[-empyre-] Interrupting your Conversation

[Irina Contreras]

Hello,

I thought I would get a jump start here for us on this much needed dialogue.

Sorry for the lapse in emails. If you want to see what I am up to at the
moment, I am a participant in the Ghetto Biennial in Port Au Prince, Haiti.
Certainly the opposite at least for me in regards to hijacking
conversations or at least for me, personally. http://ghettobiennale.org/
Sarah is also traveling back home to Tasmania right now but we will jump in
anyways.

I would like to begin talking just a bit about how I was seeing both Sarah
Jones and then a bit later, Byron Jose (unless he jumps in, please do)
works as related to this subject. And perhaps, we will wait for Omar to
jump in too as I think he might bring a new approach with how to see this
subject or set of questions I have posed.

Sarah and I met while doing a program in Marfa during the summer. I felt
very interested in how she was using and discussing her position to look at
Richard Bell's work, primarily at the work Scratch An Aussie, which you can
see here:
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/sinister-truth-behind-the-bikini-20130205-2dwdb.html

The piece produced by Mr. Bell features two "intellectual black men"
surrounded by a group of white looking Australian women, mostly silent and
clad in gold bikinis. At other times, Mr. Bell has been known to call
himself the most controversial Aboriginal artist and has also wore a shirt
to a 2003 award event that said "white girls can't hump". Sarah invited me
to look at the work, especially as someone interested in decolonization.

A preview of Sarah's piece, a response in a sense though I also do not want
to limit its meaning in any sense is a piece produced in 2011 entitled Cut
N' Polish:  https://vimeo.com/38025683

Watching Cut N' Polish, I deeply appreciated how like the other pieces of
Sarah's that I have watched and read, I do not feel distanced from the idea
of discussing decolonization any less, but rather that the conversation
felt richer afterwards. I do think that Bell's pieces are humorous and yet,
I felt like I wanted more afterwards.

Irina
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