Endless Shout

Artists: Raúl de Nieves, Danielle Goldman, George Lewis, Fred Moten, The Otolith Group, and taisha paggett

The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania presents Endless Shout, a multi-artist performance project exploring collectivity and improvisation. Endless Shout asks how, why, and where performance and improvisation can take place inside a museum. Its name comes from a 1994 composition by George Lewis, who was referencing “Carolina Shout” (1921) by James P. Johnson.

Over the course of six months, six participants—Raúl de Nieves, Danielle Goldman, George Lewis, Fred Moten, The Otolith Group, and taisha paggett—will oversee an unfolding series of performances and encounters within ICA’s exhibition spaces.

Endless Shout offers improvisation and collectivity beyond music or dance, imagining these techniques as structures for social organizing in public and civic space. The six lead participants—some of whom will themselves perform, others of whom set events in motion—were chosen for their extensive engagement with intermedia projects at a range of scales, and because improvisation, collectivity, and black aesthetics are important touchstones for their efforts. Endless Shout asks how we attend to performance socially, politically, individually, and collectively, and what physical and psychic traces exist before and after the performance’s wake.

Endless Shout will occur in tandem with The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, on view at ICA from September 14, 2016, to March 19, 2017.
 

Program
Miya Masaoka: A Line Becomes a Circle
September 22, 8pm
With Joel Davel, Miya Masaoka, Ann Moss, and Makiko Sakurai 

George Lewis’s Calder
September 29, 7pm
With George Lewis, Thurman Barker, Dan Blacksberg, Eli Fountain, and Aiyun Huang 

George Lewis’s A Recital for Terry Adkins by Ensemble Pamplemousse
October 12, 8pm
With David Broome, Natacha Diels, Andrew Greenwald, Bryan Jacobs, Jessie Marino, and Joshua Modney 
FringeArts, 140 North Columbus Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19106 

Jennie C. Jones and George Lewis in conversation
October 14, 12pm 

Douglas R. Ewart (music) and Ni’Ja Whitson (dance) within Rio Negro
October 14, 2pm 

Screening: SHWABADA: The Music of Ndikho Xaba (dir. Nhlanhla Masondo) with Q&A
October 14, 7pm 
International House Philadelphia, 3701 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104 

For more information visit endlessshout.icaphila.org.

Major support for Endless Shout has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

ICA acknowledges the generous sponsorship of Barbara B. & Theodore R. Aronson for exhibition catalogues. Programming at ICA has been made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation, and by Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan. Marketing is supported by Pamela Toub Berkman & David J. Berkman and by Lisa A. & Steven A. Tananbaum. Additional funding has been provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Overseers Board for the Institute of Contemporary Art, friends and members of ICA, and the University of Pennsylvania. General operating support is provided, in part, by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. ICA receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. ICA acknowledges Le Méridien Philadelphia as our official Unlock Art partner hotel.