Possible Dialogues: Vol 1 entails two days of programming at BAMPFA.

Day 1 features Duets with My Black Friends, a series of duo projects and performances with other Black artists, and a panel discussion facilitated by Zekarias Musele Thompson and Black Life cocurator Ryanaustin Dennis.

Day 2 features a two-part performance by a collective of Black artists, including a Public Sale of Artworks, and a musical composition. The collective improvisation will expand with the help of the Musele Project, facilitating a long-form sonic improvisation with attendee participation.

Zekarias Musele Thompson is an artist based in Oakland, California, and Reykjavik, Iceland, who is interested in humanity’s conceptual and emotional organizational structures and how we bring them into material form. Their practice seeks to create containers that support our ability to navigate emergent psychosomatic responses through deep listening and close attention. Through sonic composition, photography, collaborative group practice and performance, writing, and mark making, they intervene with entrenched historical narratives around individual and collective self-deception and embodied trauma. Their work implores us to relinquish our attachment to identities rooted in dis-integrated mythologies and unnecessary hierarchies, and invites us to expand our capacity to create sustainable futures through self-observation.

As a part of Thompson’s practice, they hosted werk/nite, a weekly open space encouraging community creative practice by just showing up with whatever you have; instigated the Musele Project; facilitated dialogues about healing historically racialized trauma; and founded Working Name Studios, a collectively owned and organized arts institution with the mission of building institutional stability and equity for underrepresented creative practices, ideas, and people. They, along with Working Name Studios, are a member of Beauty Supply Arts, an artist-run project space in Oakland.

The Musele Project is a sound, image, performance, and facilitation practice that encourages deep, empathic listening. Weekly, on Sundays, we gather and create long-form, spontaneous compositions that traverse musical histories and invite exploration of our interior emotionality through drone, groove, repetition, and free improvisation. 

Event Accessibility

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at bampfa@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 642-1412 (during open hours) with as much advance notice as possible. More information on accessibility services.