Rest Craft Conjure: A Black Humanifesto, 2026 (Forthcoming)

In Rest, Craft, and Conjure: A Humanifesto, jaamil olawale kosoko reflects on the intersections of Black poetics, creative labor, rest, spirituality, and ecological care. Drawing from more than twenty years of artistic practice, the essay examines how touring, institutional expectations, and the pressures of productivity can produce cycles of depletion and exploitation. Kosoko proposes rest not as an absence of work, but as a generative practice of resistance, healing, and reparation. Through the frameworks of rest, craft, and conjure, the essay considers how artists can reclaim creative agency, cultivate sustainable practices, and imagine alternative futures. Conjure becomes a method for connecting ancestral knowledge, ecological wisdom, ritual, and embodied creativity, while craft becomes a way of making with intention.

Cambridge Companion (United Kingdom)