Starting June 11, 2020, the following films will air for one week.


WEEK 1:
Sarah Nicole Francois



On View June 11–18

Soft (2019)
Sarah Nicole Francois


A tale of cyborg love.






WEEK 2:
Rhea Dillon


On View June 19–25

The Name I Call Myself (2019)
Rhea Dillon


This installation is a rumination on the question of 'what it looks like to be black and be part of a problem' or 'what happens when the safe confines of the community are compromised from within'? Being black and queer has for so long made you a ‘problem’ within the black community let alone the rest of the world. Rejecting a catch-all definition of blackness, TNICM unpicks multifaceted LGBTQ identities within my local black British diaspora via friends and characters at the heart of the scene, cast across two-screens. TNICM refuses to accept that identity can be codified by working with the community to show for the first time on film Black Queer Britain to remind viewers to do more than just gaze beyond the binary – it asks them to dismantle it.

Rhea Dillon is an artist, writer and poet based in London. Using video, installation, photography, painting and scent, she examines and abstracts her intrigue of the ‘rules of representation’ as a device to undermine contemporary Western culture. She is particularly interested in the self coined phrase ‘humane afrofuturism’ as a practice of bringing forward the humane and equality-led perspectives on how we visualise black bodies. Her work has been featured at 198 Gallery, London; Somerset House, London; The British Film Institute, London; Mimosa House, London; Blank 100, London; Red Hook Labs, New York; Aperture Gallery, New York; Red Bull Film Festival, Los Angeles; Sanam Archive, Accra Ghana. She is an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, London.


WEEK 3:
summer fucking mason



On View June 26–July 2  

Velvet Rain (2019)
summer fucking mason

The undead are watching you, Suzan. Run, Suzie, run. This conceptual zombie collage centers the eminent violence Black folk experience amidst white surveillance.

Shot and directed by summer fucking mason
Soundtrack by Imogen Teasley-Vlautin
Photography by Drea Nieto
Zombie/Dance Choreography by Gabriel Christian

summer fucking mason: After graduating from Berkeley, I was immediately adopted into the film scene in Oakland and SF. Through my agency, ONX, I organized twenty creatives in the Bay to help me develop my first short film, Copper. It gained traction after the film collective, The Black Aesthetic, screened it at the Nook Gallery. Since then my films have shown at the Black Smithsonian, San Francisco Museum of the African Diaspora, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Stanford University, Ann Arbor Film Festival, New School in New York, and the Black Radical Imagination Film Tour. Currently, I’m working on my first two feature length films: Post Daddy Issues and 818.



WEEK 4: Jerome AB



On View Jul 3–July 9

Masculine Ken on the Secret We Share (2018)
Jerome AB

With spoken word by Precious Okoyomon, illustrations by Neil Gilks and Katie Armstrong

In an attempt to heal, Ken loses his digital self in a maddening research spell on stigmas around mental illnesses, inflicted upon/within ourselves in poc communities and by the other; ~white professionals~ resting on the laurels of institutionalized racism, to sift through the truths found in the misinformation of overstimulation, toxic masculinity, prayer and balance.

Length: 14:30

Jerome AB is a Kenyan-born architectural designer, movement artist and choreographer living and working between Brooklyn and Los Angeles. He has performed for and alongside Blood Orange, Casey Spooner, Caroline Polachek, Jimmy Valery Robert, Ryan McNamara, choreographer Julia Crockett and dance duo FlucT at spaces in New York City such as National Sawdust, MoMA PS1, Knockdown Center, Signal Gallery, Maw Gallery, Wild Space and Lever House as commissioned by Performa during Frieze.
His current body of work is focused on an ongoing performative video series featuring an expressionless humanoid character of unintelligible African origins, portrayed by Jerome and extensions thereof, dubbed Masculine Ken. In these pieces, Masculine Ken observes and confronts various psychological defense mechanisms and breaks down falsified intrapersonal realities that can occur as a result of internalized human exchange through movement and visual audio manipulation.



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