FRESH Festival
Jan 7, 2019 thru Jan 24, 2019
Ryanaustin Dennis, Gabriel Christian, Europa Grace
Starting with the question "How do I make myself a body?",
we will cut the rope on the western canon of art
And process its poison
We become the broken circle passing back through as black oracles/orifices
What is framing our alchemy?
mercury
is the messenger, is the gauge of temperature, is the toxin
Is metabolic rupture
Ryanaustin Dennis is an Oakland based curator/artist/writer. As the founding member of The Black Aesthetic, a curatorial collective, his practice is concerned with how 20th and 21st century experimental performance, film, and writing histories are shaped by the metaphysics of blackness. He has done curatorial work for E.M. Wolfman Bookstore, Kadist, Eastside Arts Alliance, Betti Ono, Soundwave Biennial, and is a Southern Exposure Curatorial Council Fellow.
Gabriel Christian is an increasingly amorphous artist bred in New York City and baking in Oakland. Their work metabolizes the vernaculars within BlaQ diaspora –– futurity, afrovivalism, faggotry –– through body-based live performance and poetics; moreover, they feel the bio to be an unfortunate by-product of capitalistic modes like chattel slavery.
Europa Grace is a mixed race Afro-Caribbean spoken word poet, movement artist and educator originally from New York currently living in San Francisco. They forge a tool from movement and language to access the vulnerability necessary to embody a plurality of presence. They are an Artist in Residence at SAFEHOUSE Arts, some of their work has been featured in the National Queer Arts Festival, Queer Rebels Performance Showcase.