Coinciding with the career survey exhibition Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, a series of MCA programs activates Gary Simmons’s sculptural installation work, Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark. Inspired by the Black Ark—Lee “Scratch” Perry’s famous recording studio in Kingston, Jamaica, where he pioneered dub reggae—Simmons’s sculptural installation serves as a flexible stage for conversations, music, and performance.
For this day-long celebration of Chicago’s social dance history, the piece is being temporarily installed under the glittering chandelier of the South Shore Cultural Center Dining Room to commemorate the importance of the neighborhood and the history of Black social culture in Chicago.
2-3pm: Performance – Shiny Stockings with Cristin Carole Whitney Young High School Dancers
3:30-4pm: Performance – Benji Hart, Dancer as Insurgent
4:30-6pm: Talk: The Changing Vocabulary of House Dance, Co-moderated by: Erika Jarvis and Rae Chardonnay Taylor; Panelists: Amansu Eason and Jarvis Mason with Lefunktion dancers, Kitti O. and Forty
6:30-7:30pm: Workshop with Jarvis Mason / Le Funktion & Amansu Eason
7:30-9pm: Dance Party with DJ Diaspora
*1-7pm: Community Archiving Day with CBSCM - Bring your flyers, fashion, photos, stories, and other artifacts representing Chicago’s social culture to add to the map. Our team will be on site to digitize artifacts, record oral histories, and demonstrate how to use and add entries to the Chicago Black Social Culture Map site. Sign up for a spot to digitize your ephemera and/or record your oral history with us here.
This event takes place at the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr.
CART captioning provided, except during the dance party.