In this gallery talk, artist Lauren Halsey and writer Fred Moten will discuss their research in the Octavia E. Butler papers at the Huntington Library.  

Halsey and Moten were both commissioned to create new works of art and poetry, respectively, as part of Radio Imagination, Clockshop’s yearlong project exploring the life and legacy of Pasadena science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler.  New work from Lauren Halsey will be on display in the Armory’s Caldwell gallery, and an excerpt of new writing from Fred Moten will be read at the beginning of the event.

Lauren Halsey was born in Los Angeles, California in 1987. She holds an MFA from Yale University (2014) and a BFA from California Institute of the Arts (2012). Lauren recently completed a residency at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2014-2015) and is the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2014) and an Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship (2013). She builds fantasy sculptures and environments that remix ephemera she gathers in her neighborhood with ancient Egyptian architectural styles, hyperreal nature, technicolors, outer space and Funk. The works exist as spatial metaphors for agency, optimism, self-determination and love.

Fred Moten is the author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), Hughson’s Tavern (Leon Works, 2008), B. Jenkins (Duke University Press, 2010), The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions, 2014), The Little Edges (Wesleyan University Press, 2015) and co-author, with Stefano Harney, of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Minor Compositions/Autonomedia, 2013). Two new books will appear in 2016:consent not to be a single being: Essays 2002-2015 (Duke University Press) and The Service Porch (Letter Machine Editions). Moten teaches literature and critical theory at the University of California, Riverside.