southern Futures
An Expanding Archive for Artistic Exchange
We bring artists and performers together with students, faculty, archivists, community leaders, scholars and practitioners in service of an American South that is ethical and just for everyone. To imagine is powerful; to reimagine is transformative.
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Rooted in Research
Rhiannon Giddens is conducting primary-source archival research for the first time as a part of her Southern Futures Research Residency with CPA. Much of Rhiannon's research is focused on interracial relationships around the Reconstruction Era in the United States. In October 2023, Rhiannon hosted a public conversation with Leoneda Inge, WUNC's Race and Southern Cultures Reporter, to share some other findings from Wilson Library's collections.
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Sounding the Shadows as Omar Engages the Past and the Present
Dr. Naomi André, David G. Frey Distinguished Professor in the Music Department at Carolina, specializes in research on opera and issues surrounding gender, voice, and race. As a scholar of Black opera, Dr. André was especially captivated by Omar and its significance within the operatic canon. In this essay, she reflects on the work's contribution to a deeper public understanding of the lives of the enslaved.
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Behind the Scenes of Eclipse
Eclipse was an immersive and participatory performance held at CURRENT ArtSpace in April of 2022. The experience included bricks from UNC facilities, a monologue about the 100+ year history of the land outside CURRENT ArtSpace, place-based meditations, and collective communal navigating of space, time, and history. In this video, Culture Mill artists Tommy Noonan and Murielle Elizéon, and their collaborators, give a behind the scenes look at the performance.