A.J. McClenon and Katherine Simóne Reynolds: “Gestures Investigating the Good and Not So Good In Relationships – As Shown to Us by Blondell Cummings”
This Video Viewing Room features a new project by A.J. McClenon and Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Gestures Investigating the Good and Not So Good In Relationships – As Shown to Us by Blondell Cummings (2022), alongside excerpts of the archival recording of Blondell Cummings’s performance at The Kitchen from November 30–December 3, 1989 and a series of collages by McClenon, Inspirited by For J.B. & 3B49 (2022). From August–October 2022, McClenon and Reynolds’s project Gestures Investigating the Good and Not So Good In Relationships existed as a freestanding website: what appears below are excerpts from the project.
This presentation is organized by Alison Burstein, Curator, with thanks to The Estate of Blondell Cummings.
Gestures Investigating the Good and Not So Good In Relationships – As Shown to Us By Blondell Cummings
In their collaborative project Gestures Investigating the Good and Not So Good In Relationships, A.J. McClenon and Katherine Simóne Reynolds take cues from the gestural choreographic work of Blondell Cummings demonstrated in her 1989 performance at The Kitchen, which included excerpts from her work Relationships: Good and Not So Good, a work-in-progress titled For J.B., and her piece 3B49.
McClenon and Reynolds present a series of somatic, gestural narratives on “how to” live a domestic Black life, captured via performances staged for the camera in publicly private spaces. Thinking of the complications of interpersonal relationships and the way that language can fail us in these exchanges, the artists work through a lens of anti-articulation by offering an improvisational, movement-based score for responding to a series of relational scenarios.
The project existed for a fixed amount of time from August–October 2022 as a website (https://goodandnotsogood.com). Selections of videos and video stills appear below as a lasting record of this work.
Blondell Cummings at The Kitchen, November 30–December 3, 1989
Video stills from recording of Relationships: Good and Not So Good
Video stills from recording of For J.B.
A.J. McClenon, Inspirited by For J.B. & 3B49 (2022)
Video stills from recording of 3B49
A.J. McClenon, Inspirited by For J.B. & 3B49 (2022)
Excerpts from Printed Program
To see the full program, click here.
A.J. McClenon, Inspirited by For J.B. & 3B49 (2022)
Born and raised in “DC proper,” A.J. McClenon studied art and creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park, and The New School prior to receiving a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. Alongside artistic experiences, A.J. is passionate about teaching and community collaborations with the goal that all the memories and histories that are said to have “too many Black people,” are told and retold again. As a means to uphold these stories, A.J. creates writings, performances, installations, objects, sounds, and visuals. These creations often revolve around an interest in water and aquatic life, escapism, Blackness, science, grief, US history, and the global future. A.J. is deeply invested in leveling the hierarchies of truth and using personal narrative to speak on political and cultural amnesia and their absurdities. A.J. currently works and lives in Chicago.
Katherine Simóne Reynolds’s practice investigates emotional dialects and psychogeographies of Blackness and the importance of “anti-excellence.” Her work physicalizes emotions and experiences by constructing pieces that include portrait photography, video works, choreography, sculpture, and installation. Taking cues from the midwestern post-industrial melancholic landscape, she has formed an obsessive curiosity around the practices of healing as well as around a societal notion of progress spurning from a time of industrial success. Utilizing Black embodiment and affect alongside her own personal narrative as a place of departure has made her question her own navigation of ownership, inclusion, and authenticity within a contemporary gaze. She draws inspiration from Black glamour/beauty while interrogating the notion of “authentic care.” Her practice generally deals in Blackness from her own perspective, and she continuously searches for what it means to produce “Black Work.”
Videos and images:
1–2) Left and right: A.J. McClenon and Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Gestures Investigating the Good and Not So Good In Relationships – As Shown to Us by Blondell Cummings, 2022. Courtesy of the artists.
3) Left and right: Video stills from A.J. McClenon and Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Gestures Investigating the Good and Not So Good In Relationships – As Shown to Us by Blondell Cummings, 2022. Courtesy of the artists.
4–5) Video stills from recording of Blondell Cummings, Relationships: Good and Not So Good at The Kitchen, November 30–December 3, 1989. Video recording from the collection of The Kitchen Archive, ca. 1971–1999. The Getty Research Institute. Courtesy of The Estate of Blondell Cummings.
6) Left: Video still from recording of Blondell Cummings, For J.B. at The Kitchen, November 30–December 3, 1989. Video recording from the collection of The Kitchen Archive, ca. 1971–1999. The Getty Research Institute. Courtesy of The Estate of Blondell Cummings. Right: A.J. McClenon, Inspirited by For J.B. & 3B49, 2022. Collage with video still from recording of Blondell Cummings, For J.B. at The Kitchen, November 30–December 3, 1989.
7) Left: Video still from recording of Blondell Cummings, 3B49 at The Kitchen, November 30–December 3, 1989. Video recording from the collection of The Kitchen Archive, ca. 1971–1999. The Getty Research Institute. Courtesy of The Estate of Blondell Cummings. Right: A.J. McClenon, Inspirited by For J.B. & 3B49, 2022. Collage with video still from recording of Blondell Cummings, 3B49 at The Kitchen, November 30–December 3, 1989.
8–9) Excerpts from program for Blondell Cummings, Relationships: Good and Not So Good, For J.B., and 3B49 at The Kitchen, November 30–December 3, 1989, with names of Cummings’s family members highlighted in yellow in the “Thanks to” section. Emphasis added. To see the full program, click here.
10) A.J. McClenon, Inspirited by For J.B. & 3B49, 2022. Collages with video stills from recording of Blondell Cummings, For J.B. and 3B49 at The Kitchen, November 30–December 3, 1989.