Full Description
The second annual Alchemy Lecture brought together five artists, thinkers, and writers who proposed new ways of being and discussed radical visions for the future. Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World captures and expands these lectures to illuminate our path toward this possible beautiful world. Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation) asserts that "for this decolonial future to become possible, the guiding force must no longer be capital but relations." Film curator JanaÍna Oliveira (Brazil) evokes music and movement as a means toward this relationality. Visual artist Phoebe Boswell (UK/Kenya) asks, "If we burn down the institution, what happens next?" Saidiya Hartman (US) prompts us to consider our capacity to burn, examining whether "the gift of pragmatism yields a profound tolerance of the unlivable." Cristina Rivera Garza (US/Mexico) gives us the language of the future in the subjunctive, "the smuggler who crosses the border of the future bearing unknown cargo." Each alchemist is intimately concerned with this cargo, our ability to bear its weight, and how we might find the beautiful world together.
Contents
Introduction / Christina Sharpe 1
A Manifesto for Speculative Relations / Joseph M. Pierce 7
A Manifesto for Curation / JanaÍna Oliveira 39
Manifesto of the As Yet Unlived Thing / Phoebe Boswell 63
Crow Jane Makes a Modest Proposal / Saidiya Hartman 97
Subjunctive: A Manifesto About Language, Territory, and the Yet to Come / Cristina Rivera Garza 117
Notes and References 153
About the Alchemists 164
Acknowledgments 167
