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PASS in NY: Coco Fusco

coco fusco

Coco Fusco is a Cuban-American artist and writer whose work examines the relationship between women and society, war, politics, and race. For PASS in New York, Coco draws on her new book, Dangerous Moves, to discuss performance and politics in Cuba, with a focus on Cuban hip hop.

“I think all art all over the world can be understood in relation to politics, not just in Cuba. My focus is on artists who address political phenomena. Making art for me is really about work and serious thinking about what happens in the world.” – Coco Fusco

New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco has staged multi-media productions incorporating large-scale projections, closed-circuit television, web-based live streaming performances with audience interaction, as well as performances at cultural events that actively engage with the audience. Her most recent book Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba was published by Tate Publications (2015).

Much more at cocofusco.com.

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PASS in NY: Triple Canopy

For PASS at Peforma 15, Triple Canopy, a magazine based in New York, present a performative reading of their new series, Passage of a Rumor, edited with Ralph Lemon, considers how and why we talk about the value and potential acquisition of ephemeral works of art. “I and others make stuff up about what’s happening, and, more compellingly, about what might happen, knowing that one cannot predict what will happen, given life’s ephemeral relationship to life and life’s partially ephemeral …  ( continue reading

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PASS in NY: Innov Gnawa

Innov Gnawa is a traditional Moroccan gnawa band based in New York City uniting music fans with their innovative, hypnotic and ecstatic take on North Africa’s trance-inducing folk tradition. The full band is comprised of Maalem (Master) Hassan Ben Jaafer (Fez), Samir Langus (Agadir), Ahmed Jeriouda (Sale), Amino Belyamani (Casablanca), Said Sayed (Sale) and Nawfal Atiq (Rabat). “You don’t need to speak Arabic to be moved by this music. It’s the music of the poor, the excluded who couldn’t afford to go …  ( continue reading

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PASS in NY: Hisham Aidi with Abdi Latif Ega and Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr

Hisham Aidi is the author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture, a study of how music—primarily hip-hop, but also rock, reggae, Gnawa and Andalusian—has come to express a shared Muslim consciousness in face of War on Terror policies. He hosts a conversation with writers Somali-American writer Abdi Latif Ega and poet, playwright, essayist and short story writer, Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr. “[T]he richest cross-fertilization that you have between American music and Islam is in hip-hop, that begins …  ( continue reading

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PASS in NY: Neo Muyanga

  Cape Town-based composer and PASS co-founder Neo Muyanga is engaged in an ongoing, multi-focal exploration of protest music that spans from how protest songs played a key role in South Africa’s liberation to the role of liberation music in Egypt, Brazil and Uruguay. For PASS at the Performa Hub in New York, Neo will host discussions and performances to explore these themes with NYC based musicians. “This is ugly beautiful. One of the roles of music is to do …  ( continue reading

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PASS in NY: Brent Hayes Edwards

Writer and researcher, Brent Hayes Edwards presents “The Two Ages of Artist House: Ornette Coleman on Prince Street”. “In jazz history, the 1970s have habitually been overlooked or dismissed as a period when the music went into severe decline. But in fact there was a remarkable ferment of activity in the decade, especially in New York — much of it underground, in small clubs, musician-run “lofts,” and independent theaters — and jazz played a central role in the arts scene …  ( continue reading

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PASS in NY: Harmony Holiday

Poet and choreographer Harmony Holiday curates an archive devoted to poetry, poetics and music, woven together through mythscientific gestures. “Since the 1950s, jazz music and the literary imagination have been inextricably linked, producing transcendent recordings and written work and many hybrids of the two – a new sonics, an AntiqueFuturism – From Langston Hughes and Kenneth Rexroth and Duke Ellington to Joseph Jarman to Michael Harper to Mos Def.” For PASS at the Performa Hub in New York, Harmony will …  ( continue reading

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PASS pop-up at Performa 15 Hub in New York

Through next week, we’ll occupy the Performa 15 Hub in New York with the Chimurenga Library. This multi-tiered programming platform takes the form of a library-of-people, bringing together a broad spectrum of collaborators and literal bodies of knowledge in an improvised, pop-up library which also functions as radio studio and market. The Chimurenga Library engages trade as both the process of buying, selling, or exchanging goods or services and the practice of exchanging ideas, imaginaries, perceptions, and vocabularies. Over five days, from …  ( continue reading

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African Futures Music Concert & Party: Spoek Mathambo / Batuk/Keziah Jones/Just A Band/Gato Preto

Nigerian musician Keziah Jones, South African Spoek Mathambo, Kenya’s Just A Band and German duo Gato Preto will join for an evening of music and the closing party of African Futures. Each of them will be performing music that relates to the theme of African Futures. Listen to this concert on PASS. 31/10/2015. 21hoo-late Keziah Jones, Nigerian singer-songwriter and guitarist, who accompanied Lenny Kravitz on his world tour, will present music from his latest album Captain Rugged, which was accompanied …  ( continue reading

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African Futures Knowledge Production: Where do we go from here?

“Who generates knowledge about Africa? How do past, present and future collide in representations of the continent? And what are the different languages we use to speak about Africa’s political, technological and cultural tomorrow?” Listen to this talk on PASS. 31/10/2015. 10hoo-13h00 While the world embraces information as both resource and currency, Africa is busy working on telling its story and imagining that story’s future. Will this shift the way in which we think about information or data? Can fiction …  ( continue reading

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