What is called the imagination (from image, magi, magic, magician, etc.) is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data, and can be called on to solve all our “problems.” The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as “things.” Imagination (image) is all possibility, because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use (idea) is possible. And so begins that image’s use in the world. Possibility is what moves us.
—Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre”, Liberator, July 1965
Black Portraitures III
Reinventions: Strains of Histories and Cultures
Johannesburg, South Africa
November 17–19, 2016
BLACK PORTRAITURE[S] III: Reinventions: Strains of Histories and Cultures is the seventh conference in a series of conversations about imaging the black body. It offers a forum that gives artists, activists, and scholars from around the world an opportunity to share ideas from historical topics to current research on the 40th anniversary of Soweto. Presenters will engage a range of topics such as Biennales, the Africa Perspective in the Armory Show, the global art market, politics, tourism, sites of memory, Afrofuturism, fashion, dance, music, film, art, and photography.
The conference will be held November 17-19, 2016 at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and held in collaboration with the U. S. Department of State, U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, Patrick H. Gaspard, Goodman Gallery, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research/Harvard University, New York University’s LaPietra Dialogues, Tisch School of the Arts and the Institute for African American Affairs.