Mendi + Keith Obadike

Jan 23

Mendi + Keith Obadike’s collaborative practice exists at the intersection of sonic, visual, and literary traditions, often highlighting the resonant histories embedded within these forms. For Counterpublic 2023, SlowDrag is a sound installation consisting of cars moving through the St. Louis Place neighborhood playing numerous simultaneous remixes of an interpolation of the song “Black Angel Blues” created by the artists, further reinterpreted and remixed through a collaboration with local music contractor and event producer Mvstermind.

Rooted in associations of the intimate slow-drag dance form that has persisted from the early blues through to contemporary hip-hop and R&B, SlowDrag carries this history forward by engaging St. Louis hip-hop producers and sound system culture. To open Counterpublic 2023, the work is “performed” by dozens of cars with custom speakers. Their sonic procession relies on the shape and form of the St. Louis Place neighborhood to determine the route as it moves through streets actively undergoing the stresses of displacement and vacancy. Here, SlowDrag announces itself as a sonic intervention—and celebration—meant to enter into a heightened intimacy and creation of new relations in the public spaces of St. Louis.

PROGRAM INFO

Featured

Date: Sunday, April 16, 2023, TIME: 10AM-6PM, SITE: Pulitzer Arts Foundation

Roundtable Discussions + Conversations

Date: Sunday, April 16, 2023, TIME: 10AM-6PM, SITE: Pulitzer Arts Foundation

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A day of discussions with the Counterpublic curatorial ensemble and artists, hosted by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

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Date: Sunday, April 16, 2023, TIME: 10AM-6PM, SITE: Pulitzer Arts Foundation

DATE: SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023, TIME: 2PM, SITE: ST. LOUIS PLACE PARK

Mendi + Keith Obadike's "SlowDrag" Procession

DATE: SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023, TIME: 2PM, SITE: ST. LOUIS PLACE PARK

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Experience Mendi + Keith Obadike’s SlowDrag, a sound installation consisting of cars moving through the St. Louis Place neighborhood playing numerous simultaneous remixes of a song (an interpolation of “Black Angel Blues”) created by the artists.

Their sonic procession relies on the shape and form of the neighborhood to determine the route. Curated by Allison Glenn and realized in part in collaboration with Muhammad “Mvstermind” Austin. Departing from St. Louis Place Park, the procession will last approximately one hour.

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DATE: SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023, TIME: 2PM, SITE: ST. LOUIS PLACE PARK

DATE: SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023, TIME: 11AM-4PM, SITE: The Griot + St. Louis Place

St. Louis Place Neighborhood + Studio Tours

DATE: SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023, TIME: 11AM-4PM, SITE: The Griot + St. Louis Place

Engage the St. Louis Place neighborhood’s history and future as Counterpublic 2023 artist Robert Green will host an open house and studio tour; curator Allison Glenn, Matthew Angelo Harrison and Calvin B. Riley will open the George B. Vashon Museum for tours, leading to St. Louis Place Park at 2pm.

DATE: SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023, TIME: 11AM-4PM, SITE: The Griot + St. Louis Place

About the artist

Mendi + Keith Obadike are creators of music, art, and literature. Their work has been shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the New School in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and more. They have received numerous awards, including a Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship, Pick Laudati Award for Digital Art, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award.