Join us for an evening of exchange choreographed by Black Chalk and Co (Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Tinashe Mushakavanhu). Participate in a performative workshop that explores the power of language and our ability to alter our ways of being. In this way we get to experience the fluid, changing nature of language and meaning.

Enjoy an array of free snacks and beverages as you listen to a live DJ set by Philadelphia-based artist bb basura. Featuring Risograph printing activity courtesy of Common Press, and food from bāo • logy. ICA’s galleries will be open late so you can check out our current exhibitions Speech/Acts and Nathalie Du Pasquier, BIG OBJECTS NOT ALWAYS SILENT.

ICA’s biannual Free For All programs invite students and community members to experience ICA after hours and enjoy free snacks, drinks, music, and performances. This event is free and open to the public; register here.

Workshop

This will be a live editing session where the audience participates in building a new lexicon in real time through word remixing, language invention, and annotations. The idea is to turn the space into a pop up language lab. The interactive editing process will generate live annotations from the audience that will be transmitted through an overhead projector and multimedia channels. Besides co-authoring a new dictionary of meaning in real time, participants will also produce their own zines. In their publishing practice, Black Chalk and Co uses participatory binding as an integral way of involving the audience to be collaborators.

NONTSIKELELO MUTITI is a Zimbabwean-born interdisciplinary artist and educator. She holds a diploma in multimedia art from the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, with a concentration in graphic design. She has been a resident artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, Recess, and the Centre for Book Arts, both in New York City, and is currently a member at NEW INC. In 2015, Mutiti was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in its inaugural year. She has participated in several group shows, including Salon Style at the Studio Museum in Harlem, a special screening for Dreamlands at the Whitney Museum, Talking Pictures at the Metropolitan Museum, and THREE: On Visibility and Camouflage at We Buy Gold. Mutiti produces project-based works, and founded Black Chalk and Co with Tinashe Mushakavanhu.

TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU is an award-winning Zimbabwean journalist, poet, and cultural commentator. He received an MA in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Carmarthen (Wales) and PhD in English at the University of Kent (England). He is the founder of YoungNation Media, an online magazine about youth in Zimbabwe, and co-founder of Black Chalk and Co with Nontsikelelo Mutiti. He is currently taking part in the NEW INC. incubator program at the New Museum.

BB BASURA is a Venezuelan born, Philly based multidisciplinary artist. Finding meaning in the in-between, in the cracks of conflicting identity—through a sort of double vision of sound—she creates ruptures and spaces for a multiplicity of experiences to exist.