6:30pm Doors + Free Food | 7:30pm Free Art

Slavery (Working Title)

by Kyle b. co.

curated by Malcolmx Betts & Arien Wilkerson as part of the Black Aesthetics Series at Judson Arts Wednesdays

A work by Kyle b. co. featuring Isaac Silber and Alex Capraro

Structured as a collective post-therapy musical “talkback,” Slavery (working title) reimagines the form of the sermon as a space for unraveling rather than instruction, opening a speculative relationship to psychoanalysis, confession, and communal reflection.

Slavery (working title) is an evening-length performance premiering on December 10 as part of Black Aesthetics at Judson Memorial Church, curated by Malcolm X Bettes and Ariel Wilkerson. The event begins with free food and musical sets at 6:30–7:00PM, followed by the performance at 7:30PM with musicians Isaac Silber and Alex Carpraro.

The work investigates how language, sound, and embodied action can interrupt or reframe inherited cycles of behavior, trauma, and longing. Structured as a collective post-therapy musical “talkback,” Slavery (working title) reimagines the form of the sermon as a space for unraveling rather than instruction, opening a speculative relationship to psychoanalysis, confession, and communal reflection. The church setting is integral: the architecture of the sanctuary becomes both stage and dramaturgical frame, allowing the performance to engage the cyclical temporality of weekly worship and the historical weight of the pulpit. By working within this environment, the piece reframes the podium as a site of inquiry, not authority, and reorients the relationship between performer, audience, and ritual. These conditions hold the performance’s inquiries into darkness, Blackness, and unknowing.