From April 25–27, 2014, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented Carrie Mae Weems LIVE: Past Tense/Future Perfect, a weekend of public programs that included interviews, music, panels, spoken word, videos, and other performances. Weems, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, assembled an all-star cast of activists, artists, musicians, writers, and other internationally renowned guests in a series of museum sessions on the occasion of the Guggenheim retrospective Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video. Cohosted by Weems and Carl Hancock Rux, a poet, playwright, and recording artist, this multidisciplinary performance-salon focused on contemporary cultural production by people of color in the areas of architecture, dance, film, literature, music, theater, and visual art, and the discourses around this production. Poets Elizabeth Alexander and Aja Monet punctuated the proceedings with poetry and manifesto readings.
The schedule was as follows
Friday, April 25, 11am–6pm
Peter B. Lewis Theater
Cohosted by Carrie Mae Weems and Carl Hancock Rux
11 am Opening remarks
11:10 am Tribute to Terry Adkins, late conceptual artist and saxophonist, by musicians Vijay Iyer, Vincent Chancey, Dick Griffin, Marshall Sealy and Kiane Zawadi
12 pm Welcome and presentation by Carrie Mae Weems
12:30 pm The Blue Notes of Blues People: presentations by visual artists Rick Lowe and Julie Mehretu, and landscape designer Walter Hood
1:30 pm The Blue Notes of Blues People: presentations by digital culture pioneer Aina Abiodun; visual artists Leslie Hewitt and Shinique Smith; Thomas Lax, Assistant Curator, The Studio Museum; and feminist scholar Michele Wallace
2:30 pm Talk by Marinella Senatore, an artist and activator who invites public participation in her work\
3:15 pm The Blue Notes of Blues People: presentations by choreographer Camille A. Brown; visual artists Hung Liu and Shahzia Sikander; and Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University Professor of Black Popular Culture
4:15 pm The Blue Notes of Blues People: presentations by visual artists Sanford Biggers, Lyle Ashton Harris, Maren Hassinger, and Xaviera Simmons
5:15 pm At the Intersection of Blackness and Shifting Identities: documentary filmmaker John Akomfrah discusses his film The Stuart Hall Project
8 pm Jason Moran and The Bandwagon A conversation between Jason Moran and Carrie Mae Weems precedes a concert by the jazz trio featuring Moran (piano), Nasheet Waits (drums), and Tarus Mateen (bass). A reception and an exhibition viewing follow the performance.
Literary Hub: Carrie Mae Weems and the Long History of Collective Self-Institutionalization Among Black Radicals
