“There’s just a certain genius to accompaniment, how you actually support other people being expressive, and that’s the jazz thing again. I keep coming back to that: listening and responding, but responding in a way where you still allow the person a certain kind of platform. To a certain degree it goes into this whole space that I circle back on so often, this “usher” work. How do you function as a platform for other people’s expression or articulation, which I think everybody’s sort of doing all the time in jazz. They cede the floor to one another. So I always definitely saw DREAMS ARE COLDER THAN DEATH as usher work. It was always about creating a platform for black folks—as I say, uncommon black folks—and for specialists to voice their feelings about where they were but ostensibly where we are, collectively.” — Arthur Jafa*

As part of the MOCA exhibition ARTHUR JAFA: LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH, curated by Helen Molesworth, the museum and Los Angeles Film Forum at MOCA present a screening of Jafa’s 2013 documentary DREAMS ARE COLDER THAN DEATH.  The film will be introduced by Saidiya Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, who will participate in a post-screening Q & A.

ARTHUR JAFA: DREAMS ARE COLDER THAN DEATH, Thursday, May 11, at 7 pm.

THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA, 152 North Central Avenue, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.

moca.org/program/los-angeles-filmforum-at-moca-presents-arthur-jafas-dreams-are-colder-than-death

ARTHUR JAFA: LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH, through June 12.

THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA, 152 North Central Avenue, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.

moca.org/exhibition/arthur-jafa-love-is-the-message-the-message-is-death

Jafa’s first solo show in London will open next month at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. ARTHUR JAFA: A SERIES OF UTTERLY IMPROBABLE, YET EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS, curated by Amira Gad, “will take the form of a site-specific installation at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, while also expanding beyond the gallery to the peripheries of the city with a series of performances, screenings, and events in venues or areas of London that function for Jafa as ‘black sites.’ ”*

ARTHUR JAFA: A SERIES OF UTTERLY IMPROBABLE, YET EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS, June 8 through September 10

SERPENTINE SACKLER GALLERY, West Carriage Drive, London

*serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/arthur-jafa-series-utterly-improbable-yet-extraordinary-renditions

*Cassie da Costa, “Interview: Arthur Jafa,” Film Comment, May 8, 2017:

filmcomment.com/blog/interview-arthur-jafa/

Also see: frieze.com/article/arthur-jafa?language=en

Image credit: Arthur Jafa, Dreams Are Colder Than Death