Jason Moran
Sept 20, 2019–Jan 5, 2020
Collaborations
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Collaboration has been central to Moran’s experiments, and among the many artists with whom he has collaborated include The Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits), Stan Douglas, Lizzie Fitch, Theaster Gates, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Ashland Mines (Total Freedom), Alicia Hall Moran, Adam Pendleton, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, Ryan Trecartin, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems.
Glenn Ligon
Death of Tom, 2008
Glenn Ligon, Death of Tom, 2008, 16mm film transferred to video, black-and-white, sound; 23 min. © Glenn Ligon; Image courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London
Artist Glenn Ligon critically investigates the legacies of painting and conceptual art as well as language and identity. For The Death of Tom, his first foray into filmmaking, Ligon set out to re-create a scene from a 1903 silent film adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), the abolitionist novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. In the 1903 movie, white actors performed the principal roles in blackface. During his project, Ligon discovered that his camera had not been properly loaded with film, resulting in what he describes as “blurry, fluttery, burnt-out black- and-white images, all light and shadows.” Viewing the ghostly footage, the artist realized that only abstraction could address the history and enduring repercussions of America’s structural racism.
Ligon, who knew the original silent film was accompanied by piano, invited Jason Moran to improvise a score. Ligon suggested as a starting point the vaudeville song “Nobody” (1905). Moran homed in on Ligon’s haunting moving images and played, as he describes it, “to the shadows.”