Join danilo machado, Simone Browne, and Akil and Seth Scafe-Smith of UK-based RESOLVE Collective for this second installment of Conversations in the Commons. Facilitators will discuss and guide a collective reflection on the global conditions of Black people under surveillance campaigns and the history of public and private resistance in the United States and United Kingdom. At the intersection of creative disruptions and scholarship, how do we redefine “the commons” or public space? What happens when blackness enters the frame?  

Inspired by the sculptural practice of Thomas J Price and in support of his exhibition, Thomas J Price: Witness taking place in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park, Studio Salon: Conversations in the Commons offers participants an opportunity to examine key themes and ideas addressed in Price’s practice through literary texts and works of art. Salon topics will include fashion, surveillance, monuments and public space, and portraiture and Black masculinity. For every session, facilitators will unpack key texts through conversation and creative prompts, as well as supplementary materials for further explorations. 

Pulling from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study and the exhibition’s curatorial vision, Conversations in the Commons aims “to (re-)define and (re-)imagine “the commons.”

This program seeks to provide opportunities to contemplate complex and abstract themes and to commune with new and existing peers.  

Live CART captioning provided by Stenocaptions and ASL interpretation provided by Pro Bono ASL. 

Conversations in the Commons | Surveillance participant bios

danilo machado

Born in Medellín, Colombia, danilo machado is a poet, curator, and critic living on occupied land interested in language’s potential for revealing tenderness, erasure, and relationships to power. An honors graduate of the University of Connecticut, danilo is producer of public programs at the Brooklyn Museum and curatorial assistant at Socrates Sculpture Park. danilo is the curator of the exhibitions Otherwise Obscured: Erasure in Body and Text at Franklin Street Works, Stamford, Connecticut, 2019-20; support structures at 8th Floor Gallery, virtual, featuring the 2019–20 cohort of Art Beyond Sight’s Art and Disability Residency; and We turn at EFA Project Space, New York, 2021. A 2020–21 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, their writing has been featured in Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Rail, Art Critical, Art Papers, Poem-a-Day, the Recluse, GenderFail, TAYO Literary Magazine, and alongside exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation, Abrons Art Center/Boston Center for the Arts, and Real Art Ways. They are working to show up with care for their communities.   

Simone Browne

Simone Browne is Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Simone is currently writing her second book manuscript, Like the Mixture of Charcoal and Darkness, which examines the interventions made by artists whose works grapple with the surveillance of Black life, from policing, privacy, smart dust and the FBI’s COINTELPRO, to encryption, electronic waste, and artificial intelligence. Together, these essays explore the productive possibilities of creative innovation when it comes to troubling surveillance and its various tactics, and imagining Black life beyond the surveillance state. Simone is the author of Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Duke University Press, 2015).   

RESOLVE Collective

RESOLVE Collective is an interdisciplinary design collective that combines architecture, engineering, technology, and art to address social challenges. They have delivered numerous projects, workshops, publications, and talks in the United Kingdom and across Europe, all of which look toward realizing just and equitable visions of change in our built environment. Much of RESOLVE Collective's work aims to provide platforms for the production of new knowledge and ideas. An integral part of this way of working means designing with and for young people and under-represented groups in society. Here, “design” encompasses both physical and systemic intervention, exploring ways of using a project’s site as a resource and working with different communities as stakeholders in the short- and long-term management of projects. In this way, design carries more than aesthetic value; it is also a mechanism for political and socio-economic change. For more information, visit RESOLVE Collective. 

Studio Salon Surveillance additional texts

Studio Salon body copy

Studio Salon

Studio Salon explores the dynamic intersections of literature and contemporary art through artist talks, book launches and writing workshops.  

TJP Funder Credits

The Studio Museum in Harlem digital programs are supported by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s Frankenthaler Digital Initiative. Thomas J. Price: Witness is made possible thanks to the Open Society Foundations. Support for inHarlem provided by Citi and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. Additional support is generously provided by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Council.