IN CONVERSATION: ROBESON TAJ FRAZIER AND JHEANELLE BROWN

October 15, 2024
7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m

In Collaboration With

California African American Museum

Born in 1945 in New Mexico, artist Ben Caldwell came of age within the groundbreaking LA Rebellion film movement of the 1960s to 1980s after serving in the Vietnam War and studying at UCLA. In 1984, he opened KAOS Network, the media arts hub that has helped steward Leimert Park Village’s traditions of Black artistry, fellowship, and love for over four decades. Join Caldwell as he discusses his work and his new multimedia exhibition at Art + Practice with curators Robeson Taj Frazier and Jheanelle Brown.

(Left to Right) Robeson Taj Frazier, Jheanelle Brown and Ben Caldwell

Speakers

Jheanelle Brown is a film curator/programmer, educator, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles. Her curatorial practice creates frameworks to explore the boundlessness of Black life in experimental and non-fiction film and video. She is interested in the space between fugitivity and futurity and elevating an ethic of care, with a special interest in the sonic in film, political film and media, and West Indian film/video. Jheanelle is a board member and a programmer for Los Angeles Filmforum. She is currently on faculty at the California Institute of the Arts and Otis College of Art and Design.

Robeson Taj Frazier is a writer, University of Southern California associate professor, arts and humanities curator, and Emmy and Los Angeles Press Club-nominated producer of docuseries and documentary film. He is the host/producer of two PBS productions (the award-winning Hip Hop and the Metaverse and Outside the Lyrics), and the author of The East is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination (2014), and the award-winning New Yorker magazine favorite, KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Ark of Ben Caldwell (2023). He is also the executive director of USC’s Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at Annenberg (IDEA), a media, arts, and culture-driven center that facilitates interdisciplinary education, research, programming, and cultural productions.