On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a makeshift bomb from a helicopter onto the 6200 block of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, following a heated standoff between its authorities and the members of MOVE, a Black liberation group founded by John Africa in 1972 that embraced self-determination, eco-justice, and a society free of modern constraints.

In conjunction with Karyn Olivier: Everything That’s Alive Moves, poet, writer, and dancer Harmony Holiday presents Until That Morning Comes, a film and suite of poems and writings that draw from the legacy and contemporary reverberations of the MOVE Bombing in West Philadelphia. Through her work, Holiday creates an ode to joy—to Black laughter and smiling and spiraling, exploring gestures that counter decimating, oppressive acts and recover tenderness from ruin.

Bio

Harmony Holiday is a writer, dancer and the author of five collections of poetry, including the forthcoming Maafa (April 2020). Holiday is an archivist of jazz poetics and has a related curatorial practice. She is at work on a play commissioned by the Hammer Museum for Made in L.A. 2020: a version, in addition to other writing, film, and curatorial projects.

Support

Programming at ICA has been made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation, and by Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan.