Black Image Corporation

Artist and UChicago faculty member Theaster Gates and art historian Romi Crawford are brought together through a shared engagement with archival photographs made of and by black people, the deployment of which has rarely been controlled by black people. This Gray Center Mellon Collaborative Fellowship aims to redeploy the black image aesthetically, historically, economically, and for the public. 

Valuations, Economies, and Revised Ecologies for the Black Image

 

A team-taught course with artist Theaster Gates and art historian Romi Crawford, "Valuations, Economies, and Revised Ecologies for the Black Image," is an investigation and inquiry into the challenges around black photographic image production. The course will require students to both examine and produce (on their own and with the faculty) strategies for making and interpreting contemporary art based on the urgent economic and affective needs (often obfuscated) of Black photographic archives. Organized around practicums of research and making, students will be required to conduct interviews with artists and/or produce artworks in collaboration with living artists and photographers. The course will allow students to work with faculty on producing outcomes in areas such as intergenerational collaboration, archival-based art-making, and "service-oriented" art history; or one that pays attention to the affective realm of (often) very basic needs and desires of the Black and minoritized artist. With students, we will develop a process and method for locating and responding to these needs as an actionable part of art historical research and scholarship.

Course listed as ARTV 26206.  Information on registration found here.