Black Joy Symposium
for the love of you,
A BLACK JOY SYMPOSIUM
To Imagine & Ritualize an Opulent Black Future…
A month-long, curated series of virtual prompts, performances, queries, artistic interventions, and intergenerational gatherings to consider topics related to Black Joy, defined here as an ever emerging, revolutionary process and practice. Please join us in this extended community conversation designed to joy-scape a vibrant Black future in a way that transcends (without ignoring) histories rooted in oppression. See below for our evolving, daily calendar of prompts, pop-ups and programs and for updates and information on how to register for free virtual events. Return as often as you like for your daily dose of pure Black joy. Click dates or icons on calendar for more information on engagements and events. Note: Programs with an asterisk (*) require registration. 2022 Calendar coming soon.
Speaking Joy To Power
Keynote Presentation | December 27, 2022 (time TBD | featuring South African poet, Diana Ferrus.
Speaker Bio: Poet, writer, performance artist, activist, founding member of Bush Poets, the Afrikaans Writers Association (Afrikaanse Skrywersvereniging), and Women in X-chains, member of the Women’s Education and Artistic Voice Expression (WEAVE), played an instrumental role in the repatriation of Sarah Baartman’s remains from France to South Africa. Her poem, I’ve come to take you home, is a tribute to Sarah Baartman, the Khoi woman who was taken from her country of birth (South Africa) under false pretenses to be displayed as a freak show attraction in 19th century Europe. Ferrus wrote the poem while studying at Utrecht University in Holland in 1998. Feeling incredibly homesick, she started thinking about how Baartman must have felt being in a foreign land far away from her home and this prompted her to start writing.
The poem became a catalyst for the return of Baartman’s remains to South Africa, persuading the French government to finally transport her remains back to her home country after 192 years. It was so impactful that it was included in the bill that allowed for Baartman’s remains to be repatriated, and was thus published in the French law (a first in French history) that made it possible for her remains to be returned. Ferrus, along with a delegation from South Africa, left to collect Baartman’s remains and in early 2002, Baartman arrived in Johannesburg, Gauteng, and was at last laid to rest on 9 August 2002. Source
The First Annual Black Joy Symposium was Convened during December 2021
Keynote Program , 2021, Featuring Dr. Gabrielle Civil, author of Experiments in Joy
The evolution of the Black Joy Symposium has been supported in many ways by many people and organizations. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all those who have held space, talked it through, created, curated, funded, acknowledged and/or uplifted this community call for joy, understanding that all resources are necessary and valued. I am looking forward to joy-scaping the coming year through new and established partnerships. A very special shout out to Jay Simple, founder and editor in chief of The Photographer’s Greenbook, whose timely question inspired the whole damn thing. Peace & many blessings to you all.
