February 18 - September 1, 2020
For the third iteration of the Platform series, Rice Public Art is pleased to welcome Kameelah Janan Rasheed, a Brooklyn-based artist, educator, and self-described learner. Rasheed will intervene on the Rice University campus with a newly commissioned installation, on view from February 18 to September 1, 2020.
Rasheed’s interdisciplinary practice addresses themes of blackness, spirituality, and literacies. In her multifaceted text-based work, the artist confronts and interrogates the viewer with inquisitive language which she presents on large-scale banners, in immersive installations made of black-and-white Xerox paper, or as performative gestures. An educator, Rasheed reflects on the process of learning as an evolving practice that can occur through experimental and collective interactions.
For Rice, Rasheed created a new poetic gesture that grapples with concepts of futurity, certainty, and underscores critical issues of exclusion and vulnerability through lyrical yet unequivocal words. Installed across four large banners situated at the center of campus, the project seeks to generate student engagement, spark collaboration across disciplines, and engage with the many areas of ongoing research occurring at Rice University.
The new installation, titled perhaps, there is no sequel, is inspired by the work of the late Benjamin Patterson (b. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania , 1934 – d. Wiesbaden, Germany, 2016), a composer, artist, and musician who is renowned for his instrumental role in the groundbreaking 1960s Fluxus movement. Expanding upon Patterson’s use of language in his performative musical scores—which provided sets of rules to incite specific actions from the public—Rasheed will establish a number of constraints within which viewers can elaborate on her text and produce countless new arrangements. The artist’s instructions will be outlined on cards and dispersed in strategic locations across campus, encouraging the participation of viewers, who can expand on, amplify, and reinterpret her words.
During the opening reception on February 18 at 6 p.m., Rasheed will collaborate with Houston-based trumpeter, composer, and hip-hop artist Jawwaad in an experimental performance that also will subvert the traditional dynamics of the artist-viewer relationship. The performance will draw inspiration from Patterson’s Ants, a work he initiated in the early 1960s and revisited in 2010. Using images of the eponymous insects sprawling on a white background as a starting point for a score, Patterson developed a musical composition based on their pheromone driven movements. Rasheed and Jawwaad similarly will combine extemporaneous actions, musical interventions, and electronic sounds to generate a multidisciplinary, heterogeneous score.
On the occasion of the closing, on September 1, Rasheed will engage with Rice students in a creative-writing workshop that will lead to an intervention by Houston-based poet and activist Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton. Perhaps, there is no sequel will culminate with the presentation of new compositions created by a selection of students of the Rice Electroacoustic Music Labs (REMLABS) at the Shepherd School of Music, as well as a performance by students in the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts.
Perhaps, there is no sequel is curated by Ylinka Barotto, Associate Curator, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University.
Location: Rice University, west lawn adjacent to The Brochstein Pavilion
Closing: September 1, 2020 | 6–8 pm
Featuring an intervention by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton
Opening: February 18, 2020 | 5–7 pm
6100 Main St.
Houston, 77005 TX
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