Re: [-empyre-] race, net-art, strategy

[Mendi Obadike <mendi@blacknetart.com>]

Dear all,

What I've been thinking is that sometimes white people respond to art
by people of color that takes on race with an evaluative comment (such
as "It's too simple," "It's heavy handed," "It's so overtly political")
because they don't like where the work takes the general conversation.
Maybe it is because the work makes them uncomfortable and they aren't
used to having to deal with the unmitigated ideas of people of color.
Maybe they cannot deal with the fact that they aren't being spoken to
on the terms that they prefer (where references to difference or
oppression are veiled.) It is important for me to allow for the
possibility that you, Ian, simply have an idea of the kind of political
black art you would find engaging and you just aren't seeing it. Still,
your response sounds to me like an attempt to regain control of a
conversation (where "Art" is the conversation) on behalf of people who
don?t want thinking about race to take up so much work. Interestingly,
many of these people don?t then seek out work that does the work they
say they would like to see done with race and/or bring it up in the
discussion. I obviously don?t know if this part applies to you because
I don?t know you, but maybe you can ask yourself if you fit into this
group.

This is connected to some other ideas I have had about our work while
reading these conversations. The conversations have moved so fast and
it has taken me so long to figure out what this list is (how it moves,
who is in here, etc) that I haven?t found the ways to jump in, but I?m
jumping in now.

1. Yes, it matters if an artist making work about blackness on the net
is black. When the news of Ayo?s work spread around my community (and
it came to me through net communities, art communities, and family
members), it always came with the suggestion that I go to her website
and see her picture, see her other work, see who she *was*. I noted
this point in people?s emails because I had recently had a good number
of conversations about artists identities or the idea of artists
identities in this kind of work. When Keith and I went to talk to Mark
Tribe?s (mostly white) net art class at Williams College (in
Massachusetts, the northeastern United States) to talk about identity,
the students went to our personal website to look at our pictures
(which was fine with us  and fun for us, but not part of the
assignment) and wanted to talk about what it meant for us to play
ourselves online. When we spoke to my father?s (all black) Sociology
class at Paine College (in Georgia, the southern US), students were
interested in what could be communicated from black people to one
another on the net. When we gave a talk at Smith College (also in
Massachusetts) to talk to a racially mixed group of professors in John
Peffer?s African Diaspora art seminar, yes, they responded to our being
black people making art. Both Kevin Quashie and Okwui Enwezor talked
about how Blackness for Sale might have resonated differently if the
artist was white or was assumed to be white. I don?t know whether we
can get away from the artist?s body (or the idea of the artist?s body)
in critique, even if that body is absent. But it?s often absent. This
idea of absent presence doesn?t just come in with the net. If you read
the curator Thelma Golden?s comments on her Post-Black show, you will
see her struggling with her desire to know if the artist who made a
particular work was black. I don?t remember whether it was painting or
sculpture, but it wasn?t a work in a new medium.

2. My work is not always speaking directly to white people. Now, I
always intend to have a large audience. I never write with the
intention of not having a white audience (or almost never write with
that intention) but some things I have to say I am saying to people who
are not white. In some of the contexts in which I work, this is
extremely rare. People of many backgrounds have noted and been
interested in this kind of address, but this fact makes some people (of
many backgrounds) uncomfortable. 

3. I like art that reaches for me where I laugh and I like to appeal to
the funny bone of my audience in my work. I feel that humor (or humour,
as the case may be) is a way to enact community; it?s an act of faith.
If you get the joke, you are ?in?, even if you are implicated in
another part of the power dynamic represented. This may come with some
discomfort, but maybe it won?t be a discomfort that makes you
defensive. Maybe it makes you think better about difference and power
and even alliances.

4. Work on race that does not make people laugh often passes by without
comment, no matter how it makes an audience feel. Even work that makes
some people laugh often passes by without comment if those people
aren?t white.

5. What does it mean when one?s humor about race isn?t ?gotten?? I?ve
been thinking about the responses to Damali Ayo?s net project and some
of the responses to our work. I don?t think it?s that the idea of a
rent-a-negro service is so hard to recognize as funny. I grew up
listening to Godfrey Cambridge?s albums from the 60s and he had a joke
about creating a Rent-a-Negro service for himself, renting himself out
to white people for dinner parties. I was 6 or 7 years old and had a
limited sense of the political implications of the joke, but I still
got how this joke was funny and how it was critique. It had to do with
the way it rode the line of the real in the ridiculous and what it
meant to speak from inside that absurd situation. I think one would
only not get such a combination of critique if one could not recognize
(or if one refused to recognize) the absurdity of being for sale or
living in a place where one is desired only as a commodity. Ayo?s
recontextualization of this old idea in a context where people could
respond puts people on the spot. Part of what is interesting about work
on race and commerce on the net is the interactivity. People can
participate. People can make bit on your blackness or make an offer for
your Negro presence. People can apply to sell their own Negro presence.
When we did Interaction of Coloreds, people actually answered our
survey. They told us where their grandparents were from; they told us
where they had been included or excluded on the basis of color. They
told us when they had tried to lighten their skin. They talked to us
about what it was like to submit to the process to register for a hex
code categorization. Some of them sent us pictures of their body parts.
To engage fully in a net art project that deals with race and is
humorous, you don?t just laugh at the joke. You also play along. But
how will you play along?


Mendi








=====
Mendi Lewis Obadike
http://blacknetart.com
http://Obadike.tripod.com/sweat.html