Surveying Gravity
In 2020 the Fine Arts Center at UMASS announced that it would bear the name of Justin Randolph Thompson’s grandfather, Randolph Bromery. As an artist engaged in notions of maintenance and re-signifying monuments, Thompson will explore the legacy of Bromery in Surveying Gravity, a research-oriented, performance-based project engaging the labor of legacy maintenance.
The work draws upon the form of Bromery’s unfinished basement, and his trajectory as the founder of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, a Tuskegee airman, a geophysicist, a Howard graduate, a jazz musician, the chancellor at the University of Massachusetts, and the president of Springfield College as material for performance based engagement. For the project, Thompson will restore his grandfather’s 100-year-old silver Buescher alto saxophone, and use performative forms of experiential research in dialogue with Bromery’s unpublished memoirs and personal archive to connect jazz history, geological survey, and social activism.
More information at: justinrandolphthompson.com and https://creative-capital.org/projects/surveying-gravity/
Archival, Urgent, Imaginary is a documentary dedicated to reflections from the Second National Conference: Justice in Geoscience held at AGU in Washington DC in August of 2022. The video features the co-conveners of the conference Raquel Bryant, Benjamin Keisling and Rachel Bernard sharing their impulses and aspirations. The themes Archival, Urgent and Imaginative frame the conference objectives and are the backdrop for this work which is dedicated to the memory of geophysicist Randolph Bromery who orchestrated the First National Conference on Minority Participation in Earth Science and Mineral Engineering in 1972. The documentary is designed to be of service to the conference objectives of extending participation in the geosciences, asking what has transpired in the 50 years since the first conference. The piece draws upon the work of the co-conveners employing this second conference as a call to arms to make the next 50 years look different. The documentary, filmed and edited by Bradly Dever Treadaway, is a part of Surveying Gravity, a Creative Capital funded project by Justin Randolph Thompson dedicated to the legacy of his maternal grandfather Randolph Bromery.
For more information on the Second National Conference: Justice in Geoscience:
https://www.agu.org/Chapmans-SNC-Justice-in-Geoscience
For more information on Surveying Gravity:
https://creative-capital.org/projects/surveying-gravity/
Parachute Folding
Parachute Folding documents Justin Randolph Thompson and Jason Thompson's research trip to Tuskegee Alabama to uncover a meditation on their grandfather Randolph Bromery's training as a Tuskegee Airmen. The absence of Bromery in the archive and museum space led to other forms of reflection on the legacy and significance of this training on his life and career. the work was performed at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in collaboration with Tuskegee University. The work was filmed and edited by Bradly Dever Treadaway and is part of the Creative Capital Funded project Surveying Gravity.
Introduction
Archival, Urgent, Imaginary