Skip to main content

ETHNOS_APP

Home • Search • Journals • List 0

Doing It, Fluid

Bibliographic Data

ID8252583
AuthorsMichele Prettyman (0000-0002-1178-0474, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume6
Issue1
Pages168-203
Publication date2022-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
Venueliquid blackness (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2692-3874 • E-ISSN: 2692-3874
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/26923874-9546612
OpenAlexW4229053280
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited5

In this interview essay Michele Prettyman talks with filmmaker, moving image artist, curator, and producer Elissa Blount Moorhead about her work, the power of collaboration, and her innovative praxis. Taking some inspiration from black musical traditions, which are central to Blount Moorhead's roots, Prettyman borrows the essay's title phrasing, “Doing It, Fluid,” from a song by the group the Blackbyrds. The song's aggregation of an array of sonic components embodies the capacities of black expressive life to animate multiple creative impulses at once, providing a compelling analogy to Blount Moorhead's “fluid” practices of black making, gathering, and collaboration. The introductory essay outlines ways in which fluidity is useful both as an analytic and as an approach to studying Blount Moorhead's work, which often reveals unseen nuances in Black life by visually reconstituting images, artifacts, memories, and speculative histories. Prettyman also explores Blount Moorhead's role in shaping an art and moving image collective of Black media makers in Baltimore, coining the phrase “the Baltimore Arts and Image Renaissance (BAIR),” and citing Baltimore as an important base for Blount Moorhead, Bradford Young, and filmmaker Radha Blank, among others, and as a hub for TNEG, a film production studio helmed by Blount Moorhead, Malik Hassan Sayeed, and Arthur Jafa. Together the essay and interview reveal the impact of Blount Moorhead's praxis and the ways in which contemporary Black filmmakers remain connected to histories of Black creative collectives while also reimagining black aesthetic and technological possibilities

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Film director · Movie theater · Praxis · Sociology · Studio · The arts · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Music History and Culture · Philosophy · Theater, Performance, and Music History

  • Critical Mass

    Open Access•Alessandra Raengo•liquid blackness•2026

  • Enter the Mystery

    Open Access•Michele Prettyman•liquid blackness•2026

  • A View of a Landscape and Other Church Problems

    Open Access•Alessandra Raengo•liquid blackness•2022

  • Free Medicine

    Open Access•Alessandra Raengo•liquid blackness•2023

  • Black Study @ GSU

    Open Access•Alessandra Raengo•liquid blackness•2021

  • A Liquid Africa

    Open Access•Ekow Eshun•liquid blackness•2021

Citations per year1
Citation span2022 - 2026 (5)
Highly citedNo

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access
Ethnos_APP • Open Source Project • MIT License • Frontend v2.0.0 • Privacy and Cookies • API Documentation: api.ethnos.app/docs • API Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17049435 • Frontend Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17050053 • cruz.rio.br • Expectantes Misericordiae