Rashaad Newsome: Shade Compositions

Rashaad Newsome, renowned New York based artist, will make his Pittsburgh debut of Shade Compositions, an ongoing performance project that launched in 2005. Throughout the Fall of 2018, Newsome will be working in Pittsburgh, casting local performers, and staging rehearsals for Shade Compositions, the artist’s critically acclaimed performance. In this performance, Newsome is both conductor, composer and vocal choreographer. Leading an ensemble of locally cast self-identifying black female and femme performers, whose individual voices and gestures are synthesized to form improvisatory orchestral music. Newsome explores the complexities of social power structures and questions of agency.

During the performance, Newsome collages video and audio using hacked video game controllers. For over a decade Newsome has engaged in casual, but extensive ethnographic and linguistic research into global iterations of “Black Vernacular”—a variety of English natively spoken by most working and middle-class African Americans, particularly in urban communities. Through his visually engaging and dynamic style of live performance and video, Newsome explores the complexities of social power structures and questions of agency.

This event is organized by Jessica Beck, the Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Andy Warhol Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Devan Shimoyama: Cry, Baby.

Co-presented with PearlArts Studios.