Under New Ownership (GENERAL THEORY OF HISTORICAL MATERIALIST CRITIQUE remix)

THIS LECTURE OCCURRED ON APRIL 5, 2019.

In this performance lecture with a live audio score by Todd Stovall, Maya Stovall considered the distinct works on view in Under New Ownership. Demonstrating how and where a research method and an artistic practice can meet, the artists showed together how knowledge can be produced via the studio, the street, the interview, and the encounter. Writing too figures here as a central tool, and so Stovall punctuated the event with passages from her 2020 Liquor Store Theatre book, as well as from a book project co-authored with her brother Josef Cadwell. Cadwell’s meditations range widely across theory and practice, including Stovall’s own, and reference an inside view of the U.S. prison system.

Maya Stovall’s Under New Ownership was on view through May 5, 2019. Stovall works across the disciplines of performance and dance, moving and still image, installation, and text. She explores the big questions of human existence, creating works that “vividly juxtapose art and life” (The New York Times). Equally an artist and an anthropologist, she holds a Ph.D. in anthropology. A book based on her dissertation, Liquor Store Theatre: Ethnography & Contemporary Art in Detroit, was published by Duke University Press in Spring 2020.

This performance lecture occurred as part of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)’s Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series (VAS), a public forum for engagement and dialogue with major figures in international contemporary art and culture. Through lectures, screenings, and performances, the series creates intimate connections between SFAI, artists, and the public. Attendees RSVP’d online.