A few weeks ago, during a thoughtful conversation, a friend described 2020 as a fever dream. The uncertainty brought on by the pandemic and the potential for the uprisings that summer brought many people closer to understanding the demands they could make on themselves and others to create a safer world. It was a year of answering calls to action, of protesting and demonstrating, of helping neighbors, of corporate promises to listen and learn, to emotionally control and overhaul the capitalist machine that makes death. A heady energy ran through those days; no wonder it felt unreal.
If 2020 was marked by promises, then 2022 was marked by its ghosts. How many of those promises were not fulfilled? How many commitments were abandoned in silence? Lethargy set in as we continued to live in unprecedented times: corporate profits rose while individual pocketbooks and sanity shrank, scientists and activists sounded even louder alarms about our current climate emergency, police budgets skyrocketed. while those of public services were reduced.
In the midst of these multiple crises, the art that caught my eye this year celebrated community and reminded me of humanity’s strengths rather than its faults. I was comforted by movies, TV shows, albums, and exhibits that glorified love and imagination, that embraced the difficult work of honest self-expression, and highlighted the uplifting ways people come together to build both what they need and what they want. What they want. Here they are, in alphabetical order.
For Girls of Color
Ntozake Shange’s genre-defying work returned to Broadway in April under the energizing guidance of choreographer Camille A. Brown. Brown tends the production as if it were an inherited garden, remixing the choreopoem (a term Shange coined to describe the piece’s combination of poetry, narrative, dance, and music) with his electric dances and the addition of American Sign Language. Her interpretation transforms For Girls of Color in an invitation, an exciting call to embrace the expansive nature of Shange’s work and the experiences of Black women, past, present, and future, at its core.
Just above the city center: changing spaces
Activist and filmmaker Linda Goode Bryant (flag wars) founded Just Above Midtown in 1974, when he was just 25 years old. The gallery incubated and displayed the work of Lorraine O’Grady, Senga Nengudi, and other black experimental artists when the overwhelming white art world refused to do so. Thirty-six years after it closed in 1986, the Museum of Modern Art commemorates JAM’s legacy with a lively retrospective and a generous catalog of exhibitions. Just above the city center: changing spacesthrough February 2023, features the paintings, performance videos, and sculptures of JAM artists, as well as archival ephemera (late payment notices, exhibition invitations) that build a clear picture of this visionary project.
Love letter (in random mode)
Solange Knowles’ original score for the New York City Ballet drew this dance neophyte to Lincoln Center in October, but it’s choreographer Kyle Abraham’s. Love Letter (in random order) that will bring me back. Assisted by haunting music by James Blake, elegant costumes by Giles Deacon and precise lighting by Dan Scully, the 16 dancers in this deeply moving work roll, shuffle, stretch and contort their bodies in the name of love. The 38-minute piece combines traditional ballet with more contemporary movements to tell compelling stories of desire, courtship, and separation. This is Abraham’s fourth work for NYCB, and luckily for us, there will be another chance to see him in May 2023.
Lowndes County and the road to black power
Sam Pollard and Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary about how black residents of Lowndes County, Alabama, organized to secure their right to vote is an inspiring testament to the power of community. Guided by the philosophies of activist Ella Baker, Lowndes County and the road to black power chronicles the innovative methods that residents, with the help of some SNCC members, used to bolster voter registration and enact change within their racist district. Recent interviews with surviving black and white residents of the area, along with archival footage and a coda about the ongoing fight against white supremacy in the US, make this intimate documentary, broadcast on Apple TV+, a must see. forced.
Motherland Radicals
After publicly declaring war on the United States in 1970, members of the Weather Underground, a radical anti-Vietnam War group, spent the next decade on the run. Motherland Radicals, a podcast created and hosted by Zayd Dohrn (son of Bernardine Dohrn, one of the group’s most prominent members), reports on the group’s formation, its underground years, and its collaboration with the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation movements. This exciting 10-episode journey is more than just an oral history; is a guide to acting on your beliefs, an assessment of radical movements, and a complicated intergenerational conversation between Weather Underground members and their heirs.
neptune frost
Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Afrofuturist musical is a story of love and revolution. The dazzling, narratively fluid film (streaming on the Criterion Channel and available to rent on Prime Video) chronicles the fateful encounter of Neptune, an intersex hacker (played by Elvis Ngabo and Cheryl Isheja), and Matalusa (Bertrand Ninteretse), a mine worker. of coltan in another dimension. With its dreamy, mind-blowing visual landscape and striking costume design, neptune frost is a mind-blowing experience, a story of queer love, erasing binaries, working behind the technology, and escaping the extractive nature of the world as we know it.
normal gossip
Every episode of Kelsey McKinney and Alex Sujong Laughlin’s hilarious Defector Media podcast It begins with the same question: “What is your relationship with gossip?” The responses reveal a lot about the guests, an eclectic group of writers, comedians and fellow podcasters, and how they will react to anonymous user-submitted gossip. Host McKinney weaves these tales of barista fights, group tours gone awry, and the hostile factionalism of bachelorette parties into edge-of-your-seat stories.
rothaniel
Jerrod Carmichael’s HBO intimate comedy special is a delicate move between different forms of storytelling, from confessional comedy to memoir to prayer. Carmichael uses humor to access a more honest record, allowing her to unravel the threads of his complicated relationship with his mother and come out as gay. The special, directed by friend and fellow comedian Bo Burnham, is cast as a communion, a spiritual encounter between Carmichael, his family’s past, and the unknown terrain of his future.
Jump
I started following Sault, the anonymous British collective, in 2020, when they released their records Untitled (Black Is) Y Untitled (Ascent) —records that selected sounds from decades of black music to capture the solidity of the revolutionary spirit of that summer. This year the group, which is rumored to include producer Inflo and singer Cleo Sol, released five new albums, initially in a password-protected folder and now available to stream: eleven, Air, land, Today Tomorrow Y (Untitled) God. The bountiful crop of songs showcases the breadth of Sault’s talent and curiosity, his ability to draw inspiration from across the black diaspora—from South America to the African continent—and curate eclectic and witty offerings.
skeleton crew
Set in the break room of a closing Detroit auto factory, Dominique Morisseau’s work is a sober, warm and deeply moving look at economic precariousness and class loyalty. Ruben Santiago-Hudson directed this energetic and vibrant production starring Phylicia Rashad and Chanté Adams (in her Broadway debut). skeleton crew traces the tumultuous conversations that take place between the characters embodied by this all-star ensemble as they try to protect themselves and others. It’s the kind of show that leaves you with a deep sense of humanity’s interdependence; I hope we don’t have to wait too long to see her again.
