about black spatial relics

Founded in 2016 at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, the Black Spatial Relics (BSR) Residency initially supported the development of two new performance works that addressed and incorporated the public history of slavery and contemporary issues of justice.

In the 2016-2017 year, artists-in-residence ChE and James Jorsling convened at The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island in October 2016 for three days of workshops, meetings, and studio development. During the Brown University Commencement Week (May 21-27, 2017), the artists presented their developed works. This work was made possible through generous support from the Heimark Artist-in-Residence Program.

In 2019, Black Spatial Relics became a newly independent project. Since then, BSR has hosted four additional cycles of artists in residence, supporting 24 artists and projects via the residency program. Additionally, BSR has offered 30 micro grants for collective research and community care to Black artists. BSR has hosted 4 convenings gathering its artists from across the U.S and Caribbean for essential discourse, creative exchange and witness. In the city of Philadelphia, BSR hosts youth programs and a Black experimental performance laboratory.

Black Spatial Relics is made possible with the support of W Trust, The Black Seed (a regranting program of the Mellon Foundation), JKW Foundation, Independence Media Foundation, Velocity Fund, and independent donors. Black Spatial Relics is a fiscally sponsored project at The Public Trust.

TOPOGRAPHY: BLACK SPATIAL RELICS FOUNDATION

The geographic mapping of this residency was inspired by the research of the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Marker’s Project, a project that commemorates the ports of entry for slaving voyages in the transatlantic slave trade. Black Spatial Relics artists-in-residence  pay particular attention to the history of the slave trade and its legacies on the Eastern seaboard of the United States as well as other land-based histories of chattel slavery, fugitivity and liberation. Artists develop performances that engage music/sound, dance, theatre or performance installation and/or ritual, and spoken word. The residency enables artists to develop works that engage the public history of slavery and bridge or incorporate systemic and inherited connections with contemporary issues of injustice.

In working to commission multiple works of site responsive performance around spaces that are specific to histories of slavery, Black Spatial Relics engenders  transhistorical solidarity to the end of disrupting emergent repertoires of systemic and inherited legacies of injustice.

 ELEVATION: BLACK SPATIAL RELICS IMPACT

The Black Spatial Relics Residency supports the development of new performance works about slavery, justice and freedom by emerging and mid-career artists. Key to this effort is the convening of the artists toward the end of the residency in reflection on their processes and work. In supporting emergent artists and emergent creative thought, Black Spatial Relics holds a developmental space for collaborative imagining about freedom.