• Grey background with album cover on top. The cover is black with some yellow elements. At the top, there is a yellow banner with text in black.

    brhtss01a-temra-pavlovic.jpg

    Album cover. Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, edited by Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. Photo: Temra Pavlović, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.

  • Open record jacket on top of a grey background. The inside is black and yellow, with the left side reminiscent of a wood pattern. The right side is black with a yellow shape in the middle. There is a yellow block with some black text on the left side. And white text at the bottom and the top of the right side.

    brhtss01b-temra-pavlovic.jpg

    Album interior. Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, edited by Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. Photo: Temra Pavlović, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.

  • carter-cali-memory-intro-excerpt.mp3

    Audio excerpt. Derrais Carter, “Sonic Introduction” for Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, edited by Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński.

  • Yellow text on top of a black background. The text appears on the left side in two columns, with two sections of text appearing redacted in yellow. A photograph, also in black and yellow, occupies the right side. It depicts a person sitting at a desk. They are are holding the back of the chair with their right hand and gesticulating with their left hand, keeping their left elbow on the table.

    brhtss02a.jpg

    Layout spread. Derrais Carter, “In the Key of Revelry—A Performance Lecture” insert material. Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, edited by Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński.

  • Grey background. On the right side there is a orange square with a photograph and some text in black. On the right, only partially visible, is a photograph. A book and three polaroids are partially visible in the photograph.

    brhtss02b-temra-pavlovic.jpg

    S*an D. Henry-Smith, In the hours before First Service (left) and DJ Lynée Denise, “Late Night DJ 1980: Adventures in Black Listening Practices” (right). Insert materials. Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, edited by Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. Photo: Temra Pavlović, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.

  • Several print materials have been stacked on top of each other, with the edges visible. Each sheet has a different colour; from bottom to top: yellow, black, white, light brown, blue and burgundy.

    brhtss02c-megan-hoetger.jpg

    Insert materials. Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, edited by Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. Photo: Megan Hoetger.

  • Yellow square with digital text in black.

    brhtss03a.jpg

    Event announcement. Black Revelry Quiet Storm radio marathon and book launch. Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, edited by Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński.

  • On top of a glass table there is a vinyl player, with the needle on on top of the vinyl disk. To the right, there is an open record jacket with headphones on top. Behind it, another album cover of the same record has been propped up.

    brhtss04a-konstantin-guz.jpg

    Installation view. Derrais Carter, What We Do Language Can’t Touch, Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, November 2021. Photo: Konstantin Guz, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.

  • Two people sit behind a low table. On the table, there is a vinyl player, an album propped up and some paper. There is a microphone in front of the person on the left. The person on the right adjusts the needle of the record player. Behind them, in the middle of the two, there is a pole where a square photograph has been attached.

    brhtss04d-konstantin-guz.jpg

    S*an D. Henry-Smith (left) and Derrais Carter (right). Book launch. Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, edited by Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. Photo: Konstantin Guz, courtesy of If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam.

  • book webshop 

  • Late Night DJ playlist by DJ Lynée Denise 

  • black poesis/radical composition 

Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’ is an experiment in bookmaking, which takes up the form of the LP record as a starting point for re-configuring the haptics of the printed page. Presented as a collection of unbound contributions inside a gatefold double-record sleeve, the publication includes a pressed record, as well as written, visual and sonic contributions from scholars, poets, artists, choreographers and DJs. Through the logic of the detail, each contributor imaginatively (re)produces Ernie Barnes’s iconic painting The Sugar Shack as an archive of personal histories and a universe of intergenerational connections. Held together as an album, it is a performance to be made at home, which invites readers/listeners to feel art’s histories and to be in them with their bodies.

For the Amsterdam launch of the publication, the listening lounge What We Do Language Can’t Touch was installed at the Sandberg Institute to accompany a 7-hour live broadcast radio marathon featuring all three episodes of the Black Revelry Quiet Storm, as well as a guest playlist by DJ Lynnée Denise⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠ created especially for the album-book. At the finale of the marathon, Carter hosted a conversation with artist and publication contributor S*an D. Henry-Smith⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠ on ritual and revelry. Following its release, the album-book has also launched at Hopscotch, Berlin (Summer 2022) and was featured in the “black poesis/radical composition” event series organized by Saidiya Hartman at Columbia University (Spring 2023).

Carter’s publication formed part of the commission Black Revelry, which Hoetger led as part of the Edition VIII - Ritual and Display biennial program (2019-2021) for If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam. The publication was supported by the Netherlands American Foundation. Special thanks to the Ernie Barnes Foundation for permission to work with visual elements from Ernie Barnes’s The Sugar Shack, and to Naomi Collier Broms and Marta Santos for their assistance in assembling the album-books.

Editor: Derrais Carter
Contributors: Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams
Managing editor: Megan Hoetger
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
Design: Karoline Świeżyński
Sound production: MJ Mouw

Previous:

Art/Obscenity/Underground Cinema in West Germany, 1968–1973: Circulating through the Debates

Next:

COLLABORATION. How can we work together?

Back to index