You are mine. I see now, I'm a have to let you go.

Abstract

Abstract Critical Art Encounters offer sustained and at times meditative engagements with contemporary artworks. This Critical Art Encounter is a kind of reprise, a return to a joint performance by visual artist Suné Woods, poet and theorist Fred Moten, and musician and theorist James Gordon Williams. Titled You are mine. I see now, I'm a have to let you go, the piece was performed live at the Hammer Museum during their 2018 biennial event “Made in L.A.” This special section of liquid blackness aims to sample the fully realized collaboration and audiovisual experimentation that took place in the largely improvised art event. This Critical Art Encounter includes the intimate ecological exploration that takes place in Woods's video work; Moten's poem “the general balm,” which was written in part for the performance and later published in his book of poetry and criticism all that beauty (2019); and finally, a conversation with Erin Christovale, an associate curator at the Hammer who helped organize the event. Although not all three artists are featured (Williams's original compositions can be heard in the footage from the performance), we were fortunate to expand this creative dialogue by including a curatorial perspective. Thus we are able to consider how this work expresses liquidity as both a concern of contemporary black art and a call to the congregation.