Screening Vision is a new digital venture digging deep into the Arts for Art and Vision Festival archives to highlight great performances and discussions from 25 years of programs. New videos are posted on our Youtube channel Tuesday through Sunday.
See the video schedule here and learn more about the performers in this week's videos below
Tuesday April 14
Patricia Nicholson - dance, text
Val Jeanty - percussion, electronics
Cooper-Moore - piano, instruments
Bill Mazza - video art
Filmed at The Clemente, June 2, 2019
no more passing for Normal
It just don’t work now and never did
Let us stretch out our souls
Let me touch your heart and the sky
At the same time
Making the connection
- Patricia Nicholson Parker
Thursday April 16
Moderator: Mike Burke - Democracy Now
Speakers: Oliver Lake, Fred Moten, William Parker, Jason Kao Hwang
Filmed at Vision Festival 19, June 13, 2014 at Roulette, Brooklyn.
Amiri Baraka was an important presence at the Vision Festival since its inception in 1996. Long before the festival, he was a champion of the music with his seminal books on Jazz including Blues People and Black Music.
For many of the other artists and audiences who have participated in the festival, Baraka has been an inspiration. For many years, Baraka helped organize the panel discussions that deepened the context and impact for the art that being presented.
William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City, heralded by The Village Voice as, “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.” In addition to recording over 150 albums, he has published six books and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists. http://www.williamparker.net/
Fred Moten is a teacher and writer whose areas of study and practice include Black Literary, Aural and Visual Culture, Critical Theory, Performance Studies, and Poetry and Poetics. He is especially concerned with the social force and social origins of black expressive cultural practices. In particular, Moten is interested in the relation between insurgent social movement and experimental art, and has been preoccupied with understanding these fields of endeavor as indissolubly linked and irreducibly popular. https://www.dukeupress.edu/explore-subjects/browse?AuID=1384061
The artistic scope of renowned saxophonist, composer, painter, and poet Oliver Lake’s half-century-long career is unparalleled. An extensive resume of his collaborations includes work with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Flux String Quartet, Bjork, Lou Reed, A Tribe Called Quest, Mos Def, Me’shell Ndegeocello, Anthony Braxton, James Blood Ulmer, William Parker, Vijay Iyer, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille and a veritable who’s who of the jazz vanguard. Oliver’s efforts extend far beyond the music, with his creation of the non-profit Passin’ Thru organization, becoming a mainstay at Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, publishing two books of poetry and frequently producing visual artwork for exhibitions across the country.
https://oliverlake.net/
The music of Jason Kao Hwang (composer/violin/viola) explores the vibrations and language of his history. His compositions are often narrative landscapes through which sonic beings embark upon extemporaneous, transformational journeys. His most recent releases, Conjure, his duo with Karl Berger, and Blood, performed by Burning Bridge, his octet of Chinese and Western instruments, have received critical acclaim. In 2019, 2018, 2013 and 2012, the El Intruso International Critics Poll voted him #1 for Violin/Viola. His chamber opera The Floating Box, A Story in Chinatown was one of the Top Ten Opera Recordings of 2005 by Opera News. As composer, Mr. Hwang has received support from Chamber Music America, NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, NY Community Trust, NJSCA, NYSCA, US Artists International and others. As violinist, he has worked with William Parker, Anthony Braxton, Butch Morris, Reggie Workman, Pauline Oliveros, Tomeka Reid, Patrick Brennan, Will Connell, Jr., Zen Matsuura, Oliver Lake, Adam Rudolph, Jerome Cooper and others.
www.jasonkaohwang.com
Mike Burke is the longest-standing producer at Democracy Now! In addition to his work on the show he helped found The Indypendent a monthly social and economic justice newspaper based in New York.
Sunday April 19
Amiri Baraka - poetry
Wilber Morris - bass
Herbie Morgan - tenor saxophone
Filmed at Vision Festival 4, May 25, 1999, St. Nicholas of Myra Church, NYC.
The dramatist, novelist and poet Amiri Baraka is one of the most respected and widely published African-American writers. With the beginning of Black Civil Rights Movements during the sixties, Baraka explored the anger of African-Americans and used his writings as a weapon against racism. Also, he advocated scientific socialism with his revolutionary inclined poems and aimed at creating aesthetic through them.
Amiri Baraka’s writing career spans over nearly fifty years and has mostly focused on the subjects of Black Liberation and White Racism. Today, a number of well known poems, short stories, plays and commentaries on society, music and literature are associated with his name. A few of the famous ones include, ‘The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues’, ‘The Book of Monk’ and ‘New Music, New Poetry’ among others.
The literary world respects the playwright and poet Amiri Baraka as one of the revolutionary provocateurs of African-American poetry. He is counted among the few influential political activists who have spent most of their life time fighting for the rights of African-Americans.