"The motionless movement of death from slavery to segregation to neo-segregation is not progress." – Antony Paul Farley

PARTICIPANT celebrates the launch of our partnership with the Art Basel Crowdfunding Initiative and Kickstarter with a multi-channel installation by M Lamar, DEATHLESSNESS. This installation and performance is organized in support of a book on the work of artist, countertenor, and composer M Lamar. The book was initiated on the occasion of Lamar’s first solo exhibition, NEGROGOTHIC, a Manifesto at PARTICIPANT INC in 2014 and San Francisco Art Institute in 2015. Describing the exhibition, the artist noted that, “NEGROGOTHIC politics resurrect, perform, and prophesy radical potentialities of blackness.” Like the gothic novel, this project mixes romanticism with horror – the horror is American white supremacy. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Lamar draws inspiration from Southern gothic as well as underground, goth, and post punk music. At the center of NEGROGOTHICISM is the Negro Antichrist, a rock star or blues man like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, with a big, operatic voice, and a deep connection to the supernatural. “NEGROGOTHIC aesthetics transect romanticism, surrealism, horror, pornography, gospel, metal, and early silent film,” Lamar continues. “From the slave ship to the pillory... on plantations and lynching trees... within and beyond the prison and the grave... the NEGROGOTHIC binds archive to myth, merging bodily properties with supernatural possession.”

PERFORMANCE:

Sunday, May 7, 7-9pm
As the Kingdom Burns: Reflections on the work of M. Lamar in Preparation for the Release of His New Book Negrogothic 
With a special performance by M Lamar

Sponsored by MATERIAL