Evil Nigger: A Five-Part Performance for Julius Eastman by Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and LaMont Hamilton

Artist, designer, and composer Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste completes his ISSUE residency in collaboration with interdisciplinary artist LaMont Hamilton January 19th - 20th, 2018 at The Kitchen. The performance features the duo sequentially performing all five of their previously staged “parts” of Julius Eastman’s 1979 composition “Evil Nigger” as a 24 hour interpretive cycle. The work runs continuously from Friday to Saturday, with five publicly accessible segments opening in parts throughout the 24 hours. A $5 RSVP commitment is asked to ensure seating for each public viewing.

The performance is part of the 2018 Julius Eastman: That Which is Fundamental festival curated by Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Dustin Hurt, organized for The Kitchen with the Eastman Estate and Bowerbird.

Public Performance Schedule:

“In this final and cumulative iteration, we are concluding our investigation of Julius Eastman as an archetypal trickster, specifically within the canon of Black American cultural practice. Here, by presenting previously standalone pieces sequentially, we are able to make explicit what Eastman referred as an “organic” principle of performance, a cumulative process in which new sections of a work are overlapped with preceding sections, resulting in a dense, mounting-yet-nuanced simultaneity of expression: a pursuit through which we are able to further understand Eastman as complicating minimalist form, rather than reinforcing its emergent supremacy.

Specifically, we acknowledge Eastman’s own subtle contradiction in regards to the organic principle that “the information is taken out at a gradual and logical rate” to be an impetus to examine a principle which simultaneously emphasizes the preservation and accumulation as well as the frictions which might occur upon their intersection. In making explicit the sonic, gestural and material relationships within and across each of the five performances in this series, we embrace the incongruity (or infeasibility) of overlapping content without losing information.”

-- Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste

Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste is a Bessie-nominated composer, designer and performer, living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Holding an MFA from Brooklyn College’s Performance and Interactive Media program, his work, through the lens of precarious labor, complicates notions of industry, identity, and environment and the implications of the intersections of such phenomena. He is a founding member of performance collective, Wildcat!, and frequently collaborates with performers and fine artists, including Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, André M. Zachery, and Yanira Castro/a canary torsi. He has presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Newark Museum, Under The Radar at The Public Theater, The Studio Museum In Harlem, National Sawdust, The Jam Handy (Detroit), Tanz Im August at Hau3 (Berlin), American Realness at Abrons, Knockdown Center, Gibney Dance, FringeArts (Philadelphia), Judson Church, Stoa Cultural Center (Helsinki), MIT, Arts East New York, JACK, Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia), University Settlement, Harlem Stage, as well as on Dazed Digital, Complex, and Boiler Room. Jeremy Touissant-Baptiste is a 2017 Artist-In-Residence at ISSUE Project Room.

LaMont Hamilton is an autodidact interdisciplinary artist working in Chicago and New York. Hamilton works primarily in photography, film and performance. Hamilton has been the recipient of several fellowships and awards including most recently the Brown Foundation Fellowship, MacDowell Colony, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Artadia Award, ArtMatters Grant and the City of Chicago's IAP Award.

Nyugen E. Smith is a Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist and educator. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a 2016 Leonore Annenberg Arts Fellow. Drawing heavily on his West Indian heritage, Nyugen is committed to raising the consciousness of past and present political struggles through his practice which consists of sculpture, installation, video and performance. He is influenced by the conflation of African cultural practices and the remnants of European colonial rule in the region. Responding to the legacy of this particular environment, Nyugen’s work considers imperialist practices of oppression, violence and ideological misnomers.

Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson is a movement artist exploring duality and the dissolution of identity. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, this one is a 2016 Movement Research VanLier Fellow. Illuminated by mentors Sidra Bell, Daria Faïn, Jaamil Kosoko and the Unseen Hand, this one's mode of inquiry is centered around the oneness of being. shantelle aka s+vois has worked with the Alison Chase Project, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Paloma McGregor, and Urban Bush Women. Their works have been presented at Light Lab, The Space Upstairs, Dixon Place, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the New Hazlett and at BRIC with AUNTS. Currently they are collaborating and performing with luciana achugar and the Commons Choir and would like to thank Bill T. Jones, and Movement Research for their support. So thankful to all those who support this one.