Upcoming Talks

Babes,

I’m going to be participating in two events mid-May, which is incredibly just two weeks away.

1. Keynote address for the Primer encuentro virtual: Perspectivas cuir e indígenas en Abya Yala [First Virtual Meeting: Queer and Indigenous Perspectives in Abya Yala]. The conference will be in Spanish on part of my book about why Indigenous bodies are always naked, what I call Indigipornography [Indiopornografía]. The conference will be online, virtual, all day May 15, 2025, and my talk will be up first, at 9am Costa Rica time (GMT -6), which is 11am Eastern/10am Central Turtle Island time. If you want to join, it looks like you may have to do it by Facebook (?!) but you can also email Monica Bradley [monica.bradley@ucr.ac.cr] who is organizing.

2. The next day, May 16, 2025, I’m going to be joining Glenn Ligon and Amanda Williams, two amazing artists, to talk about MoMA’s stunning Jack Whitten retrospective, “The Messenger.”

   The link to register (in person) is here.

   I’m going to be discussing the color red in Whitten’s work. (Glen will talk about black; Amanda about blue). A chromodiscussion. I’m going to be talking about just a couple works, I think—I need to write it still. But probably these:

   

   Above is “Testing Slab,” 1972. A fairly early work. But I love the earthy, ochre, reddish, red. The ruddy red of Alabama earth.

   

   This is “Totem 2000 IV: For Amadou Diallo,” 2000. The picture here isn’t very good, but this is a later work dedicated to Amadou Diallo, who was killed by the NYPD in 1999. I can hardly believe it's been 25 years (26 now) since that moment that seemingly has never ended. The ongoingness of this violence. I don’t have words yet, but I’m hoping to talk about this work, its title as a totem, that indicates a kind of speculative impermanence. That is, perhaps, the work—as a totem—includes within it the possibility of erosion, weathering (here maybe turning to Christina Sharpe and ‘the weather’).

That’s it for now. Please be warmly invited to these.