Onsite Reception at VisArts on Friday, November 5 from 7:00–9:00 PM
Featuring a performance by Babizulu
VisArts
Kaplan Gallery
155 Gibbs Street, Suite 300
Rockville, MD 20850
Jimmy Joe Roche + Allen Cordell: High Speed Internet, 2017. Video, 3:50 min, color, sound. Courtesy of the artists. Photos by Dean Kessmann (unless otherwise noted).
ALTAR: Babizulu + Brian Dinkel: Resentment, 2021. Video, found objects. Courtesy of the artists. Production assistance by Abdu Ali, As They Lay, and Baatchoy.
Keep a-knockin’, but you can’t come in.
—Little Richard (1957) interpreting a traditional blues song, author unknown
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if anyone hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to them, and will sup with them, and they with me.
—Revelation 3:20
A large fraction of Americans wanted or needed to believe they lived in an enchanted time and place, that the country swarmed with supernatural wonders, and that mid-nineteenth century America was like the Holy Land of the early first century, when Jesus was only one among many itinerant prophets and wizards and healers wandering the eastern Mediterranean.
—Kurt Andersen, Fantasyland
Curated by 2021 VisArts Emerging Curator Joshua Gamma, Keep A-Knockin’, features an interracial, intergenerational cohort of interdisciplinary artists working through the legacy of rebellious American Protestantism and its tendrils in everything from ecstatic experience in popular music to gender and sexual politics, from the cultish allure of authoritarian leaders and conspiracy theories to the beloved community of the civil rights movement, from the utopian to the apocalyptic visions that keep a-knockin’ through the years.
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Current Movements
Alex Dupree + Devin Person
Hoeteps
[aka. Markele Cullins] + Babizulu
Mike McGonigal
S.M. Prescott
[via www.transceiverradio.org]
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Read the exhibition catalog/church program
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Kyle Kogut: War (On A Chrome Horse), 2020. Ink, graphite, and colored pencil on paper, 60 x 42”. Courtesy of the artist.
Kyle Kogut: Pestilence (On A Chrome Horse), 2020. Ink, graphite, and colored pencil on paper, 60 x 42”. Courtesy of the artist.
Kyle Kogut: Famine (On A Chrome Horse), 2020. Ink, graphite, and colored pencil on paper, 60 x 42”. Courtesy of the artist.
Kyle Kogut: Death (On A Chrome Horse), 2020. Ink, graphite, and colored pencil on paper, 60 x 42”. Courtesy of the artist.
BANNERS (L–R): SM Prescott: Tune My Heart, Positive, Blessings, She Arose, I Believe, 2021. Fabric, dimensions vary. Courtesy of the artist.
Normally airing on XRAY.FM 91.1 FM & 107.1 FM Portland, Oregon, and CJAM 99.1 FM in the Detroit/Windsor, Canada-region, ’Buked & Scorned offers up an hour of raw, rare, otherworldly Gospel music. DJ Yeti, aka Mike McGonigal, has been collecting gospel records for years, curating the CD compilations Fire in My Bones in 2009 and This May Be My Last Time Singing in 2011 for Tompkins Square Records. Of his Gospel compilations, Pitchfork writes, “[they are] deeply compelling document[s] of the various ways human beings talk to God.” McGonigal also edits the music and art publication Maggot Brain, previously edited the publication Yeti, and wrote the 33 ⅓ book on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.
This episode focuses on African American Gospel.
BANNERS (L–R): SM Prescott: Positive, Blessings, She Arose, 2021. Fabric, dimensions vary. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Joshua Gamma.
Babizulu performing at the Keep A-Knockin’ opening. Photo by Glowmother. See video of the performance here. Video by Frank McCauley.
African American Religious Thought and The Movement for Liberation [+ LIVE Insurgent Imagination Podcast Recording]
Current Movements, VisArts, and the Josiah Henson Museum and Park present a conversation on the legacy of African American religious thought in social movement organizing in the U.S. and beyond. Participants include the founder of the Black Woman’s Museum and Education Program Manager at the Josiah Henson Museum, Imani Haynes; multidisciplinary artist and founding instigator of Black Lives Matter D.C., Ọmọlará Williams McCallister; Current Movements founder, filmmaker, and organizer formerly involved in Black Lives Matter D.C., organizing at Standing Rock, and currently organizing with D.C. Mutual Aid, Katie Petitt; and ordained minister of the Church of God in Christ and Curator of Religion for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Dr. Eric Lewis Williams.
The event will be broadcast live via www.transceiverradio.org, recorded, and an edit will later be released as an episode of Current Movements’ Insurgent Imagination, a podcast considering the intersections of storytelling, artistic practice, and movements for collective liberation.
Current Movements is a Washington, D.C.-based organization with a mission of connecting activists, organizations, and movements around the world using film, art, and technology.
The Josiah Henson Museum and Park is the former plantation property where Rev. Josiah Henson was enslaved. Henson’s 1849 autobiography inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Henson eventually escaped to Canada where he helped establish a city inhabited by former slaves, continued his ministry, and became an international speaker and abolitionist. Henson led 118 people from enslavement in the U.S. to freedom in Canada as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
Omolará Williams McCallister: Fishers of Men, 2016/2021. Aluminum livestock tanks, photo of performance printed on silk, muslin, light, water, 24 x 24 x 72” (each tank). Courtesy of the artist. Fabrication by Jared Christensen.
Rodrigo Carazas Portal: Untitled (7 Elvis), 2013–ongoing. Serigraphy on aluminum, video. Courtesy of the artist.
Rodrigo Carazas Portal: Untitled (7 Elvis) (detail), 2013–ongoing. Serigraphy on aluminum, video. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Joshua Gamma.
Join Los Angeles-via-Austin-based singer-songwriter Alex Dupree, Professional Wizard Devin Person, and Keep A-Knockin’ curator Joshua Gamma on a mind-bending journey through the psychedelic rock and trippy folk records that emerged from the Jesus People Movement of the late-1960’s until the dawn of the Reagan-era—an unexpected Holy Union of charismatic Christianity and the hippie counterculture.
Dan Graham: Rock My Religion, 1983–1984. Video, 55:27, b&w and color, sound. Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix.
December 16, www.transceiverradio.org
7:00 PM EST
Transceiver Radio presents a Queer Double Feature Rebroadcast:
Hoeteps [aka. Markele Cullins] + Babizulu: An Ode to Rosetta
Hoeteps + Babizulu channel a live interference from a future liberated Black Queer outer space utopia into our regularly scheduled radio programming. [original air date: 03 MAY 2019]
SM Prescott: Joyful Rage
You are invited to participate in Joyful Rage—a Holy, Queer Liturgy from the Deep South led by S.M. Prescott. To be said, prayed, sung, or screamed; kneeling, sitting, standing, or in procession, as you feel led, and as you are able. Leave your hang-ups behind. [original air date: 12 NOV 2020]
Thank you to everyone at VisArts: Susan, Frank, and Megan; to my mentoring curator Kristen Hileman; to Imani Haynes at the Josiah Henson Museum and Park; and to all the artists and contributors to the exhibition and programming .