The Black Garden Project is a documentary radio play that takes music and sound texts (interviews, field recordings, recorded lectures, etc.) into a critical investigation of black queer life ecologies. The program will specifically examine the process of creating nourishing spaces for black people in institutions of higher education. Inspired by stories of activism in response to anti-black and indigenous racism on college campuses, this piece will poetically mix elements of newspaper theater with radio interference to gesture towards the ephemeral instability and impossibility of structuralizing nourishing spaces for black life in the contemporary world while exploring the simultaneous capacity of radio to enact real structural connections through vulnerable Black communities that are creating new sites for black resistance politics, black life gardens, and futures.

Temar France (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar whose research-based practice considers black feminist ecologies, queer world-making, sexuality, and healing. Their recent work focuses on radio broadcast and live performance, combining interviews, field recordings, poetry, and music to construct and amplify narratives that explore questions about black queer ecological succession, community, and rebellion. France is currently in graduate school at Brooklyn College studying performance and interactive media art. temarfrance.com