Fred Moten

Fred Moten works in the Department of Performance Studies in the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He is interested in social movement, aesthetic experiment, and the poetics of black study. Over the last thirty years, Moten has addressed this concern as part of the Harris Moten Quartet, Moved by the Motion, Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective, the Institute for Physical Sociology, the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy, and the Exodus Reading Group; and in collaboration with Arika, Renee Gladman, Zun Lee, Jennie C. Jones, Renée Green, George Lewis, Harmony Holiday, and Gerald Cleaver & Brandon Lopez, among many others; and in a number of books, the latest of which, written with his old friend and writing partner Stefano Harney, is All Incomplete (Minor Compositions/Autonomedia, 2021). He was recently awarded a Macarthur “Genius Grant,” recognizing his work of “creating new conceptual spaces to accommodate emerging forms of Black aesthetics, cultural production, and social life.”

Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation