Minor Music at the End of the WorldGeschreven door Saidiya HartmanDirected by Sarah Benson

FEATURING ANDRÉ HOLLAND, OKWUI OKPOKWASILI AND FILM BY ARTHUR JAFA

WITH ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTIONS BY PRECIOUS OKOYOMON AND CAMERON ROWLAND A.O.

COMMISSIONED BY HARTWIG ART FOUNDATION

Amsterdam, Venice, and now New York: Minor Music at the End of the World, the stage adaptation of Saidiya Hartman’s writings, commissioned, developed and originally presented by Hartwig Art Foundation, will have its U.S. premiere in fall 2026 at the BAM Harvey Theater.

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. Structured in three movements, the piece is based on Saidiya Hartman’s acclaimed essay The End of White Supremacy, An American Romance, which draws inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Comet — a speculative short story written in the aftermath of the 1918 global pandemic that imagines the end of the world. Also instrumental to this production is a new performative text by Hartman, Dead River (2025), conceived as a ceremony of life in the wake of catastrophe.

At the heart of Minor Music is a powerful spirit of collective creation—bringing  together a constellation of celebrated artists and combining literature, film, installation art, movement, and sound into a singular stage experience. Collaborating with Saidiya Hartman and her exceptional team of creators to bring her influential writings to life through this evolving and deeply collaborative process has been an extraordinary journey. The premiere in Amsterdam and the subsequent presentations in Venice were profoundly meaningful experiences, marked by engaged and generous audiences that affirmed the urgency and resonance of the work. We are glad this vital and important work – perhaps today more than ever – will travel to the USA next.

– Beatrix Ruf, director Hartwig Art Foundation

Directed by Sarah Benson, Minor Music at the End of the World features a film by Arthur Jafa, lead performances by actor André Holland and actor/sonic movement artist Okwui Okpokwasili, and artistic interventions by artists Precious Okoyomon and Cameron Rowland, with the guidance of executive producers Tina Campt and Beatrix Ruf. 

BACKGROUND

Minor Music at the End of the World originated in 2021 as a staged reading of Saidiya Hartman’s The End of White Supremacy by Andre Holland at the 92nd Street Y in New York. The project evolved through a series of collaborations, workshops, and performances over the following years, beginning with a performative reading of Hartman’s text and a filming session with Okwui Okpokwasili and Arthur Jafa in the ruins of Ostia Antica in 2023, held in conjunction with the opening of an exhibition by Precious Okoyomon in Rome. Hartwig Art Foundation became involved at that stage as a commissioner, playing a key role in the development of the work into a full-scale staged performance. Supported by the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics, the project culminated in an invited public rehearsal at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 2024, with BAM providing production residency support. Its world premiere took place at International Theater Amsterdam (ITA) in 2025. Hartwig Art Foundation subsequently presented the work in Venice, where it was performed in three sold-out shows at the Teatro Goldoni during the opening week of the Venice Biennale.