Hernease Davis sits down with the artist, Raymond Thompson, Jr. at the end of a very busy season that included a tour that launched his recent book project, entitled, Appalachian Ghosts: A Photographic Reimagining of The Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster, which caused the death of nearly 800 workers, 2/3 of which were black americans. Their conversation focuses on an ongoing series that Raymond worked on as a resident at VSW, entitled “It’s hard to stop rebels that time travel”- Both of these projects are very much related to one another in terms of how Raymond is approaching the North American landscape that is both research driven and integrated with speculative and imaginary interventions. Raymond made numerous references to important artist scholars whose works greatly influenced his directions. Links to Raymond’s work as well as those important references are included in the show notes.
Photo Credit: Raymond Thompson Jr., from the series “It’s hard to stop rebels that time travel”, 2021 - ongoing
Raymond Thompson Jr. Reference Links
www.raymondthompsonjr.com
Deborah Willis: https://debwillisphoto.com/home
Ingrid Pollard: http://www.ingridpollard.com/
Dawoud Bey: https://www.colum.edu/academics/faculty/dawoud-bey
Christina Sharpe: https://profiles.laps.yorku.ca/profiles/cesharpe/
Saidiya Hartman: https://saidiyahartman.com/
Simone Brown: https://www.dukeupress.edu/dark-matters
HLT Quan’s, “It’s Hard to Stop Rebels That Time Travel”: Democratic Living and the Radical Reimagining of Old Worlds
https://www.education.pitt.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Quan-ungovernability.pdf
A transcript of this episode can be found at https://www.vsw.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Season-3-Episode-2-Raymond-Thompson-Jr.pdf.
