Reading
Annea Lockwood & Ruth Anderson: “Tête-à-tête” LP Release with ISSUE Project Room and Ergot Records
On the first weekend of April, Triple Canopy will inaugurate an annual convening of artists, writers, musicians, technologists, and scholars. In self-portraits and performances, dialogues and festivities, they’ll address the role of culture in responding (or contributing) to the most pressing problems of the day.
This year’s gathering, hosted by the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery and presented in collaboration with Critical Minded, will draw on the themes of the magazine’s current issue, True to Life. The issue asks how we record our lives and compose ourselves through memoir, autobiography, biofiction, and video diaries, and how the proliferating forms of “life writing” reflect our uncertain political and ecological futures. Over the weekend, Triple Canopy’s contributors will consider why certain perspectives, idioms, plotlines, and genres are established as natural while others are said to be unfaithful to reality. And they’ll ask: How are our lives composed and consumed through stories, songs, databases, and bioengineering? How do those forms enable us to understand—and, perhaps, alter—the conditions of life?
The symposium will include performances by Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and Kamau Amu Patton for Toussaint-Baptiste’s … and Drive Far Away (2022), a mobile sculpture in the form of an unmarked police car, plus a conversation with the musician Taja Cheek (L’Rain); an evening of narrative wormholes and squalid shticks with Alex Tatarsky and special guests; a talk about AI and the algorithmic unconscious with the artist Stephanie Dinkins and scholar Ezekiel Dixon-Román; a primer on sperm shopping (and the relationship between cryobanks and eugenics) by Sophia Roosth with Anicka Yi; a reflection on grief and grift in Black music with Harmony Holiday, who’ll be joined in conversation by Nikita Gale and Tiona Nekkia McClodden; a chronicle of formative concerts via a listening session by Hua Hsu; and a party on Saturday evening with music by Club Cringe, presented by Montez Press Radio.
The symposium will be broadcast by Montez Press Radio. Bạn Bè will sell baked goods.
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Saturday, April 1, 2:30 p.m.–12:30 a.m.
Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Kamau Amu Patton
Taja Cheek
Stephanie Dinkins
Ezekiel Dixon-Román
Alex Tatarsky
Club Cringe (DJ)
And more to be announced
Sunday, April 2, 3:30 p.m.–8:00 p.m.
Sophia Roosth
Anicka Yi
Hua Hsu
Harmony Holiday
Nikita Gale
Tiona Nekkia McClodden
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The 2023 Triple Canopy Symposium is made possible through the generous support of Directors Circle members Christopher Barley, Wendy Goldberg, Jane Hait, Liz Klein, and Manon Slome; the Ken & Judith Joy Family Foundation; the Stolbun Family; and Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in cultural critics of color cofounded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Issue 28, True to Life, also received support from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Beverages for the symposium have been graciously provided by Topo Chico, Hiatus Tequila, Narragansett Brewing Company, JuneShine, and Zev Rovine Selections.
