For If I Can’t Dance’s Edition VI – Event and Duration (2015–2016), Fred Moten and Wu Tsang are commissioned to produce the research project, Gravitational Feel.

Gravitational Feel, is a sculptural performance that continues Moten and Tsang’s ongoing collaboration on the poetics of intimacy. Using fabric and sound to produce a series of “chance events”, Gravitational Feel will be an experiment in blur in which the social and physical significance of touch and voice, of space and time in matter, will open and maintain the mystery of who we are and what we know. This project will culminate in a book published by If I Can’t Dance.

Biographies

Fred Moten (b. 1962, Las Vegas, United States of America) it a poet and scholar whose work explores black studies, performance studies, poetry and critical theory. Moten has taught at several colleges and universities, including the University of Iowa, New York University, Duke University, the Naropa Institute, and Brown University, among others and currently works as a professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. His poetry collections include The Little Edges (Wesleyan University Press, 2014), The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions, 2014), B Jenkins (Duke University Press, 2010), and Hughson’s Tavern (Leon Works, 2008). His scholarly texts include The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013), co-authored with Stefano Harney, and In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota, 2003). Moten was also a member of the Board of Managing Editors of American Quarterly from 2004 to 2007 and has been a member of the editorial collectives of Social Text and Callaloo, and of the editorial board of South Atlantic Quarterly. He is also cofounder and co-publisher of the small literary press Three Count Pour. Previously for If I Can’t Dance, Fred Moten participated in Performance Days (2014) alongside Gregg Bordowitz and Rachel O’Reilly for the programme Poets Don’t Lie – Appropriation and the Proper Power of the Voice. He lives in Los Angeles, United States of America.

Wu Tsang (b. 1982) is an artist, performer and filmmaker. Her films, performances, and installations have been presented at museums and film festivals internationally. Tsang's first feature Wildness (2012) premiered at MoMA's Documentary Fortnight and won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Outfest, Los Angeles. Her recent short, You’re Dead To Me, premiered on PBS and won the 2014 Imagen Award for Best Short. Tsang has presented projects at the Tate Modern, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the New Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MOCA, Los Angeles; Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju; Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool; and the 2012 Whitney Biennial, New York. Tsang is a 2014 Rockerfeller Bellagio Creative Arts Fellow and a 2015 Creative Capital Fellow. She lives and works in Los Angeles.