Liquor Store Theatre (Black Outdoors: Innovations in the Poetics of Study)

Maya Stovall uses her Liquor Store Theatre conceptual art project—in which she danced near her Detroit neighborhood's liquor stores as a way to start conversations with her neighbors—as a point of departure for understanding everyday life in Detroit and the possibilities for ethnographic research, art, and knowledge creation. For six years Maya Stovall staged Liquor Store Theatre, a conceptual art and anthropology video project---included in the Whitney Biennial in 2017---in which she danced near the liquor stores in her Detroit neighborhood as a way to start conversations with her neighbors. In this book of the same name, Stovall uses the project as a point of departure for understanding everyday life in Detroit and the possibilities for ethnographic research, art, and knowledge creation. Her conversations with her neighbors—which touch on everything from economics, aesthetics, and sex to the political and economic racism that undergirds Detroit's history—bring to light rarely acknowledged experiences of longtime Detroiters. In these exchanges, Stovall enacts an innovative form of ethnographic engagement that offers new modes of integrating the social sciences with the arts in ways that exceed what either approach can achieve alone. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2014) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2014) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 1, No. 3 (2014) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2015) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2015) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2015) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 3 (2016) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 4 (2016) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 5 (2016) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 6 (2016) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 7 (2016) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2017) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2017) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2017) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2017) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 5 (2017) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 6 (2017) -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 7 (2017) -- v -- Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2018) "For six years, Maya Stovall staged Liquor Store Theatre, a conceptual art and anthropology video project in the streets and sidewalks surrounding the liquor stores in her Detroit neighborhood. In LST, staged and video-recorded performances are the start of conversations with neighbors. On the streets and sidewalks next, neighbors discuss everything from economics, to politics, to aesthetics, to affect, to drugs, sex, work, and daily life. Following a screenplay structure, Stovall moves, one-by-one, through her Liquor Store Theatre (2014- ) video series seen in the Whitney Biennial. In the scenes of her 1st video reflections, Detroit's McDougall Hunt neighborhood comes alive"-- Provided by publisher "For six years, Maya Stovall staged Liquor Store Theatre, a conceptual art and anthropology video project in the streets and sidewalks surrounding the liquor stores in her Detroit neighborhood. In LST, staged and video-recorded performances are the start of conversations with neighbors. On the streets and sidewalks next, neighbors discuss everything from economics, to politics, to aesthetics, to affect, to drugs, sex, work, and daily life. Following a screenplay structure, Stovall moves, one-by-one, through her Liquor Store Theatre (2014-) video series seen in the Whitney Biennial. In the scenes of her LST video reflections, Detroit's McDougall Hunt neighborhood comes alive"-- Provided by publisher