The Counterpublic Papers vol. 8 no. 17

Author

Lester Spence
June 17, 2024

These past few weeks have come and gone in a rush. I turned 55 last week—thanks to all who sent birthday wishes (and a special thank you to my girlfriend Tracey Shissler for hosting, Don and Beth Fredrick for food, wine, and more, and then to the folks who brought themselves and gifts. Special shoutout here to Lionel Foster who gave me a dope recording unit that’ll come in real handy given what I’m working on). Turning 55 isn’t like turning 40 or 50, but it ended up being a convenient opportunity to bring people together. 

(From 3pm to 3am. What a hang.)

It also comes at a particular moment in time as far as everything I’ve been working on. I’ve spent the last few years working on three major projects. We just had our second Summer School on Racial Politics, and we’ll begin planning for the third. I just published an op-ed on the proposed Hopkins private police force. And will have my last official engagement with the head of the police force on Monday morning (likely as you read this).

But what I’m particularly excited about is our Looking Rights exhibition, the final component of our Sawyer Seminar (Rethinking the Right to the City through the Black Radical Tradition).

A quick note on the Sawyer Seminar. From Mellon’s website:

Named in honor of the Mellon’s long-serving third president, John E. Sawyer, the seminars have brought together faculty, foreign visitors, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from a variety of fields mainly, but not exclusively, in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences, for intensive study of subjects chosen by the participants.

Mellon support aims to engage scholars in comparative inquiry that would otherwise be difficult to pursue, while at the same time avoiding the institutionalization of such work in new centers, departments, or programs. Sawyer Seminars are, in effect, temporary research centers.

More here. 

While the Sawyer Seminar award is typically used to bring scholars from around the country/world to produce (academic) work on a given theme, we used the seminar to develop a set of broad intellectual conversations with collaborators within Baltimore, from across the Atlantic, and from the Global South. These conversations were designed to dissolve the firewall between the university and the city, and to rethink the Right to the City. What would it mean to argue for this right from the position of black populations? We think the answer to this question has empirical and political implications, particularly now. 

Last year our events took the form of a set of curated readings hosted at Red Emma’s, public conversations at Urban Reads, both chosen because of their ownership structure (Red Emma’s is cooperatively owned and has been a hub of left activism for twenty years, while Urban Reads is perhaps the only black owned bookstore in the city) and then an un-conference in Baltimore placing organizers and scholars from London and Rio in community with organizers and activists here. 

This year our events consisted of a series of parlors conducted at various black and cooperatively owned restaurants in the city, and finally, of an art exhibition entitled Looking Rights.  

We’ve been working with Kurt Orderson, an international documentary film maker, for a while and thought he’d be perfect for this given his work. And realizing we were fish out of water as far as art exhibitions go we brought in Rael Sally and The Space for Creative Black Imagination.

From the press release:

The cinematic, sonic, and narrative artworks invite audiences to observe and respond to markers of spatial violence in Baltimore, Sao Paulo, and Cape Town. Through a curated collection of visual and auditory elements, the exhibition weaves together a collection of narratives that illuminate the complex relationships among spaces, power dynamics and lived experiences of the city by its citizens. Appearing in the context of what Machicote calls urban marronage, the exhibition unpacks generations of exploitation and repression, and points to acts of resistance and collectivity that, consequently, produce new creative spaces. 

Here are images from the exhibition opening:

NomüNomü is the absolute perfect space for the project as it has become over a short time the gatehering space for organizers and activists that Red Emma’s and 2640 were for folk in Baltimore in the beginning of the 21st Century. My plan is to use the exhibition space as a residency, working and also hosting conversations with folks associated with the project and associated with the black radical tradition in Baltimore. And to host happy hours in the early evening—it’s the beginning of the summer, and my DJ equipment travels. 

If you’re around, please stop by. We’ll be here through the 27th from 1-5 with happy hours likely to follow.