Curator: Naila Keleta-Mae
Location: Room 1175 – Pavilion André Aidenstadt – 2920 chemin de la tour – Université de Montréal
(Building 19 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Sponsored by the Department of Communication Arts – University of Waterloo
We live in a world where institutionalized anti-Black racism is troublingly prevalent and increasingly public, and where systems of oppression are entrenched (Crenshaw; Du Bois; Fanon; Gilroy; McKittrick; Sharpe). The pursuit of freedom has been a central preoccupation of Black people throughout the Americas and Africa ever since the advent of the TransAtlantic slave trade in the 16th century, when Europeans led the violent taking of Africans from their lands to build European settlements (Bakare-Yusuf; Campbell; Cooper; Hartman; Rodney; Young 2005). For the past five centuries, Black people have used Black expressive culture (ie. architecture, visual art, theatre, performance, music, dance, festivals, and protests) to imagine and advocate for freedom. By taking freedom as its departure point, the curated panel proposes a reading of Black expressive culture that looks towards and imagines a liberated present and future through the analysis of site visits conducted as part of Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae’s Black And Free research-creation project. Seeking to make a “new claim” about blackness and freedom, the program aims to analyze Black expressive culture using theatre and performance studies methodologies to ascertain how blackness and freedom are portrayed in the range of historical sites and public events visited in Canada. An argument for blackness and freedom necessarily evokes questions of justice, that are panel bring together with three papers focused on Black And Free’s theoretical and methodological frameworks (by Dr. Keleta-Mae), the Black Loyalists Heritage Centre in Shelburne, Nova Scotia (by Jelissa Ricketts) and Freedom School in Toronto, Ontario (by Shanique Mothersill).
Black And Free Site Visit Methodology
This paper will describe the theoretical and methodological framework that I have used and will use to conduct visits, for my Black And Free research-creation project, to historical sites and public events in North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa where blackness and freedom are expressed and/or contested through various artistic forms. I started Black And Free in 2017 and it draws from numerous disciplines and fields in the humanities, namely: performance theory, critical race theory, feminist theory and theatre studies. D. Soyini Madison writes, “With each generation, perhaps with each turn of a phrase, we stake a new claim within a new world order for the nature and significance of blackness” (vi). The intellectual contribution that Black And Free seeks to make is a “new claim” about blackness and freedom. This paper will assert that expressions of Black freedom constitute both performances of blackness and ways of making what has been rendered unthinkable—the full liberation of Black people and the agency of Black people to define that liberation for themselves—thinkable and livable for Black people and the larger world of which they are a part. Further, this paper will assert that while Black people have been forced into various forms of performance both during and since chattel slavery, this history does not prevent performances and other cultural expressions of Blackness from constituting acts of agency that assert into the relationship between performer and audience—or site of expression and viewer – the fact of Black freedom.
Naila Keleta-Mae, University of Waterloo
Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae is a Dorothy Killam Fellow, Tier II Canada Research Chair in Race, Gender and Performance, Member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Artists, Scholars, and Scientists, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo and a multi-disciplinary artist.
Black and Free: Performance, Oral Tradition and Unearthing Black Nova Scotian History
A major dereliction of Black Canadian history is the events surrounding Black Loyalists and the development and eventual destruction of Africville in Nova Scotia. Theatre, music, poetry, and visual arts have been tools utilized to platform the willfully forgotten histories of Black Canada(s) (Riley, 2022). These artistic practices share a methodological and philosophical approach to the oral traditions of West African Mande ethnic groups that have been maintained and utilized by their displaced descendants in the Americas to keep their memories alive (Okagube, 2007). This paper will explore these intersections and retentions through an assessment of performance pieces that center on the unacknowledged lives of Black Loyalists, Africville and Blackness in the Maritimes. Moreover, this paper will reflect on the extent to which these practices can be viewed as a counter-pedagogy, resisting the dereliction of traditional institutions of knowledge and creating alternative ways of knowing. Performances that will be critically engaged include but are not limited to, the works of Camille Turner, Clement Virgo, and Halifax’s Black Theatre Ensemble.
For centuries, Canadian history has been contoured by omissions and erasure that misconstrue the presence of Blackness as a recent introduction to the country. Canadian educational systems have eschewed engaging the role of Black people in the development of Canada to maintain the perception of national benevolence (Bristow, 1994). This fragmented historiography has been challenged by Black Canadian artists who have worked to unearth the 400 years of African Canadian experiences.
Jellisa Ricketts, York University
Jellisa Ricketts is a filmmaker and Ph.D. student studying Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto, Ontario. Her research focuses on spatial theory, Black geographies, Cultural Geographies and Architecture.
Black And Free: Freedom School’s Freedom Pedagogy as an Educational Stage for Black Youth Justice and Performance
A radical and recalcitrant conjuring of Black youth’s deep longing for freedom and educational justice, Freedom School Toronto is an immersive initiative that mobilizes creative educational alternatives toward a knotted relationship between Black liberatory education and the creative possibilities of Black youth. Visited in 2019 by Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae as part of Black And Free’s research program, Freedom School Toronto challenges and resists state violence, anti-queerness and anti-Black racism in the Canadian school system. Examining its carefully designed Kiki Ball as a performance gesture and its Black Power Saturday School as an educational “stage”, I draw from Black feminist, queer and critical race theories as well as performance studies to explore Freedom School Toronto’s freedom pedagogies including its use of humanizing and queer positive educational opportunities. Specifically, I explore its engagement of justice, politics, Black cultures and histories within the context of resistance, education and performance.
Shanique Mothersill, York University
Shanique Mothersill a PhD candidate in gender, feminist and women’s studies at York University, working on “the poetics of Jamaican women’s aliveness.” As a poet and scholar, she thinks and writes about the ways in which Black women’s multiple acts of living help us understand gendered and racialized “beingnesss” in the African diaspora.