Black Artists Retreat 2019: Sonic Imagination
Hosted by Armory Artist-in-Residence Theaster Gates
October 11, 2019 - October 12, 2019
Wade Thompson Drill Hall
Theaster Gates, a charismatic figure in the contemporary art world, with a practice situated both within and without gallery walls, vacillating between aesthetics, urban planning, and activism, hosts his renowned Black Artists Retreat for the first time outside of Chicago.
For this year’s retreat, Gates, an Armory Artist-in-Residence, welcomes black artists and allies from Chicago, New York, and beyond for a weekend of communion, celebration, and multi-disciplinary exploration of this year’s theme: sonic imagination.
Retreat guests will be invited to actively think about the role of sound in the human experience and in art-making: the capacity to dream, feel, motivate and activate through sound, to think through and love through sound, to incant, incite or invoke using the invisible energy of wind and body to materialize form that moves us.
Through presentations, formal and informal conversations, side-bars, sharings, tributes, screenings, and meditations, the Retreat will explore how artists, performers, curators, historians and other leading thinkers in the fields of art production, cultural production, music, film and video, sound engineering, and the adjacent technical crafts of sound production, play, pray, worship, commune, entertain, interrupt, celebrate, heal, mourn and invite unity.
This gathering also celebrates the completion of the replacement of the wooden flooring of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, which includes recycled pine planks milled by Gates’s workforce and repurposed from his Chicago urban manufacturing renewal project, Dorchester Industries, amongst other sources.
Opening Celebrations
Friday, October 11, 2019 from 7:30pm–12:00am
Sonic Musings, Meditations & Testimonies
Saturday, October 12, 2019 from 11:00am–6:00pm
Sonic Soul Session #1: Roller Skating Party
Saturday, October 12, 2019 from 7:00pm–11:00pm
“An enormous dreamer canny enough to make his outlandish ideas for the neighborhood a reality…[he is] a civic treasure on par with Chicago’s skyline and downtown museums.”
The New York Times
“…one of the most iconoclastic, and intellectually supple, figures in the contemporary art world”
The Financial Times (UK)
Schedule
Opening Celebrations
Friday, October 11, 2019 7:30 pm–12:00 am
Wade Thompson Drill Hall
Sonic Musings, Meditations & Testimonies
Saturday, October 12, 2019 11:00 am–6:30 am
Wade Thompson Drill Hall & Historic Period Rooms
Join Theaster Gates for a kaleidescopic exploration of BAR 2019’s theme: Sonic Imagination. Through film, presentations, conversations, meditations, testimonies, and special sonic moments we will explore the role of sound in our lives and practices, leaving space for a multitude of perspectives.
Sonic Soul Session #1: Roller Skating Party
Saturday, October 12, 2019 from 7:00 Pm–11:00 Pm
Wade Thompson Drill Hall
Gallery
Support
Black Artists Retreat 2019: Sonic Imagination is made possible by a generous grant from the Ford Foundation. Gagosian has provided major support for the Retreat. Sponsorship is provided by Toyota. The Armory’s Artist-in-Residence Program is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
