Black Revelry: In Honor of “The Sugar Shack”

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 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 Lynée 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. Since its release, the album-book has also been launched with Hopscotch, Berlin (Summer 2022) and was featured in the “black poesis/radical composition” event series organized by Saidiya Hartman at Columbia University (Spring 2023).