ADMISSION & CAMPUS ACCESS:
Admission is free. Reservations are required. Campus access is limited to registered guests and USC students, staff, and faculty with current USC ID.

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DESCRIPTION:
ArtForum says that interdisciplinary artist Cauleen Smith is “something of a heroine” to “the Black vanguard—the Afrofuturists and community activists, the artists and writers and theorists imagining ways of living that dignify themselves as Black subjects as well as all of humanity.” At this event, a screening of short films by Smith will be followed by a conversation with the Los Angeles–based artist and USC professor Kara Keeling.

Bios:

Cauleen Smith was raised in Sacramento, CA, and lives in Los Angeles. Holding a BA in creative arts from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Smith is faculty in the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. Smith’s short films, feature film, an installation, and performance were work showcased at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019. Smith has had solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Mass MoCA, and LACMA. Smith is the recipient of the following awards: Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Creative Capital Film / Video, Chicago 3Arts Grant, Chicago Expo Artadia Award, Rauschenberg Residency, Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts in Film and Video 2016, United States Artists Award 2017, 2016 inaugural recipient of the Ellsworth Kelly Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 2020 recipient of the Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Kara Keeling (moderator) is a professor of cinema and media studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Keeling’s research has focused on Black and queer cinema and media, with particular attention to issues of racial capitalism, sexuality, and gender; sound studies; critical theory; and cultural studies. Keeling’s most recent monograph, Queer Times, Black Futures, considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through racial capitalism by exploring how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise. Keeling currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals New Review of Film and Television Studies and Feminist Media Studies, and is a co-editor of the journal boundary2.

Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Erin Graff Zivin (Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Comparative Literature) and Kara Keeling (Cinema and Media Studies). Co-sponsored by the USC Dornsife Experimental Humanities Lab.

Art: Cauleen Smith, Pilgrim, 2017 (image courtesy of the artist, Morán Morán, and Corbett vs. Dempsey)