Re: [-empyre-] Fwd: ayo should go byo

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@rhizome.org>]

> probably not for too long ... have you ever seen the workshop blue eye, i
> think 
> this is the name ... white people get angry, anxious, distressed, cannot take
> much at all of what they have been giving for centuries


Critically, isn't the problem this "they" though?

Ie not essentialising a human based on colour, over generations?

["much at all of what they have been giving for centuries"--we might also
ask if this is the same "gift" given centuries ago, or whether we can chart
change and difference in this systematic violence, and whether this violence
relates to positionality in the system and less a "they" complex than a
complex of the system itself .. I'm always reminded of that rather infamous
psychology experiment which recreated a prison: inmates and guards quickly
acquiesced to their roles... masochists and sadomasochists...slaves and
masters...].

Is there a way to express this in art without simply applying a reverse,
sadomasochistic situation?

(...and here, on the Net--a venue whose "colour"--ie its claims to an
"essential whiteness"--are being held to the mats...)

In my own art practice, I have focused on group dynamics (through venues of
excessive bodily practices in subcultures, for example) -- and I wonder if
there are ways to unfold implicit and systematic violence in ways which are
themselves not violent in their application.


tV