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B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip HopExhibition: June 29 - September 9, 2006Summit: June 29 - July 2, 2006 rap . graffiti . dj . dance . panels . fashion . poetry . visual exhibition . filmFull B-Girl Be Summit Schedule here
Welcome to the 2nd Annual B-Girl Be Summit A Celebration of Women in Hip-Hop Due to the small number of female practitioners in hip hop during its thirty plus years of development, usually women formed the female of an all boy crew, serving as the oddity or the novelty. Yet because of this, women created global networks as a method of gendered solidarity. At B-Girl Be we want to not only recognize and celebrate the role of women in hip hop, but also empower future generations of girls and boys alike to claim their place by experiencing, visualizing, interpreting and organizing hip hop on their own terms. B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip Hop 2006 aims to develop from what was created last year as the first summit of its kind. We offered a unique gathering where the execution of hip hop met up with its conceptualization through praxis as well as theory. Audiences of over 3000 people came together amongst over one hundred local, national and international hip hop artists to learn and practice the individual elements of break dancing, aerosol art, rapping, and turntablism. Keeping with our desire to challenge the norm B-Girl Be went beyond the four-element hip hop model to offer new gendered dimensions to essential exponents of these such as audio and visual production, exhibition, fashion, entrepreneurship, and scholarship.
B-Girl Be relies on a stronger and wider foundation this year due to our reformulation of the curatorial model by adding the positions of female assistant curators and allowed for males to become formally involved as advisors. We believe a true marker of success for B-Girl Be is the growth of various audience members from last year as participants this year, and a few of last year's participants serving as assistants in 2006. We designed a primarily all-ages summit program as well as added two week-long youth camps following the summit that allows for a more relaxed and intimate encounter with hip hop's elements and their production. The six weeks following the summit also include performances, film screenings and talks for multi-generational audiences alongside the B-Girl Be exhibit that runs through mid August. B-Girl Be is a locally oriented event that is graciously maintained by the community of hip hop artists, activists, and organizers with the financial support of local and national grants, sponsors and individual donors. Last year we learned that Minneapolis, as a site for this type of convention, and Intermedia Arts as its cradle, allowed artists to unite under the pretext of a globally recognized conference yet removed from the pressures of defending East and West Coast or other territorial philosophies. By adding a stronger international scope on the summit this year our intention is to challenge the local scene by providing tools for advancement while permitting the global hip hop community to think beyond the metropolises. We believe that bringing together b-girls from around the world for four days not only creates new networks that remain in the local webs but also ferments new discussion abroad. We want to thank everyone from audience and participants to artists, activists and organizers, sponsors and funding agencies for being an essential part of B-Girl Be this year. Without this community support B-Girl Be would still be merely a vision each one of us would rely on to make it through another day in hip hop. Peace and respect, B-Girl Be Curatorial Team: B-Girl Be Curatorial Assistants: B-Girl Be Fashion Show Curators: kid & family-friendly . all ages . all genders . all incomes . all ethnic communities |
B-Girl Be presentsA night of open mics, b-girl ciphers, and live performances by Twin Cities artists Desdamona, Maria Isa and Black Blondie with special guests on Thursday, November 16, 2006 at Babalu in Minneapolis. Doors open at 7:00 PM, Show at 9:00 PM. Babalu is located at 800 Washington Ave N in Minneapolis. |
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