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Artist: Kofi Forson
Kofi Fosu Forson is writer and artist who identifies as para-meta-modernist and whose writing explores subjects of posttrauma, postshock and ongoing transformation from realm of post-white shock. His current manuscript, Ghost of Brother Blackburn, was triggered by an encounter with Caucasians in traditionally black environments, examples of modern gentrification.
At Gun Hill Road stop, red-headed woman, business suit and heels, typed on PC
I had become animal – horror in my eyes, laugh-less hyena, burnt-throated, fang
Mid-western, rugged good looks, charismatic man reading, slouched and stared
Room of black faces, I sat paranoid, clay-figure, senior-citizened, scatter-brained
Only black character in a Fassbinder film – decolonizing his way up Boogie-down
Dead-tired, consciously black, feeling blood boil next to hyper-real, strong men
Stress from brother is blackness in coffee cup; the kind you heave against a wall
Hurt for color of skin; your alt-city cowboy for my tortured, Afro-politan cow-heck
The manuscript further deals with his transformation from white euphoria channeled through rock and roll music, European art cinema, history of Euro-American Art, all filtered through scope of urban living, African family dystopia, spiritual reckoning and his newfound voice within the post-post modernizing of the African male.
Displaced from Ghana to New York City, he has endured personal experiences of post-post colonization (whitening of conscience) through educative history, dominance and subservience in art circles, gender and sexual politics; much of which is chronicled on his blog, Black Cocteau. https://kofosu.blogspot.com/
At the Riant Theater, NYC, he wrote and directed plays as part of Strawberry One-Act Festival and full-lengths, one which premiered Off-Broadway, in celebration of Martin Luther King Day. His play Alligator Pass was nominated for the Arnold Weissberger Award.
As an (interning) press officer and painter at Eickholt Gallery, where he had his first showing of his Muse Series Paintings, he parlayed his research into the Liverpool Biennial by engaging in discourse with several artists from Liverpool on subjects of displacement in association with cultural initiative, Transvoyeur. It resulted in the video film, Gender, Space, Art and Architecture, which premiered at Media Noche Gallery in Spanish Harlem.
It was there, Liverpool, where he had exhibition of his Muse Series Prints, Femmes du Futur, screening of his video film, Cushion Pill and a tape loop of his theatrical monologues, Horatio High-Wire Acts.
Cushion Pill dealt with combination of polarization of his experience with white muses and self-destruction induced by psychiatry and pharmaceuticals.
His collaborations include Dismember the Night, thread poetry and photography project, Tribes Gallery, NYC. This project further explored subject of post-white polarization (Whiteness and the Female). Late fine art and mural artist, Dianne Bowen accompanied him, staging scenes from celebrated theater productions and film. They then took selfies. The thread poetry was part of their original idea to write poetry as thread conversations on Facebook.
His most recent collaboration was with writer and researcher, Nehal El-Hadi. They have started writing together about innate Blackness, life/love/death. Kofi and Nehal’s poem Flightless Birds Gather At Darkest Hours is oncoming in swifts & slows.
As poet and performer, Kofi has participated in productions such as What the Hell is Love? and The Loser Project. Among his published works are Three Rooms Press’ NYC 1 and NYC 2 and Maintenant 10, Great Weather for Media’s Understanding Between Foxes and Light, Anti-Heroin Chic, Full Crow Press, Flapperhouse and The Scum Gentry.
Kofi can currently be seen as featured poet and participant in venues such as Parkside Lounge and Open Mic series around New York City.
Night is armor one wears over skin: body as shadow positioning
New skin clothed; not country of origin, but new language learned
Artist: Kofi Forson
Kofi Fosu Forson is writer and artist who identifies as para-meta-modernist and whose writing explores subjects of posttrauma, postshock and ongoing transformation from realm of post-white shock. His current manuscript, Ghost of Brother Blackburn, was triggered by an encounter with Caucasians in traditionally black environments, examples of modern gentrification.
At Gun Hill Road stop, red-headed woman, business suit and heels, typed on PC
I had become animal – horror in my eyes, laugh-less hyena, burnt-throated, fang
Mid-western, rugged good looks, charismatic man reading, slouched and stared
Room of black faces, I sat paranoid, clay-figure, senior-citizened, scatter-brained
Only black character in a Fassbinder film – decolonizing his way up Boogie-down
Dead-tired, consciously black, feeling blood boil next to hyper-real, strong men
Stress from brother is blackness in coffee cup; the kind you heave against a wall
Hurt for color of skin; your alt-city cowboy for my tortured, Afro-politan cow-heck
The manuscript further deals with his transformation from white euphoria channeled through rock and roll music, European art cinema, history of Euro-American Art, all filtered through scope of urban living, African family dystopia, spiritual reckoning and his newfound voice within the post-post modernizing of the African male.
Displaced from Ghana to New York City, he has endured personal experiences of post-post colonization (whitening of conscience) through educative history, dominance and subservience in art circles, gender and sexual politics; much of which is chronicled on his blog, Black Cocteau. https://kofosu.blogspot.com/
At the Riant Theater, NYC, he wrote and directed plays as part of Strawberry One-Act Festival and full-lengths, one which premiered Off-Broadway, in celebration of Martin Luther King Day. His play Alligator Pass was nominated for the Arnold Weissberger Award.
As an (interning) press officer and painter at Eickholt Gallery, where he had his first showing of his Muse Series Paintings, he parlayed his research into the Liverpool Biennial by engaging in discourse with several artists from Liverpool on subjects of displacement in association with cultural initiative, Transvoyeur. It resulted in the video film, Gender, Space, Art and Architecture, which premiered at Media Noche Gallery in Spanish Harlem.
It was there, Liverpool, where he had exhibition of his Muse Series Prints, Femmes du Futur, screening of his video film, Cushion Pill and a tape loop of his theatrical monologues, Horatio High-Wire Acts.
Cushion Pill dealt with combination of polarization of his experience with white muses and self-destruction induced by psychiatry and pharmaceuticals.
His collaborations include Dismember the Night, thread poetry and photography project, Tribes Gallery, NYC. This project further explored subject of post-white polarization (Whiteness and the Female). Late fine art and mural artist, Dianne Bowen accompanied him, staging scenes from celebrated theater productions and film. They then took selfies. The thread poetry was part of their original idea to write poetry as thread conversations on Facebook.
His most recent collaboration was with writer and researcher, Nehal El-Hadi. They have started writing together about innate Blackness, life/love/death. Kofi and Nehal’s poem Flightless Birds Gather At Darkest Hours is oncoming in swifts & slows.
As poet and performer, Kofi has participated in productions such as What the Hell is Love? and The Loser Project. Among his published works are Three Rooms Press’ NYC 1 and NYC 2 and Maintenant 10, Great Weather for Media’s Understanding Between Foxes and Light, Anti-Heroin Chic, Full Crow Press, Flapperhouse and The Scum Gentry.
Kofi can currently be seen as featured poet and participant in venues such as Parkside Lounge and Open Mic series around New York City.
Night is armor one wears over skin: body as shadow positioning
New skin clothed; not country of origin, but new language learned
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