Minor Music at the End of the WorldWritten by Saidiya Hartman Directed by Sarah Benson

Minor Music at the End of the World is a performance in three movements based on SAIDIYA HARTMAN's acclaimed essays The End of White Supremacy: An American Romance and Litany for Grieving Sisters. 

FEATURING ANDRÉ HOLLAND, OKWUI OKPOKWASILI AND FILM BY ARTHUR JAFA

COMMISSIONED AND PRESENTED BY HARTWIG ART FOUNDATION

How does one live at the end of the world? Is it possible to envision a world without racism? And what would be required to produce such a world?

This new work takes as its point of departure W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Comet, a speculative fictional tale of the end of the world written in the wake of the pandemic of 1918. Minor Music is presented in three movements:

Movement I: The End of White Supremacy — Featuring Andre Holland
Movement II: Dead River — Featuring Okwui Okpokwasili
Movement III: The World is Dead — A film by Arthur Jafa

The collaboratively developed stage performance explores the possibility of Black life at the end of the world and in the wake of racial capitalism and white supremacy. Against this complexly layered backdrop, Minor Music conveys an ongoing series of catastrophes that converge at this critical inflection point — among others, the arrival of Africans in New York City, the first slave auction in lower Manhattan, the precarity of Black life, global pandemics, and environmental catastrophes that make life seemingly unlivable. In doing so, it provokes a series of penetrating questions about Black life at the end of the world and the new social formations that arise in its wake.  

Directed by Sarah Benson, Minor Music at the End of the World features cinematic elements by Arthur Jafa, lead performances by actor André Holland and actor/sonic movement artist Okwui Okpokwasili.

New York/Amsterdam, 2024 – 2025

2024 – 2025 is a pivotal moment that highlights the significant historical connection between New York and Amsterdam. Four hundred years ago, in 1624, Dutch colonists founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manahahtáanung— the ancestral home of the Lenape people now known as Manhattan. This event led to the displacement and oppression of Indigenous peoples that predates English colonisation. Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th anniversary in 2025. The city and its former sister city New Amsterdam — now New York — share complex and contested histories marked by trade, colonisation and slavery. These histories have profoundly shaped both communities, and they continue to reckon with them today.

A one-night-invitation-only rehearsal, the culmination of a year-long series of development workshops, was held in November 2024 at BAM’s Harvey Theater (NY), leading up to a world premiere at ITA in Amsterdam on 3 – 5 October 2025.

Context Programme

Saturday, 4 Oct. 12:30pm: Minor Music at Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam with Hartwig Art Foundation

A special programme of talks and encounters with Saidiya Hartman, Arthur Jafa, Precious Okoyomon, Cameron Rowland, Pelumi Adejumo, and Alexander Ghedi Weheliye, moderated by Quinsy Gario and Derica Shields. More info and RSVP here (sold-out).

Sunday, 5 Oct: Aftertalk at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA)

with Saidiya Hartman, Sarah Benson, Okwui Okpokwasili, André Holland a.o, moderated by Rita Ouédraogo and Tina Campt. Accessible with a ticket to the Sunday performance.

3–17 Oct: Arthur Jafa at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

On the occasion of the world premiere of Minor Music at the End of the World, the Stedelijk exhibits Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016) from 3–10 Oct, and APEX (2013) from 10–17 Oct. Both works have been donated by Hartwig Art Foundation to a shared ownership of the Stedelijk Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. More information.