Park update: From 7am – 3:30pm on Monday, March 18 and Tuesday, March 19, the High Line will be partially closed between 23rd and 30th Streets due to construction. Visitors can enter and exit at the 23rd Street stair/elevator and the 30th/10th Street stair. The entrances from Hudson Yards, the Connector, and the Spur remain open.

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Photo by Liz Ligon
Arts & Cultural Events

B.Y.O.: Black Lunch Table - Artists Table

Wednesday, July 11, 2018
12 – 1:30pm
Location
On the High Line at 22nd St.

On July 11, artists Jina Valentine and Heather Hart bring their project Black Lunch Table (BLT) to the lawn on the High Line at 22nd Street, to engage cultural workers who identify as part of the African Diaspora and members of the communities surrounding the High Line in meaningful conversation.

BLT is an ongoing collaboration between Hart and Valentine initiated in 2005 at the preeminent artist residency, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Imagining the lunch table as a discursive site where social connections are made, organizing is planned, social hierarchies revealed, and power dynamics played out, BLT provides a space to discuss critical issues. The ultimate goal is to give visibility and validate shared concerns through exchange, while strengthening the bonds within the nebulous artistic community, and the larger community of neighbors and visitors.

Artists Table
This session is open to artists and cultural workers who identify as part of the African Diaspora to join intimate conversations. The Artists Table seeks to both democratize and augment the dominant narratives of contemporary art history by animating discourse among the cultural producers of color living it. This session provides a space to discuss critical issues directly affecting the international community of diasporic artists. It seeks to strengthen the bonds within this nebulous community and validates shared concerns through exchange. Light lunch will be provided.

If you are an artist or cultural producer who identifies as part of the African Diaspora and want to participate in the discussion…

  • Space at the table is limited. We will send a reminder 5 days before the program to confirm your participation.
  • Participants will be required to arrive 15 minutes before the start time, and by the time of the program any unclaimed tickets to participate of the conversation will be released to the waitlist or walk-in audience members.
  • Conversation will be prompted and framed around critical themes, relevant to both private and public life; participants need no previous experience or knowledge.

B.Y.O. (Bring Your Own) is a new series of intimate, unscripted conversations staged in public space. Hosted by artists who center their practice on food and dialogue, these events contribute to an exploration of critical thought, creative exchange, and discourse production. B.Y.O is inaugurated this year with McKendree Key’s The Breakfast Den, Heather Hart and Jina Valentine’s The Black Lunch Table, and Elia Alba’s Supper Club.

All conversations will be recorded and photographed, transcribed, and published—both as part of the Black Lunch Table online archive, and as a booklet that will be available later in the year published by the High Line.


Wikipedia edit-a-thon
As part of their participation in B.Y.O. (Bring Your Own) conversation series, on Monday, July 9th, 5:00 – 8:00 pm on the High Line at 16th Street, The Black Lunch Table is holding a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. In it BLT will mobilize the creation and improvement of a specific set of Wikipedia articles that pertain to the lives and works of Black artists. More information can be found here.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS
The Black Lunch Table (BLT) is an ongoing collaboration between Chicago-based artist and SAIC Assistant Professor Jina Valentine and New York-based public artist Heather Hart. First staged in 2005 at the preeminent artist residency Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, it has since taken the forms of audio archiving sessions, salons, peer teaching workshops, meetups and Wikipedia edit-a-thons. BLT has been hosted by the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Creative Time Summit, the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, among others. BLT was awarded a 2016 Creative Capital Grant, a Digital Innovation Lab Fellowship from Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC Chapel Hill, and an Artist Community Engagement Grant from the Rema Hort Foundation. Hart received her MFA from Rutgers University and Valentine received her MFA from Stanford University

Support

High Line Programs are supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Corey Johnson.