In conjunction with the ongoing exhibition Endless Shout, the Institute of Contemporary Art presents an evening of programming with Ashon Crawley and Theodore Harris.

Endless Shout asks how, why, where, and when performance and improvisation can take place inside the museum. Over the course of six months, the five lead participants will initiate an unfolding series of events and encounters within ICA’s exhibition space. Major support for Endless Shout has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Crawley’s recently published book Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press, 2016) “generate[s] intellectual breathing room beyond the confines of the university” (L.A. Review of Books) and draws upon Black study to map futures of collective intellectual practice. Harris, the founding director of The Institute for Advanced Study in Black Aesthetics who mobilizes poetry against mainstream art criticism, will present a poetry reading.

This event is free and open to the public; register here.

Ashon Crawley (b. 1980, East Orange, NJ; lives Los Angeles, CA) is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Riverside. His research and teaching experiences are in the areas of Black Studies, Performance Theory and Sound Studies, Philosophy and Theology, Black Feminist and Queer theories. His first book project, Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility is an investigation of aesthetics and performance as modes of collective, social imaginings otherwise (Fordham University Press).

Theodore A. Harris (b. 1966, New York, NY; raised in Philadelphia) is a collagist, poet, curator, and essayist on the intersection of art and politics. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and museums such as The University of Chicago Center in Paris, France; University of Pennsylvania, PA; Hammonds House Museum and Resource Center of African American Art, Atlanta, GA; and Harmony House, Stanford University, CA. His work is in private and public collections such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, La Salle University Art Museum, Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Saint Louis University Museum of Art, Du Bois College House at the University of Pennsylvania, and Lincoln University. He has held residencies at the Ashe Cultural Arts Center (New Orleans), 40th Street A-I-R (Philadelphia), Hammonds House Museum and Resource Center of African American Art (Atlanta, GA), and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas (New Haven, CT). He has co-authored books with Amiri Baraka: Our Flesh of Flames (Anvil Arts Press) and Malcolm X as ideology; and with Fred Moten: i ran from it and was still in it (Cusp Books). He is the founding director of The Institute for Advanced Study in Black Aesthetics.