BOOK:The Appearance of Black Lives Matter,[NAME] Publications

Screen-Shot-2017-06-05-at-11.51.29-PMNicholas Mirzoeff’s awaited free e-book “The Appearance of Black Lives Matter” by [NAME] Publications. Mirzoeff’s book examines the transformation of visual culture from the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in the summer of 2014 to the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017. By studying visual material from a variety of historical periods and sites, Mirzoeff develops a case for the space of appearance, a space “Where we catch a glimpse of the society that is to come.” The book shows how Black Lives Matter has formed a visual commons, meaning a space of appearance in which it is possible for Black people and those affiliated with revolutionary blackness to see and invent each other. In particular, Mirzoeff explores what the “Black” in #BLM has come to mean and how the visual commons was shaped by persistent looking in protest performance, specifically Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, and the die-ins. Mirzoeff’s own engagement with persistent looking has been through a close reading of the Grand Jury archive from the shootings of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice as part of an activist-academic refusal of white supremacy. Nicholas Mirzoeff is a visual activist, working at the intersection of politics and global/digital visual culture. He is considered one of the founders of the academic discipline of visual culture in books like “An Introduction to Visual Culture”, “The Visual Culture Reader” and “How To See The World” (2015/16). Download the book here.-Dimitris Lempesis

Black Lives Matter Millions March
Black Lives Matter Millions March

 

 

More than 500 protesters marched from Empowerment Temple Church on Primrose Avenue north on Reisterstown Road to Reisterstown Road Plaza for "Black Lives Matter Sunday." (Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun)
More than 500 protesters marched from Empowerment Temple Church on Primrose Avenue north on Reisterstown Road to Reisterstown Road Plaza for “Black Lives Matter Sunday”