Keynote conferences > Myron M. Beasley

PERFORMANCE, ART & NECROPOLITICS IN THE AMERICAS: CACHOEIRA, PORT-AU-PRINCE AND MALAGA ISLAND

Friday, October 3rd from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Centre des colloques, Amphitheater 250

Myron M. Beasley Ph.D. is Associate Professor of American Studies, he also serves on the committee of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates College. His ethnographic research includes exploring the intersection of cultural politics, material culture and social change. He has been awarded fellowships and grants by the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and most recently the Ruth Landes Award from the Reed Foundation. His ethnographic writing about Africana Cultural Politics, Contemporary Art, Material Culture and cultural engagement has appeared in many academic journals including Text and Performance Quarterly, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, The Journal of Poverty, Museum & Social Issues, The Journal of Curatorial Studies, Food and Foodways, and Performance Research. His film food/installation ritual/feast (of his ethnography is Brazil) has appeared in UMMI and Paris film festivals. His recent curatorial projects include The Ghetto Biennale (Haiti), CAAR Paris 7 (France), and Dak’art (Senegal).

Conference:

The concept of necropolitics refers to the political systems that determine which lives are valued and which are disposable. The history of many black lives in the Americas is marked by forced arrival and fatal and often tragic departures (deaths).  Using performance as a lens to examine everyday life, we can explore the rituals of everyday life as forms of both resistance and survival. Art allows us to observe the world in all its complexities and offers new ways of seeing. Highlighting three sites in the Americas (Cachoeira, Port-Au-Prince, and Malaga Island), my work situates performance practices and art forms as modes of rhetorical political strategies that resist and sometimes unravel the systems of death.  The stories of the Boa Morta of Brazil, the artists of the Grand Rue in Haiti, and the forced removal of black and native people from the island of Malaga are significant examples of how art and performance can be used to challenge necropolitics.

Debate moderated by Jean-Paul Rocchi (LISAA - Université Gustave Eiffel)

  Myron M. Beasley