Jointly appointed in both the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Lewis Center for the Arts, Tina Campt concluded a Spring 2023 semester that was as dynamic and inspiring as it was full. In addition to teaching an undergraduate course and a graduate seminar, Campt launched the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics, hosting two artists-in-residence, holding three events, and launching the Collaboratorium  section on the Lewis Center website.

The Collaboratorium hosted two 2023 collaborators-in-residence and held three events.

2023 Collaborators-in-Residence Dionne Brand and Christina Sharpe participated as guest speakers and collaborators in Campt's courses as well as contributing to the Collaboratorium events, which took place at the Lewis Center for the Arts.

"Thinking from Black is a continual practice and an active state of doing and living a certain kind of work. When we think from Black, we do so not collectively, not in a single voice, but collaboratively in a multiplicity of voices embracing that multiplicity and embracing all of its incumbent tensions ruptures and specificities.” – Professor Tina Campt

The first event, "Think from Black: A Lexicon," took place from January 26 to 28, 2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class of the University of Johannesburg (RGC), in collaboration with the Practicing Refusal Collective (PRC), hosted the three-day convening, which was co-sponsored by the Princeton Collaboratorium and the Columbia University Institute for Research on Women and Gender Studies.  Participants were encouraged to contribute “terms and practices that animate black life… [and] articulate the multiple/intricate textures of Blackness,” or put another way, terms that “think from Black.” 

In Princeton, on April 20, Campt, Brand, and Sharpe were joined in conversation by artist Torkwase Dyson and poet Canisia Lubrin. Reflecting on their ongoing projects, the discussion, entitled “Ekphrasis: A Collaborative Experiment in Art, Writing and Thinking,” represented a meditation on the poetics of relation, questions of influence and collectivity, and the work of art and literature in the contemporary world.

The following week, on April 27, Campt, Brand, Lubrin, and Sharpe reconvened for “Thinking from Black Part II — The Practicing Refusal Collective.” Picking up where the January event in Johannesburg had left off, the group presented work from The Practicing Refusal Collective and the Sojourner Project on their collaborative publication: Think/ing from Black: A Lexicon. In this contemporary moment such a lexicon shows the continuously inventive space of Blackness. Each participant in “Thinking from Black Part II” presented new entries to the lexicon, followed by vibrant discussion involving audience members.

"Thinking from Black is a continual practice and an active state of doing and living a certain kind of work," said Campt. "When we think from Black, we do so not collectively, not in a single voice, but collaboratively in a multiplicity of voices embracing that multiplicity and embracing all of its incumbent tensions ruptures and specificities.” 

Infused with collaborative working, making, and thinking, the Spring 2023 semester has impacted and inspired participants. "It was a rollercoaster of excitement and challenges," said Diallo Jakobsen, "but the lessons I have learned about the immense potential of collaboration have left me forever transformed."

“It was amazing to watch both the eagerness and openness of students to embrace new ways of thinking and making and I learned immensely from the ways they work.” – Professor Tina Campt

"Professor Campt said to me at one point that collaboration is perhaps a 'more human' way of working," said Knutsen. "For me, the framework of collaboration foregrounds the ethical and political implications of not only the work itself but also of the process. I feel as though my group began to think more deeply about what we were trying to attune to, and in what registers, which transformed how we thought about the necessity of producing work." “There were multiple days when I left Tina Campt’s class feeling revolutionized,” Knutsen continued. “It was a privilege to study with Professor Campt and to be in the presence of such a brilliant thinker,” she said. 

As collaborator as well as instructor, Campt was impacted and inspired, too. “It was amazing to watch both the eagerness and openness of students to embrace new ways of thinking and making and I learned immensely from the ways they work.”