look like me, experiences here in Colorado. I tie in my own personal journey, skiing, backpacking and hiking through Utah, New Mexico, Montana, and Colorado. These areas and niches are predominately white spaces and ventures, but in my attempt to normalize black experiences and the wide lenses that they inhabit, I've learned the importance of cross-racial interactions. The more we allow spaces for all of us to be our most authentic self, the better we can build future communities. The more we understand and highlight our differences the better we can leave a lasting impacts on those same communities. We're all one community, the human race. We've let out-dated socio-categorical constructs limit our interactions with one another. That's why it's so easy to live in the fear of not personally knowing others who don't look like you. And that's why in all of my work, I plan to dive into those diverse experiences and encounters that show the humanity in all of us, so that we can all gain a better understanding of each other. In understanding the depth of our individuality, we also gain insight on the vastness of the diaspora. Then we can place absolute notions and biases aside, and appreciate the fullness, singularity and beauty of our individuality.
Presentation: The Black Renaissance happened and then what? Well, we shifted back to normal and blackness was even more commodified. Corporations marketed their products towards diversity. Yet, their boards remained the same. Our activism was capitalized. And black communities remain disenfranchised. Yet. There’s hope. Though they aim to keep the narrative washed. We know the transcendent power of our resilient nature. The power to spearhead innovation, to lead, to build. The future is of black joy and the power that comes from it. It is the capability of breaking societal boundaries and defining your own blackness. It is prideful, vibrant, universal, and untamed. As our hair rises up against the invisible forces that aim to define us. We continue to grow, to evolve, to maintain that fundamental sweetness that has carried this world.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “10 Minute Talks” begins at 1:00 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
Dr. Constantine Loum - Healthy Living: The Future of Waste Management in African Cities
Loum S.L. Constantine BSc., MSc., PhD. is a Public Health Nutritionist and Senior lecturer at the department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Gulu University; he lectures in the areas of medical communication skills, public health nutrition, medical anthropology, and research methods in programs of Bachelors and Masters of Public Health, Human Medicine Medical Anthropology; Food Security and Community Nutrition. He is a Mentor who also supports research at all levels while actively participating in grant proposal development for the university. He holds a doctoral degree (University of Vienna) in Cultural and Social Anthropology with specialty in medical anthropology.
Talk: African population has always been threatened by the environment that they live in, for example the effects of Tsetse Flies, mosquitoes, snakes, water borne diseases etc. which heavily contribute to high burden of diseases in our population; our environment determines how healthy we are in many ways. The future of health of the African population depends on the environment surrounding them. It is known that our environment is nature, however we are also responsible for the way our surroundings look like. Millions of Africans have died as a result of poor status of our environment. This discussion paper examines how Africans are going to live healthily with respect to the roles they play in managing waste produced as a result of their lifestyles; it also looks at the perception of the populace in managing their environment vis-a-vis their health. To achieve this, a scoping review of several literature is done to determine the current practices and perceptions of the African populace on waste management and propose best approaches to enable healthy living for Africans in their cities.
When: Friday, August 13, 3:45pm MDT
Where: Streamed Virtually and Screened at RedLine
Venazir Martinez - Hila-bana: Weaving Communities through a Street Art Hunt
Venazir is a visual anthropreneur, and a street muralist. A multi-potential creative best credited for her unprecedented social experiment using site-specific street art that challenged tthe public's visual perception on cultural markers and design theories. She graduated cum laude with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines Baguio in 2018.Her famous series of public art is found in Baguio City, Philippines, entitled Hila-bana, temporary stitching, unified by the red string concept portraying anthropological figures of the collective identities of the Cordilleras. The string is a democratized learning tool to weave the community’s mindset on the revitalization of one’s cultural identity. Hila-bana inspired not only the artistic community but also created a detailed visualization of the fluidity of a unified nation. She has been visually reformulating and developing this creative voyage in tune with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and Harnisch Foundation in New York. Martinez’s creative process delved into the influence of Filipino indigenous knowledge and links it with our contemporary mindset through the lenses of our multitudinous identities. Her style captures the realistic representations of indigenous peoples, and customs. Simultaneously, permeated with flamboyant stratification of abstractive, delineating forms, and spontaneous over-all. This progressive visual approach exemplifies our multifaceted influences that shaped our core values. Venazir’s deep enthrallment on the discourse of the discovery of one’s identity ultimately engendered her existence, thus, primed to deconstruct her concept of continuity on Filipino’s connected presence on a global scale.
Presentation: Hila-bana is derived from the Filipino term hilbanahan, meaning temporary stitching or basking. The word used for this project symbolizes the core action made alongside the traveling individuals of different ethnicities. The unifying element of the project is the concept of Hinihilang habi (red thread). Which actively encompasses the various ethnolinguistic groups in the region. The red string depicts the dominant material used in our indigenous weaving traditions. Moreso, the thread magnifies the forms of temporality driven by the constant search for an ideal national identity. Where we, the little brown brothers and sisters, stood ground from a constantly shifting archipelagic country subjected by centuries of colonial rule. The thread is our guide to empowerment, and a symbol of communal connection, and a multi-linear blueprint for future generations. The artist believes there is a possibility of globalizing the Hila-bana project because based on our indigenous communities’ anthropological history, our knowledge systems and practices are universal than we are local. To improve such a concept globally, we must first start engaging ourselves with our own unique identities. No matter where our bloodline originated, the innate beauty brought about by our indigenous groups enriched our Filipino individuality on its fluidity in spaces in our archipelago, creative ideologies, and in our spiritual resources. It is high time to deconstruct our people’s value systems’ mindsets and produce a catalyst for enrichment for the individuals who fought to preserve identity and remind us of who we are.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “Virtual Talks & Performances” begins at 10:00 AM MDT
Where: Online, exclusively on RedLine’s Facebook and Instagram pages
Motus Theater - JustUs: Stories from the Frontlines of the Criminal Justice System
From 2013-present, Motus has been working with undocumented leaders to write and perform autobiographical monologues on stage (Do You Know Who I Am?, 2013; Salsa LOTERÍA, 2015; UndocuMonologues, 2019). For some performances, we invite law enforcement, legislative, business, or education leaders to stand with Motus monologists on stage and read their stories (Law Enforcement Leaders Read DREAMer Stories, 2017; Women of Resolution, 2018 and 2020). We recently launched the UndocuAmerica Series Podcast to share these monologues in two forms: stories read by prominent Americans and a companion podcast (Shoebox Stories) where they are read by monologists themselves (Motus Monologues).
Presentation: The JustUs project was developed by Motus Theater in 2019 and premiered as a keynote at the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice Conference in front of 1,600 stakeholders. Since then, the JustUs monologues have been featured in several national and global conferences and have been read and embraced by religious, social justice, civic, and law enforcement leaders across the state. In 2021, Motus is launching workshops with two new groups of formerly incarcerated leaders, touring the JustUs monologues in virtual and in-person performances and preparing to launch season two of our podcasts: JustUs.
Monologists: Dereck Bell & Ernie Watts, Daniel Guillory & Ernie Watts
Spoken Word: Dominique Christina
Music: Spirit of Grace & Michelle Rocqet
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “Virtual Talks & Performances” begins at 10:00 AM MDT
Where: Online, exclusively on RedLine’s Facebook and Instagram pages
Toluwanimi Obiwole - Erotic Justice & Afrofuturism
Toluwanimi Oluwafunmilayo Obiwole is a Nigerian-born, Colorado-raised multidisciplinary artist, scholar, medicine womxn, and consultant. She is the founder of the Palm Wine Collective (est. 2019), a Black creative arts collective. She served as Denver's first Youth Poet Laureate from 2015-2016. In 2017 she was announced as one of The Root's 25 Young Futurists. She was a member and co-director of the literary and performance organization NUBA from 2015-2019. She served as a board member for the city of Denver's Commission on Cultural Affairs from 2017-2019. She is a two time TEDx Mile High speaker and along with being published in international anthologies such as Breakbeat Poets Volume II (Haymarket 2018), she is the author of three poetry books: OMI EBI MI (2015), How to Become a Lightning Storm (Penmanship 2017), and HONEY (2018). Her visual art and music has been published and distributed internationally. Her art is a reflection of her ancestry, the rituals of healing in her present, and the shape of her dreams of the future.
Talk: This artistic presentation will focus on the ways the theories of Erotic Justice can be solidified into rituals that can help us as humans be more present with our realities, thus realizing and claiming autonomy in how we shape them. In America, we live very restrictive lives in which even our definition of the erotic and our connection to our erotic power is diluted and bound to capitalism and capitalistic understandings of sex and power. In American mainstream media and public policy, we are offered deep pleasure only through sex (intercourse) and are told that we only deserve or can connect to that pleasure if we are “productive” members of society. There are even rules spoken and otherwise that dictate the “right” kind of productivity, and for the most part, the stress and anxiety of reaching productivity goals blocks many Americans from accessing any true or deep pleasure in their daily lives. Erotic Justice is a practice of collective liberation through the decolonization of individual daily life.
When: Friday, August 13, 2:45 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine and Streamed
Celia Peters - Story in Song Workshop
I am a filmmaker, curator and educator. My practice is steeped in storytelling, particularly science fiction with an afrofuturist perspective.
Workshop: Ever notice how music elevates a film or television show? Music can give storytelling superpowers. We’re going to explore the relationship between sound and vision by listening in a different way and using song to inspire stories of Black futures. This workshop will help you better understand song as a narrative tool.
When: Friday, August 13, 12:30 PM MDT
Where: Online via Zoom with pre-registration required
Slam Nuba is an organization that focuses on literacy, mentorship and competitive, performance-based poetry. The mission of Slam Nuba is to promote the creation and performance of poetry and cultivate literary activities and engage the community, focused on the power of the written and spoken word.
Aerik Francis, poetry performance: Body Poetics / Afrofuturist Technology
Aerik Francis (they/them/he/him) is a Queer Black & Latinx poet based in Denver, Colorado, USA. They are a Canto Mundo poetry fellow and a The Watering Hole fellow. They are also a poetry reader for Underblong poetry journal and event coordinator for Slam Nuba. They have poetry published widely and have performed poetry in venues all over the city. Find more information, links, and contact information for bookings at their website, phaentompoet.com.
Performance: Challenging mainstream technocultural assumptions of a raceless future, Afrofuturism explores culturally distinct approaches to technology,” writes scholar Dr. Alondra Nelson in the intro to the Afrofuturism special issue of Social Text. The recognition of the living body as technology is critical in afrofuturist invention. Beatboxing to emulate electronic drums and deejay techniques, an example highlighted by Mark Dery’s essay “Black to the Future”, exemplifies how Black people have developed the body’s technological potentials toward crafting futuristic art and sense. More than a simple reduction to “Black body”, body poetics and afrofuturism expresses both an insistence on Black humanity, and simultaneously a rejection, toward the vast wonder of Black beyond. In this poetry performance set, afrofuturism is expressed through the body’s capacity to create breath, to dance, to beatbox, to transform, to alter, to element, to expand from past to present to future. The poems call upon ancestors of the past, including specifically Frantz Fanon and Octavia Butler, in order to reconnect with presence and position for a newly crafted future.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “Evening Performances” begins at 5:30 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
Helanius J. Wilkins - The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging
Lafayette, Louisiana native and Boulder, Colorado transplant, Helanius J. Wilkins is a choreographer, performance artist, educator, and innovator who lives in a country where, not even for a moment, is he allowed to forget he is Black. Wilkins's creative research and projects are rooted in the interconnections of American contemporary performance, cultural history, and identities of Black men. His projects examine the raced dancing body and ways ritual can access knowledge. He uses remembering to piece together and liberate Black identity through performance. Intrigued by ideas about indeterminacy in creative process and performance, he approaches performance and pedagogy as means of re-framing perspectives, creative practices, and technical training. In his intermedia collaborations he works with artists from a wide range of disciplines, including film, video, and design.
Presentation: Rejecting finite points/products, The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging is an ongoing and always shifting dance-quilt, confronting and celebrating heritage, resiliency, justice, and hope. This collaborative, immersive work, performed by a male duet, preferences the value of bodies coexisting – sharing weight and responsibility, dancing to become better ancestors. Activating technologies of the body, tools, and toys in a non-colonizing fashion, this work centers on belonging as a way to disrupt the erasure of silenced stories and forge paths towards justice/equitable landscapes. The project’s first iteration will take place March 2022 in Michigan. Among awarded support for the creation of this work, Lead Commissioner Redline Contemporary Arts Center and Wilkins along with three co-commissioners based in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Iowa have been awarded a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund award. Redline and Wilkins will be working closely to coordinate community engagements to develop content for the creation of this work in Colorado.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “10 Minute Talks” begins at 1:00 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
I began my intentional artistic journey creating handmade abstract jewelry. Shortly after, came the idea to make custom wood jewelry. Following that experience, I began designing abstracts with gel pens, yarn, metal, paint, and now with digital applications. Needless to say, my projection as an artist goes far beyond just one specific medium. I believe my art style to be a pure flow of spirit - an imprint of my unique spiritual DNA. If my soul wants to creatively convey a message, I will use whatever tools, mediums, and/or applications that seem fit to express that energy.
Presentation: This socially engaged art project will be created as a virtual interactive art gallery. Each piece will feature an abstract of actual millionaires from our real-life African American History.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “10 Minute Talks” begins at 1:00 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
Youth on Record
Jahmila AaronAli aka Mama JAH
Jahmila AaronAli also known as Mama JAH is a Student of Life, local Denver Poet, Professional Dancer, Inspiring Artistivist, Entrepreneur, Martial Arts Champion, a Loving Mama, and a Boss Business Woman. MJ inspires to be Poetry in Motion. She believes everything has a vibration and the energy Mama JAH wants to express is the principles of Hip-Hop, embracing the emotion that needs to be felt, and that God is within all.
Mama JAHs ultimate goal is to create a safe artistic space where people of ALL color can come in together and express themselves authentically with no judgement.
She want her space to advocate for Business Environmental Sustainability. Mama JAHs Lounge LLC will be the first Café in Denver, Colorado to be an Earthship business. She states “Through my Poetry, Dancing, Martial Arts, Baking and Cooking, Determination, Charisma, Personality, and Resilience I know this business will help myself, the community, and our world heal tremendously.”
You can find Mama JAH at these platforms. IG - mamajah333 FB - Jahmila AaronAli
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “Evening Performances” begins at 5:30 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
As a black, pansexual, polyamorous, genderqueer, womxn. They exist as the in-between, the darkness that serves as the mirror to our shadow selves. Xango’s other world guides us to accept the parts of ourselves that have been deemed irredeemable. Assétou Xango is a poet and community activist born and raised in Colorado. They have been writing since they were in 8th grade. As a teenager, they were featured on HBO’s Brave New Voices in 2010 and is a two-time TEDxMileHigh Speaker. They have represented Denver, CO in competitions across the nation, was featured in Westword’s Top 100 Creatives, and published in Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s literary journal entitled “Glyph”.
Xango is the Emeritus Poet Laureate of Aurora, Colorado (2017-2021) and founder of Dark Goddess Collective. Dark Goddess Collective redistributes resources to Black Femmes to heal their unworthy stories and live the life they desire. In all of their work, Xango is dedicated to the visibility and rights of womxn and gender non-conforming people of color and promoting the use of storytelling to dismantle binaries and divisions.
When: Saturday, August 14
Series of “Evening Performances” begins at 5:30 PM MDT
Where: In-Person at RedLine
