Cassandra Press Lectures: Whiteness, Dissonance, and Horror
Sat, May 7, 2022
1–3 pm
Susan and John Hess Theater and online, via Zoom
On the occasion of their inclusion in Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept, Cassandra Press presents two seminars drawn from their course catalogue. These lectures, which are integral to the work of Cassandra Press, seek to spread ideas, distribute new language, and propagate dialogue centering ethics, aesthetics, femme-driven activism, and Black scholarship.
For this lecture, Biennial artist and Cassandra Press founder Kandis Williams will draw upon her investigations on horror motifs as products of the white supremacist cultural imaginary to unpack the psychology of dissonance and psychopathy bred out of white supremacist and colonial ideations.
Williams will discuss her research surrounding her ongoing CASSANDRA CLASSROOMS course entitled Whiteness, Dissonance, and Horror. In this course, Williams looks at Whiteness through the lens of American horror films. Theorizing that horror as a literary genre is a product of the white supremacist cultural imaginary, Williams looks at horror motifs as the recognition/means of coping with the implications of white beings and peoples in the perpetuation of brutal racial colonialism, violence, genocide, and class warfare. Following the lecture, attendees are invited to a film screening of selected media curated by Williams.
Kandis Williams (b. 1985, Baltimore, MD) is a visual artist whose practice spans collage, sculpture, film, performance, writing, publishing, and curating. She explores and deconstructs critical theory around race, nationalism, authority, and eroticism. Her work examines the body as a site of experience while drawing upon her background in dramaturgy to envision spaces that accommodate the varied biopolitical economies, which inform how form and movement might be read. Williams establishes indices that network parts of the anatomy, regions of Black diaspora, as well as communication and obfuscation, relaying how popular culture and myth are interconnected. The artist is also the founder and editor-at-large of Cassandra Press, an artist-run publishing and educational platform which produces lo-fi printed matter, classrooms, projects, artist books, and exhibitions.
This event will take place both in-person and online.
The Susan and John Hess Family Theater is equipped with an induction loop and infrared assistive listening system. Accessible seating is available.
This program will be recorded and made available on the Whitney's YouTube channel.
El subtitulado en directo está disponible para programas y eventos públicos en español si se solicita con diez días hábiles de anticipación. Haremos todo lo posible por atender las solicitudes que se presenten fuera de ese plazo. Para hacer una solicitud, contáctenos a través de accessfeedback@whitney.org o al (646) 666-5574 (voz). Aceptamos retransmisiones y llamadas de voz.
Live closed captioning is available for public programs and events in Spanish upon request with ten business days' advance notice. We will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made outside of that window of time. To place a request, please contact us at accessfeedback@whitney.org or (646) 666-5574 (voice). Relay and voice calls welcome.
Live captioning will be available online and in-person for this event. If you need captions in a separate browser window or on your own mobile device, please email accessfeedback@whitney.org for StreamText link.
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