Test Pattern 04: jaamil olawale kosoko

Can’t make it to the ICA? The entire event will be livestreamed on the ICA’s YouTube channel!

The ICA’s Test Pattern performance series returns for the fall, starting with a presentation of artist and author jaamil olawale kosoko‘s Black Body Amnesia, a live theatrical event that examines the shapeshifting, illegible, and fugitive realities of Black diasporan people negotiating the psychic lifeworlds of living inside the American context. He will be joined for the performance by DJ Maij and Ebony Noelle Golden, and Queen Drea, followed by a conversation with Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates from VCUarts Department of Theatre.

This presentation of Black Body Amnesia is supported in part by a grant from New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA).
 

6 PM – Reception with refreshments and a cash bar
7 PM – Doors to the auditorium open and check-in begins
7:30 PM – Performance begins
8:15 PM – Intermission
8:30 PM – Panel conversation and Q&A
 

Test Pattern is a hybrid performance series that invites visiting artists to use the ICA auditorium as an experimental production studio, inspired by the legacy of public access TV and alternative video movements in the US.

During each week-long residency, the artists will collaborate with members of the local community, transforming the ICA auditorium into a space for music, movement, activism, and deep conversations. Each week will culminate in a live performance and broadcast.

Test Pattern presents the public with a unique window into the creative process, to observe rehearsals, participate in live tapings and online streams of the performances, and to later access each episode in its final form.

jaamil olawale kosoko (they/he) is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent originally from Detroit, MI. Their book Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts was released in Spring of 2022. Kosoko is also a 2022 MacDowell Fellow, 2020 Pew Fellow in the Arts, 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2017-19 Princeton Arts Fellow, 2019 Red Bull Writing Fellow, 2018 NEFA NDP Production Grant recipient, 2017 MAP Fund recipient, and 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. Their creative practice draws from Black study and queer theories of the body, weaving together visual performance, lecture, ritual, and spiritual practice.

Ebony Noelle Golden is an artist, scholar, and culture strategist from Houston, TX and currently based in Harlem. She devises site-specific ceremonies, live art installations, creative collaborations, and arts experiments that explore and radically imagine viable strategies for collective black liberation. In 2020, Ebony launched Jupiter Performance Studio (JPS) which serves as a hub for the study of diasporic black performance traditions. In 2009, Ebony founded Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative, a culture consultancy and arts accelerator, that works with education, arts, culture, and community groups globally. Golden’s current projects include: Jubilee 11213 (in partnership with Weeksville Heritage Center and generously supported by Creative Capital, Coalition of Theaters of Color, and Black Spatial Relics), free/conjure/black, and In The Name Of (commissioned by Apollo Theatre.)

Brian Aladesuyi a.k.a. Maij, 32, was born in Atlanta, GA in 1990. He began playing classical cello at age 10 and studied music at Indiana University Bloomington under the tutelage of the famed Sharon Robinson. After college, Maij moved to Rochester, NY and started working in the restaurant industry, where he discovered his passion for wine. Through self-study and motivation, he earned his Level II Sommelier Certification from the Court of Master Sommeliers. Maij commonly hosts events, dinners, and tasting seminars that not only include wine, but whisky, tequila, rum and more. Going by ‘Black Maij’, he is a very passionate DJ whose main style of music is House. He performs in various clubs, bars, hotels, fundraisers and parties throughout New York City. Multi-talented, Maij is also a professional Astrologer and Tarot reader.

Queen Drea is a sound alchemist. Mixing up potions laced with looped natural and affected vocals, jagged rhythms, and found sounds, Queen’s compositions are often conceived in improvisational settings. She is a recipient of the 2022 McKnight Foundation Composers Fellowship, 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Finalist, 2021 Zeitgeist Music Sounding Ground Fellow, 2019 Penumbra Theater ASHE Lab Fellow, and 2017 American Composers Forum Minnesota Emerging Composer Award. Queen has composed soundscapes for Ananya Dance Theatre, Black Label Movement, Brother(h)ood Dance, Penumbra Theatre, and Pillsbury House Theatre, which she calls her artistic home.

Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Ph.D. is Professor of Graduate Pedagogy in Acting and Directing at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Artistic Director of The Conciliation Project, a non-profit social justice theatre company. Dr. T is a playwright, director, actor, poet, writer/scholar-activist, and teacher. She has appeared in the Tony Award Winning company of the N.Y. Shakespeare Festival’s production of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the rainbow is enuf”, performing in both the national and international touring companies. Her television, film, industrial, voice over and commercial credits are extensive. Pettiford-Wates recently directed “Fences” to critical acclaim for the Virginia Repertory Theatre Company, “Deep River: The Marian Anderson Story” for the Virginia Opera Company, and “The Niceties” for The Conciliation Lab’s inaugural season.