Black Women as/and the Living Archive

WPA Note:
This book is part of a larger project of the same name, curated and organized by interdisciplinary artist Tsedaye Makonnen, first presented at WPA in 2020. The first printing sold out well before its Book Launch on July 18, 2021, a conversation with co-editor Makonnen and ICA London’s curator Nydia A. Swaby. We’re thrilled that the second printing is now available for purchase.

Description:
Black Women as/and the Living Archive explores the modes in which Black women encode, preserve, and share memory through community. Central to Makonnen’s inquiry was Children of NAN: Mothership, a film by Alisha B. Wormsley that functions as a metaphor for the survival and power of Black women in a dystopic future. Many of the cast and collaborators of the film—Li Harris, Autumn Knight, Ingrid LaFleur, Jamila Raegan, and Jasmine Hearn—participated in the multi-event project.

This publication incorporates both archival and new materials, and serves as a repository for the conversations and intimate interactions amongst the participants and the audience. It follows the project from its inception in 2019 (first planned to be an exhibition with screenings and live performances) to its adaptation to virtual formats in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and its presentation during the Black Lives Matter uprisings and the ongoing state sanctioned violence against Black people.

Makonnen organized the publication around four themes: Space, Moving Image, Memory; Collective Memory; Pleasure Memory; and Mama Memory [& Care].

The book includes newly commissioned writing by Jessica Lanay, Jo Stewart, Ladi’Sasha Jones, and Yona Harvey, documentation of the project’s public programs, as well as an annotated bibliography by Ola Ronke, creator of The Free Black Women’s Library.

Designed by Rheagen King