BLACK BODY AMNESIA
A performance-born archive in text and sound
Black Body Amnesia is a decade-long inquiry into memory, disappearance, ritual, and embodied survival. What began as a live interdisciplinary performance now continues as a digital Second Edition and recorded audiobook.
The work moves between stage, page, and breath.
“Although my collaboration with Jaamil is new, I am learning about process, community and ritual. As a Caribbean, queer, transdisciplinary art maker, I feel mentorship and guidance in Jaamils leadership. They lead by example, creating ample opportunity, through convenings, sharings and workshops to make himself accessible to the communities he serves. With Jaamil, I feel this weaving and gathering happening between us. The works Jaamil creates have an perpetual relevance —- rest as both practice, method and theory is relevant to how he thinks about building sustainable art making practices amongst communities. Their dedication to Philly art makers like myself are a testimony to their commitment. Responsive art begins before the performance, they construct works that are inherently dependent upon collaboration and community input demonstrating the will of their work praxis. It is a pleasure to be deeply rooted in the imagination with them and I look forward to our joint makings, I believe we align in our hopes to transform, illuminate Black mundanity and to be in practice with the community. Our makings are a thoughtful response to our own archival histories.”
What This Archive Holds
Black Body Amnesia traces grief, intimacy, violence, pleasure, lineage, and refusal through language shaped by performance practice.
Developed over years of live presentation and interdisciplinary collaboration, the text carries forward an archive first shaped in real time.
The writing does not resolve.
It remains porous.
It remains embodied.
“Kosoko Performance Studio is a vital part of Philadelphia’s arts community. In my role leading FringeArts I witnessed directly the powerful impact of jaamil olawale kosoko’s boundary-pushing performance works. Their projects are deeply rooted in collaboration, community, and care, demonstrated by the highly intentional participatory and ceremonial elements of their performances. jaamil is deeply committed to supporting fellow artists and community members to sustain, preserve, and archive their art making practices, and has consistently made significant contributions to our city’s arts ecosystem for over a decade.”
Black Body Amnesia, 2nd Edition
The second edition presents a refined and focused iteration of Black Body Amnesia, centering Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s poetry alongside selected performance texts, visual materials, and conversations.
The poems move through intimacy, loss, eroticism, violence, tenderness, and care without explanation or instruction.
The current release is the Second Edition, available as a digital download.
Upon purchase, you receive:
• PDF file
• EPUB file
Files are delivered immediately.
The audiobook edition reflects the First Edition text and preserves an earlier published version of the archive.
Each format holds a distinct moment in the evolution of this practice.
Press Reviews.
“ ...Kosoko’s physical struggle allows audience members to contemplate both the physical and emotional battles that accompany embodiment. Kosoko alludes to suicide when a doll falls face-first off of a table, which represents the ultimate escape of the body; however, Kosoko seems to advocate against this option by displaying his body struggling, thriving, and surviving during his wake work amongst the deaths that he illuminates. ”
“ ...Kosoko’s work is unique because it both particularizes and contextualizes identity. He shares personal content from to his late mother and his father, such as his father’s last voicemail. These moments surface as glimpses into his own particular journey in (re)communing with them. Kosoko is also concerned with contextualizing racial, gender, and sexual identities.”
Origin: Live Performance
Before publication, Black Body Amnesia existed as a staged interdisciplinary performance practice.
Through movement, sound, and spatial ritual, the performance examined the fragility and persistence of Black life in real time. The digital edition continues that archive in written form.
Who This Archive Speaks To
This archive may resonate with:
• Artists navigating institutional fatigue
• Readers engaged in Black study and performance theory
• Cultural practitioners concerned with memory and disappearance
• Those seeking language grounded in embodied practice
Black Body Amnesia does not offer solutions.
It offers witness.
Black Body Amnesia remains an ongoing archive.
For future readings and archive announcements,
connect through the platforms below.
Collaborators & Institutions
