Thursday, December 2, 2021; 5pm PST
40-minute talk followed by 30 minutes of public conversation broadcast live at thelab.org
RSVP HERE FOR ZOOM LINK
Chip Delany and Brontez Purnell discuss Delany’s The Tragedy of Ophelia, An Essay, his 100-odd page monograph on Ophelia's place in Hamlet.
Samuel R. “Chip” Delany is the author of Babel-17, Nova, and Dhalgren (all with Vintage), Dark Reflections (Dover), Atlantis: Three Tales and the Return to Neveryon series (both Wesleyan University Press), an autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water (Minnesota University Press), and the paired essays Times Square Red I Times Square Blue (New York University Press). A pioneer of experimentalism in the science-fiction genre and beyond, as well as a critic and memoirist, he has won both Hugo and Nebula Awards from the World Science Fiction Convention and the Science Fiction Writers of America, among many other honors. He taught literature and creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, Temple University, and the State University of New York and lives with his life partner, Dennis Rickett, in Philadelphia. samueldelany.com.
Brontez Purnell is a writer, musician, dancer, filmmaker, and performance artist. He is the author of a graphic novel, a novella, a children's book, and the novel Since I Laid My Burden Down. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers' Award for Fiction, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers, a cofounder of the experimental dance group the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, the creator of the renowned cult zine Fag School, and the director of several short films, music videos, and the documentary Unstoppable Feat: The Dances of Ed Mock (created during his residency at The Lab). Born in Triana, Alabama, he's lived in Oakland, California, for more than a decade. brontezpurnellartjock.com
The Forum is an experiment in creating discourse within the context of isolation. Art creates a space for reconsidering our knowledge across various social and professional fields. It asks us: Why do we perceive things the way we do? What are we living for? How can we reimagine our relationships to the human and non-human world? The Forum proposes that the project of freedom is a project of making a world with others. So, we invite you to help us answer: what can we do now?
Please bring your ideas, proposals, questions to discuss following the talk.
Photo of Samuel R. Delany by Tom Kneller; photo of Brontez Purnell by Robert Divers Herrick