Artists: Atelier Impopulaire and Blacks’ Myths’
Exhibition title: Before We Love, Act 2: 12 Gates
Venue: NEST, The Hague, The Netherlands
Date: April 6 – 7, 2024
Photography: Please note all images courtesy by the artists, NEST and Rewire Festival. Photos by ©Lotte van Uittert
During Rewire 2024, Nest presents Atelier Impopulaire and Blacks’ Myths’ world premiere of Before We Love, Act 2: 12 Gates, a new act of the opera in three parts titled Before We Love. Atelier Impopulaire is the collaboration of artist and cultural activist Pia Bolognesi and filmmaker and dramatist Giulio Bursi. Since 2012 they have worked together on projects involving moving-image, writing, installation, and sculpture. Together they research visual languages by deconstructing and reinterpreting how representations function in contemporary culture.
Before We Love, Act 2: 12 Gates is presented at Nest’s new temporal location in the Laakkwartier in The Hague. For this special event, Atelier Impopulaire collaborate with the New York duo Blacks’ Myths. Blacks’ Myths, consisting of Luke Stewart and Trae Crudup, creates walls of sound with a combination of bass guitar and drums, incorporating complex rhythms and raw melodies. Before We Love: 12 Gates is a large-scale multi-screen installation that integrates rare archival material with new footage inspired by the story and the legacy of UMBRA Poets Workshop (1961–1963). It is part of a trilogy of works by Atelier Impopulaire that delves into the birth of underground artistic movements and civil rights activism in the Italian, African-American, and Latino communities of 1960s New York.
Displayed in Nest’s new temporary space in Laak, the installation transformed twice daily into a polyphonic, layered sound environment by Blacks’ Myths. Their sound recalls the multitude and complexity of the political dynamics that shaped UMBRA, laying the foundation for the Black Arts Movement, altering the course of American poetry, and promted in the birth of free jazz.
From April 2024 onwards, Nest will temporarily move to a new space located at the Verheeskade in Laak, The Hague. The weekend of Rewire marks the first event in this new space, kicking off a program around deep listening – a method for listening with radical attention and focus.
About Atelier Impopulaire
Artist and cultural activist Pia Bolognesi and filmmaker and dramaturge Giulio Bursi have been collaborating since 2012 as Atelier Impopulaire. Their work often arises from collaborations with musicians, archives, and artists. Their research for Before We Love began in 2012 when they were working at Tate Modern on an exhibition with Aldo Tambellini, who collaborated with the New York underground poetry collective Umbra Poets in the 1960s. Together with members of that collective, they worked on an extensive archive.
This archive and research resulted in various artworks, including Black Matters (2017), which combined recitations by the Umbra Poets and sound recordings of protests with new visual material into a large-scale installation. Now there is Before We Love, a three-part audiovisual opera in which young musicians continue the legacy of Umbra.
About Black’s Myths
For the performance of Before We Love, Act 2: 12 Gates Atelier Impopulaire collaborates with the American duo Blacks’ Myths, consisting of bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Trae Crudup. In their album Blacks’ Myths II they incorporated texts from poet, professor, and musician Thomas Stanley. They recorded the album during a marathon session lasting three days. During the four performances of 12 Gates, they will perform their abrasive combination of noise-rock and free jazz live.
About Umbra Poets workshop
Central to 𝘉𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘞𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 is the archive and legacy of the New York underground poetry collective Umbra Poets Workshop. This Black literary group was active in the 1960s, following the African American civil rights movement in America. They distinguished themselves radically from the prevailing white literary world. Between 1962 and 1965, they gathered for readings and discussions on literature and politics. Members of the group included Thomas C. Dent, Calvin Hernton, Ishmael Reed, David Henderson, Joe Johnson, and Askia M. Toure.
