The Superfluid Curation of Darkness

Abstract

Contemporary interdisciplinary collaboration practices offer visions of new modes of assembly. This article traces a curatorial model of interdisciplinary collaboration, exploring how artists activate curation as a methodology of creation. I refer specifically to the creative practice of the award-winning Queer trans/mogrifying multidisciplinary artist and futurist Sage Ni'Ja Whitson, and their series The Unarrival Experiments. I reflect on Whitson's curatorial practice as a sacred methodology rooted in Yorùbá cosmologies, theatrical jazz aesthetic, and concepts of dark matter, superfluidity, and unarrival. I trace how Whitson's use of curatorial frameworks supports ease in the impossible, builds layers of multiplicity and simultaneity, resists institutional hegemony and power structures, and crafts systems of queer kinship and care for communities, ancestors, and futures. I outline the criteria of coexistence through which they imbue curatorial practices into their collaborations, generating what I describe as a “third space.” For Whitson, this fertile space of sustained difference is a portal to an alternate institution of darkness, interdependent sovereignty, and superfluidity. I conclude by unfolding the possibilities of Whitson's third space as a forward-facing methodology of how to move through the impossible together and envision new collective futures.