Black in Design 2021: “Designing for Black Queer Pleasure, Joy, and Intimacy”

We’ve seen a tremendous expansion of spaces in which the interior lives of Black people are affirmed and celebrated, from social media to art collectives like Papi Juice. At the same time, anti-Black racism and violence reinforce the boundaries of everyday Black existence in physical and digital spaces. In convening, architects, pleasure activists, and cultural scholars, this panel aims to encourage architects, planners, and designers to design spaces that accommodate both the security and the exuberance of Black and queer bodies.

The Black in Design conference, organized by the Harvard Graduate School of Design African American Student Union, recognizes the contributions of the African diaspora to the design fields and promotes discourse around the agency of the design professions to address and dismantle the institutional barriers faced by our communities. The fourth biannual conference, Black Matter, will take place virtually on October 8-10, 2021.

Black Matter celebrates the cultivation of Black design and creativity from the magical to the mundane. The conference aims to lift up Black spatial practices and experiences that operate below the surface of design discourse, bringing nuance to the trope of Black excellence and acknowledging the urgent political, spatial, and ecological crises facing Black communities across the diaspora.

This year's conference will host discussions, exhibitions, and performances at the intersections of technology, history, and design, with focus on encouraging new design practices. Black Matter offers a dynamic virtual environment where geographically distant participants are connected synchronously to share their ideas and creative work, forming a global constellation of Black consciousness. Learn more about this year’s conference at blackmatter.tv.

Malcolm J. Rio [moderator] is a graphic and architectural designer and thinker based in Providence, RI, where they work as an assistant professor of architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Rio is also currently a Ph.D. student in architecture history and theory at Columbia University, where they research on topics of sexuality, race, kinship, citizenship, urbanism, imperialism, and colonialism across the long-19th and 20th centuries. Rio holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they were recognized with the 2019 SMArchS Thesis Prize and the Arthur Rotch Special Prize for research on the urbanism of house-ballroom culture in New York City titled “Drag Hinge: ‘Reading’ the Scales between Architecture and Urbanism” (2019). Additionally, Rio has earned a Master of Architecture from RISD, and both a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy and a Bachelor of Fine Art in Art + Design from Towson University. Rio’s scholarship, criticism and interviews have appeared in Thresholds, Avery Review, The New York Review of Architecture, ArchitectureMPS and Pidgin, as well as in forthcoming books like Living Room, a volume on sexuality, gender and architecture edited by Sophie Hochhäusl.

Ashon Crawley is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility, an investigation of aesthetics and performance as modes of collective, social imagination, as well as The Lonely Letters, an exploration of the interrelation of Blackness, mysticism, quantum mechanics and love. He is currently working on a third book, tentatively titled “Made Instrument,” about the role of the Hammond Organ in the institutional and historic Black Church, in Black sacred practice, and in Black social life more broadly.

Adam R. is an audio/video technologist, DJ, and one of the co-founders of Papi Juice, a Brooklyn-based art collective that aims to affirm and celebrate the lives of queer and trans people of color. Adam’s music and digital art are inspired by his Caribbean and African-American heritage. His work reflects his interest in afro-futurism, afro-pessimism and the diaspora at large.

Leslie Wilson is an Assistant Professor of Art History and Museum Studies Program Liaison for Art History at Purchase College, State University of New York. Dr. Wilson’s teaching and research focuses on the global history of photography, modern and contemporary art from Africa and the African diaspora, American art post-1900, and museum studies. Her current project charts the development and popularization of color photography in South Africa, from its inception in the early twentieth century to contemporary practice. She has held curatorial internships at the Art Institute of Chicago, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the St. Louis Art Museum.

Aneesah Ettress is an arts professional and writer based in the Denver Metro Area. Moved by the intersections of art and religion, she seeks to center historically underrepresented narratives and the work of POC artists past and present. She recently completed the Master of Divinity program at The University of Chicago with a research interest in the prophetic imagination of contemporary Black artists. Through her curatorial practice, she hopes to communicate that art is at work to transform the soul.

00:00 Introduction from Tobi Fagbule
02:42 Panel Introduction from Malcom Rio
06:52 Presentation by Ashon Crawley
19:29 Presentation by Aneesah Ettress and Leslie Wilson
34:20 Presentation by Adam R.
43:28 Q + A/Discussion