EVENTS

Talk
Shellyne Rodriguez
On Subversion + Cooptation: Strategies
of Survival from the Periphery of Empire
10.07.2024, 18h00

Venue: Maumaus
Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar, 148 – 3º C

It’s like a jungle, sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under. – Melle Mel

When the early hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five released 'The Message' in 1980, they amplified an ancient call across space and time from the Bronx, an inner colony on the outskirts of New York City, home to Wall Street. Hip hop, born alongside the neoliberalism that emerged from this imperial centre, was a cultural offensive launched by the descendants of the Jim Crow South and a Caribbean diaspora that resisted removal, organised abandonment and death at the hands of the state. These methods of refusal have changed over time according to the context of the confrontation, but the spirit of struggle is ancient. It is santeria in Cuba, bomba in Puerto Rico, capoeira in Brazil and juba during antebellum slavery in the US. It is a kind of guerrilla warfare.

Shellyne Rodriguez is an artist, educator, writer, and community organiser based in the Bronx. Her practice uses text, drawing, painting, collage and sculpture to depict spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation.

The talk will be in English. Entry is free and limited to the number of seats available.

For further information, please contact:
Tel + 351 21 352 11 55
admin@maumaus.org