GET INSPIRED
Below is a small snippet of things inspiring and fueling the STRANGEkit energy at the moment.
Eventually, this will be a grand collage and digital time capsule of other artwork and artists (including friends of STRANGEkit making cool art) while also forming a collection of more broad inspirations exploring strangeness in things of the non-art variety, like microwaves and snowballs.
Go forth, be inspired, apply these across mediums, across imaginations and across dimensions.
The following six artists were featured as a part of our ongoing research project ‘Black and Indigenous artists inspiring STRANGEkit’ which is based on Facebook. To learn more about the their work, other incredible artists and the project view the album here for current and future updates.
Rewina Beshue
Rewina Beshue @rgb_ is a young San-Francisco based illustrator, graphic designer, digital artist and model. Find her work on Instagram following the link above.
Kelsey Lu - Hydroharmonia III
A beautiful 20 minute “meditational sound bath tuned to the frequency of the universe (432 Hz)” dedicated to persecuted Black, indigenous and POC women.
Purchase from Bandcamp for $7 with all proceeds donated to FEMPOWER, #FreeBlackMamas Fellowship, @btfacollective , @poetryforthepeople , and Herbal Mutual Aid Network @yves____ .
Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shange was a playwright, poet, performance artist, novelist and educator born in 1948 in Trenton, New Jersey and is most famously known for creating the form of the “choreopoem” with her OBIE winning play ‘for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf’ (1977)
Read her poetry and excerpts of ‘for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf’ on the poetry foundation website
Under the Sign of Scorpio (2005) - Tracey Moffatt
Portraits of Moffatt disguising as forty scorpio women from history and pop culture with explosive and romantic backdrops, investigating the characterisation and performance of scorpio icons.
Exhibition online here at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery which also features more of Moffatt’s photography.
Panteha Abareshi
Panteha @pantehart is a multidisciplinary artist based in LA, who creates across the realms of drawing, painting, graphic and digital design, video and performance art, and sculptural installations.
The Watermelon Woman
‘The Watermelon Woman’ (1996) is the first feature film by and about a black lesbian directed by American-Liberian Filmmaker Cheryl Dunye. It is an experimental documentary which interrogates intterracial dating, cultural history, invisibility and the representation of Queer, Black American women in film.
Stream it for FREE on Kanopy here
Login with your local library or university details
A Book of Surrealist Games
Not required reading but kind of actually required reading…
The above link opens a portal to the entire PDF of this book
Brotchie, A., In Gooding, M., Lykiard, A., & Batchelor, J. (1995). A book of surrealist games: Including the little surrealist dictionary.
Einstein on the Beach - directed by Robert Wilson, composed by Philip Glass
An epic Opera in four acts, five hours. One of our earliest inspirations in dreaming up STRANGEkit.
A link to a Youtube video of the whole performance.
Insta Performance Art
We have been loving seeing the innovation of online performance artists, especially in isolation. Here is a favourite of ours. Please recommend us more to follow!
Music
Music inspires us every day. Here are some things ringing in our earholes recently. We will be updating this playlist regularly as we stumble upon more audio magic.
Aviva Endean - A Face Like Yours
A sense-sational sound-making treat
Time On Our Hands
A weekly email newsletter featuring writing, art, thoughts and creative prompts by people in quarantine, for people in quarantine. Curated by Harley Hefford.
Subscribe here