Learning Series Lecture: Working Every Minute—Rhythm, Labor, and Art
Mon, Jan 7, 2019
7:30–8:30 pm
Kevin Beasley, Rebuilding of the cotton gin motor, 2016. Photograph by Carlos Vela-Prado. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York
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Floor 3, Theater
Individual, Dual, and Friend members
“I just can’t continue to move through society without asking questions about what I’m hearing, what is being said; the noise of the world.”
—Kevin Beasley
“People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.”
—Andy Warhol
In this talk teaching fellow Ayanna Dozier will provide historical and critical context for the new exhibition Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape. Beasley uses a twentieth century cotton gin motor from Alabama to generate sound as if it were a musical instrument. In so doing, he creates a space for visual and aural contemplation around the rhythm of hard labor. How does the rhythmic drone of the cotton gin sync up with the clock? What does that tell us about the mechanization of the body through labor? By exploring Beasley’s project alongside the work of other artists concerned with machines, rhythm, and repetition—including Andy Warhol—this talk will examine Beasley’s interrogation of the relationship between labor and time.
One of the Whitney’s Joan Tisch Teaching Fellows, Ayanna Dozier is a PhD candidate in Art History & Communication Studies with a graduate option in Women & Gender Studies at McGill University. Her writing on Black feminist philosophy, experimental cinema, comic books, and performance art can be found in Cléo Journal, Feminist Media Studies, and Liquid Blackness Journal. Dozier is also a critical studies fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Monday, January 7
7:30–8:30 pm
Sunday, January 13
12–1 pm
Saturday, February 2
12–1 pm
Sunday, February 10
11 am–12 pm
1–2 pm
Individual, Dual, and Friend members are invited to this event. For Individual members, the invitation is for one and for Dual and Friend members, the invitation is for two.