[-empyre-] note from M+K, pt. 1

[Mendi Obadike <mendi@blacknetart.com>]

Hello empyre,

This is Mendi of Mendi+Keith Obadike. I?m going to give you links and
descriptions for some of our work and pose a few questions. I was going
to make this email, but it?s getting unwieldy, so I?ll send one part
now and another part later tonight. 

First, a word on some of our projects. You have already received some
links, so I?ll begin with some projects that weren?t sent to you: 

my hands/wishful thinking
<http://obadike.tripod.com/Adiallo2.html >

Just Checking In, nine eleven diptych
<http://www.blacknetart.com/nineeleven.html >

keeping up appearances, a hypertextimonial
<http://www.blacknetart.com/keepingupappearances.html >.  

?my hands/wishful thinking? is an internet memorial piece for Amadou
Diallo. Most of the information we received about Diallo's death was
mediated by the Internet and filtered through the lens of our browser.
We thought it fitting that we mourn and make art in this public/private
digital space. ?Just Checking In? is a hypertext piece created shortly
after the world trade center fell. The text used is taken from emails I
sent to friends and family during the month of September 2001. I am
using a form I have developed to look for order in chaos. As it is a
text-based form, it is an engagement with poetic practice, but it is
just as informed by the practice of artists in other forms who have
used absences as structures for visual or audio art practice. ?keeping
up appearances? is the first hypertext piece in which I utilize the
form described above. When I created it in 2001, I had been thinking
about the challenges black women autobiographers face when it comes to
disclosure. I am particularly interested in the way their narratives
are often heavily structured by silences or denials. I used hypertext
as a way to visualize this structure. 

Michael already sent you links to Interaction of Coloreds, Blackness
for Sale, and The Sour Thunder. The first two projects were a way for
us to think about relationships between design, social filters,
commerce, and net culture. In Blackness for Sale, Keith auctioned his
blackness online at eBay. The auction was scheduled to last from August
8-18 2001. After four days, eBay closed the auction due to the
'inappropriateness' of the item. After 12 bids, his blackness reached
its peak at $152.50.  The Interaction of Coloreds is an online "brown
paper bag test." It was commissioned as a gate project by the Whitney
Museum's Artport. The Sour Thunder is an internet opera which was
started in 1996. It was staged with actors, website designer and a live
web cast in 2002. Performances took place simultaneously in two sites
and were broadcast both to the alternate space and to the web for three
nights. The Sour Thunder tells a double-sided story blending
autobiography and speculative fiction. The video is no longer available
from the web, but you can still follow links to the libretto, synopsis,
and hypertext e-mix . The hypertext e-mix features writing from black
writers on the subject of black approaches to language as a type of
hacking, which I then linked through their common terminology. The Sour
Thunder was also broadcast from Berlin in June 2003 on the radio and
over the net.

I'm glad to be here and will say more tonight.

Peace,
Mendi



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