DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Nichelle Winters

03 JUNE 2012

 

New Deal: Stacked Deck // Final

 

“How is this installation Afro-futuristic or Black?” my friend asked me. “I don’t get it,” she continued. I responded diplomatically: “The artist is of West African descent, and this her future as she imagines it.” We agreed to be a part of her future when we entered into the narrative. As a collector of art (her restaurant, bar, home, and niece’s apartment are filled with narratives of colonialism, ethnography, perceptions of women, and catalogs of enigmas) I never thought that question would come from my friend’s lips. As my friend walked through this wonderland of Afro-futurism in silence, as I “ooooh” and “awwwed” at the woodland creatures moving through and hiding out in the make-believe forest. Snipers were posted on the catwalk, setting their sites on passersby with little red lights that guided imaginary bullets. If it was the participant’s desire to explore the catwalk above, deciphering the color sticker caste system was mandatory for passage. Participants passed the blue stickers off to one another as we granted access to each other into prohibited spaces. Moon-head monks and black hooded mirror-faced beings sauntered about as we sent notes towards heaven on little Buddhist prayer flags. It was magic.


We entered D. Denenge Apem’s Blackness through Afro-Futurism as a Liberatory Practice at the Hyde Park Art Center, and as spectators of the experience we owed it to the artist to attempt to understand, and not assign her a space and time before she was able to express herself. John Picton described exhibitions of African art as having been “privileged by tradition and culture, denying possibilities for significant change.”1 This is apparent as artist of color are pigeonholed by their perceived cultures that are defined by the Western standard. After some reflection I wonder what my friend expected from Afro-futurism? I ask of myself why my friend thought the artist was erroneous, vague, or perhaps in the wrong culture? Fred Wilson states that “relinquishing power” in museum settings “makes no assumptions on what the audience needed or wanted to know…” in Mining the Museum.2 The understanding of the art presented and the critic’s arguments is a request of the artist and the critic. 


Originally I intended to address the false sign and signifiers established by the powers that have become traditional through the false labeling of “high art” of Western produced ideas. In my research I have found canons on this subject matter. I have also found copious amounts of scholarship on changing the distorted view of white, male, sexist patriarchy through various mediums, but bell hooks warns that while we seek validation through the system we also empower that system, and are in “collusion with the forces of racism”3This paper has been scaled down to reflecting on readings and lectures of theorists that have tackled the issue of power and misrepresentation for years, created plans of actions to correct the imbalance, only then to create lectures on how the current power structure mutates to continue its reign, falsify democracy, and stifle progress and freedom. 


My first question in reflection is whether the Internet fosters equalization and validation of choice consistent within cultural groups? We can rewrite and correct our histories, current events, and future using digital media as our medium. We can begin to imagine ourselves as “we are and what we want to be.”4 But as we challenge and change the narrative institutions of religion, government, media controls and influences us. As our story in history are rewritten and corrected, elements in said institutions resist, discredit, and work for their maintenance. According to Edward Said, misrepresentation of Eastern cultures for the reductive understanding in the West, Orientalism is the manner in which contemporary Western Europe and North America understand the contemporary Eastern and Middle Eastern Asia and even Islam-influenced Africa presentation of art, media, culture, as well as history, and power, and how the East understands itself.4 Said’s analysis of the East through the Western lens brings to light that the particular representation of the “Orient” is deceitful, disingenuous, and reductive at best. Coupling Said and hooks’ examination illuminates the false representation of the East, and Black people in particular,  (but people of color in general) makes for the success in the media of the misrepresented. Authenticity in the media is trivial, as cultures are reproduced inaccurately, and distortions and caricatures are aligned with current power structure and dominant culture to perpetuate misunderstandings and difference. 


Digital media allows accessibility and versatility to recreate and redefine the limitations, classifications, and perceived credibility of spaces of galleries spaces. Asking what the conventional galleries ask of us helps to inform our new path to current representation. Art has higher value in museums and galleries; scholars are more credible when they are peer-reviewed upon publishing; Google is better than bing, as museums allow Google to archive their collections, and the public to produce their own collection based off the fact that Google is the most powerful search engine. In a display of power try googling the BBC Asia documentary about Black soldiers fathering children in Asian countries at war. You will not get results in the United States from Google; it is only available in the East. 

Just as we follow bloggers so that ideally, they return the favor and follow us, this develops and cultivates a new assembly to which we are valid within. Although this can produce issues of close-mindedness when everyone in a circle validates your thinking, I believe that the accessibility of the blogs, galleries, and websites on the oversaturated Internet can always have a an outside agent to which can members can either reconsider their positions or attack the outsider. The creation of the sites speaks to the issues the populous has with the mainstream. 


My second reflective question is whether imperial powers of art criticism can be neutralized when digital media is accessible to all or will it be recreated? I know I am not able to answer this question. We all have access to canvas and paint but “high art” and painting is associated with powerful, white, European-descended males, and there are many in museums and galleries. Although we must be a part of the experience because we are also American, we are partitioned into Asian art wings, African and Original American art quarters, or DuSable and Polish museums. Separating, dividing, and reminding us that we are not to confuse ethnic art with high art, unless the curator has planned to confuse us.5 I reflected in another essay that the contemporary gallery sphere tolerates people in their sacred spaces. On the reverse, museums of ethnicities, or museums of women are created for the purpose of exhibiting various others not western and male. This is our space to be free according to those who influence that realm. Should we be excited? Sure, we should. This could be the prototype for new media, accessible via the Web.


hooks, Said, Enwezor, Picton, and many others discuss the failures in reproducing cultures as imagined by status quo. Breaking away from traditional and convention modes of art that makes one aware can be liberating. Through liberation there are choices, consequences, and responsibility. Perhaps I am misreading but the theorists fail to mention that while we are recreating and expanding our definitions of ourselves the improbability of the future and the reactions of society during the slow cultural change are also unpredictable. Accepting the accurate portrayal and images of marginalized people is probably not what immobilizes people, it is likely that the unknown influences inaction. 


The careful calculations of galleries and museums are removed with the unpredictabilities of digital media. History is “man-made, a synthetically elaborate one” and contemporary galleries are foreshortened by historical and institutional foreces.5 These “elaborate, man-made histories” of ordered experiences become disorderly, unruly, and unmanageable when cultures and people curate their own identities. This is where database of the Internet dilutes, confuses, and waters down information from all sources.  Even the New York Times ran with The Onion magazine cover with Barack Obama as a teen heartthrob in 2011. The NY Times issued a correction and this proves institutional vulnerabilities.


Keeping this in mind, our power has always been limitless, thus we must validate ourselves. The history of art is no longer the unacceptable “postcolonial constellation understanding of a particular historical order…” our art history is “ always in continuous redefinitions.” 5 Ongoing, crucial transformations in our existence will inform our future, and correct the fiction of our past. The complexities of our identities can not be supported by the institutions that have historically, and distinctly diluted, insulted, and have not conformed to acceptable standards of true representation for the majority of the planet.


Are we afraid to tell our historical narratives, our present conditions, and Ethno-futurisms to each other? Perhaps we are afraid of the trouble it may cause, the singling out and being made an example. We cannot fear the possibilities of speaking for ourselves, creating “new and exciting representation,”3 pushing boundaries with digital media and discovering that our voices are acceptable.


1John Picton, (2002). Museum ethnography, current art, Africa, Journal of Museum Ethnography. No 12. p. 109-114.


2 Lisa Corrin, (1994). Mining the Museum: Artist Look at Museums, Museums Look at Themselves. Museum Studies.


3 bell hooks, Sut Jhally.  (2002). Cultural Criticism and Transformation. Media Education Foundation. Lecture


4 Edward Said. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage5 Okwui Enwezor. (2003). The postcolonial constellation: Contemporary art in a state of permanent transition. Research in Africa literatures.  Vol 34, No.4. pp.57-82. p. 64


5 Okwui Enwezor. p. 755 Okwui Enwezor. P. 772

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.