Black Holes Ain’t So Black

How does liberation feel in the body? How do structures of violence shape the spaces around our bodies and around our planet?

In this premiere of a new, multisensory performance-talk in development, cultural practice architect Mario Gooden delivers a rapid-fire oration drawn from an expansive bibliography of Black authors and references to outer space. Three-channel projections of archival images and film clips intersect with new footage shot by writer-filmmaker Thuto Durkac-Somo. These visual frictions are synthesized in the movements of choreographer-writer Jonathan González, performed both live and onscreen. By collaging spoken text, embodied movement, and moving image, these artists open a portal for imagining how the spatial practices of Black liberation unfold on bodily, architectural, and cosmological scales.

In A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Bantam, 1998), theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking defines a black hole as a region of space from which escape is impossible: “It is a bit like running way from the police and just managing to keep one step ahead but not being able to get clear away!” Amidst the present planetary reckoning with  systemic oppression, Black Holes Ain’t So Black begins with this charged image, where cosmological space slips into social choreography. From there, the performance-talk moves through a cascade of juxtaposed images, gestures, and quotations, creating a barrage of sensory and conceptual connections. Following the presentation, the artists will join the audience in conversation, moderated by curator Tara Aisha Willis.