Tag Archives: Carl Hancock Rux

CARRIE MAE WEEMS — PAST TENSE

“As much as I’m engaged with it, with violence, I remain ever hopeful that change is possible and necessary, and that we will get there. I believe that strongly, and representing that matters to me: a sense of aspiration, a sense of good will, a sense of hope, a sense of this idea that one has the right, that we have the right to be as we are.” — Carrie Mae Weems*

The timeless themes of political power, social justice, gender oppression, and valiant persistence are brought to life in a modern context in PAST TENSE, Carrie Mae Weems’ multimedia take on Antigone.

Combining music, spoken word, video, and projected images, PAST TENSE—presented this week in Los Angeles by CAP UCLA—includes works by poet Carl Hancock Rux and composer Craig Harris, and will be performed by Weems, Eisa Davis, Francesca Harper, David Parker, Imani Uzuri, and Alicia Hall Moran, who brought the house down at Disney Hall earlier this week in Bryce Dessner’s Triptych.

CARRIE MAE WEEMS—PAST TENSE

Friday, March 8, at 8 pm.

Theatre at Ace Hotel

929 South Broadway, downtown Los Angeles.

*Megan O’Grady, “Carrie Mae Weems,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine, October 21, 2018, 140.

From top: Carrie Mae Weems, Past Tense, in performance; Past Tense production photographs (2) by William Strugs; Carrie Mae Weems, portrait by Jerry Klineberg; Past Tense, in performance with, from right, Alicia Hall Moran, Imani Uzuri, and Eisa Davis. Images courtesy CAP UCLA.

JEFFREY STEWART ON ALAIN LOCKE

“If I were inventing a religion, I would try to work out some beautifully ritualistic mode of reciprocal confession and make all the conception of punishment and reward psychological and self-inflicted.” — Alain Locke, letter to Countee Cullen, 1923

The life and times of Alain Locke—philosopher, writer, editor, professor, the first African American Rhodes scholar, and “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance—have been told by Jeffrey C. Stewart in his new book THE NEW NEGROTHE LIFE OF ALAIN LOCKE.

“Unlike many of his colleagues and rivals in the black freedom struggle of the early 20th century, Locke, a trailblazer of the Harlem Renaissance, believed that art and the Great Migration, not political protest, were the keys to black progress. Black Americans would only forge a new and authentic sense of themselves, he argued, by pursuing artistic excellence and insisting on physical mobility.” — Michael P. Jeffries

This week, Stewart joins musician, poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist Carl Hancock Rux for a public discussion about “black genius, cultural pluralism, and the legacy of Locke and his pioneering ideas.”

 

JEFFREY STEWART AND CARL HANCOCK RUX

Wednesday, February 28, at 7:30 pm.

Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood, Los Angeles.

Above: Jeffrey C. Stewart and Catherine Czacki outside the Mansuy house in Giverny, France in 2015 during the Terra Summer Residency.

Below: Winold Reiss, Alain Locke. Image credit: National Portrait Gallery.