[-empyre-] Liquid Blackness- Week II: Aesthetics

Fri Apr 15 01:25:13 AEST 2016

"I have so many thoughts going through my head as I read your exciting
posts! In regard to Tommy’s question: 'what if we all took time to
make black art?'..."

Hi Derek, is "black" in the above passage meant in a general sense or are
the arguments since the beginning of the week are black artists/thinkers
addressing black artists/thinkers and referring to the same?

Ciao,
Murat

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Thomas F. DeFrantz <t.defrantz at duke.edu>
wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> oh sigh.  the figure of the slave.  it hurts me so deeply, this connection
> of blackness to the figure of the slave. it is inevitable and totalizing?
> I hope not, as an afro-optimist.  yes, I can be reduced to something else,
> but why would I want that for myself or for the people I love?  or for
> anyone? my great-great-grandmother bought her freedom; when I was little we
> kept her slave papers on the kitchen table.
>
> when I dance, I change my shape in order to express; when I sing, I alter
> my breath to demonstrate my ability to work in-between.  why would I
> theorize from a place where I cannot maneuver, from a place as a slave,
> when I could theorize from my creative practice, as a black person?
>
> and I am black, and there is an ontology to black life that embraces my
> being black. I don't consider this a concept in and of itself; it's more of
> a truth, which can have claims made against it, or can find itself to be
> always already pre-figured. I don’t want to not be black or to imagine
> outside of black, or to think of blackness as contingent and possibly
> impossible.  I don't want to think of black as temporary or detachable.
>  that hurts me in the ways that misogyny and homophobia hurt me. (have you
> heard of HB2 here in north Carolina?)  I can't productively theorize
> outside of my body in good faith (yes faith) because, well, why would I
> want to do that?  it goes against what I understand to be the materiality
> of my blackness and its fact; I theorize through my body and its gestures
> rather than the *idea* of its gestures.
>
> I'm not an object; I'm not a black body; I'm a black person with
> complexities born of 3 billion neurons firing.  well, this is how I will
> narrate myself.
>
> my insistence comes from our focus on aesthetics.  aesthetics are systems
> of thought and ideology made manifest; there are obvious and
> well-documented black systems of aesthetics.  they aren't metaphorical or
> interpretive only; they are practical ways to approach rhythm; to approach
> contradiction and embellishment as structural matter; to address concerns
> of velocity and attack; to embody the performance or demonstration of
> metaphor; the persistence of derision and irony as creative craft.  black
> performance is political in its eternal concern with relationships among
> (black) people.  its aesthetics are of the *now* rather than the
> 'what-came-before' or what might happen tomorrow.  in these aesthetic
> structures we do things *now,* because we must, we become the thing we
> dance.
>
> black aesthetics are harder to apply to visual objects that exist through
> time, because black aesthetics are concerned with right now.   so we
> interpret objects and texts, but that experience is very different from
> running the sanctuary, or holding a neighbor's baby while our cousin dances
> in the pageant.
>
> for me, the in-betweeness comes in the multi-sensory imperatives of black
> performance and its aesthetics, that demand widened abilities to process in
> several registers simultaneously.  black aesthetics are always multivalent;
> we rely on rhythm to organize possibility.
>
> so ... transvaluation, yes, but not as something done because I decide so
> looking at an object, but rather in the context of political protest, a
> scream, and a swoop towards the ground and into the gutter, only to rise up
> again, wily and wet.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au [mailto:
> empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Alessandra Raengo
> Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 5:56 PM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Liquid Blackness- Week II: Aesthetics
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Thank you,
> Derek for such a delicate and thoughtful post. The question of the fine
> line that separates the recognition of sentience from the recognition of
> pain highlights some of the most important stakes of the current
> conversation, which—I agree with Derek — is, or at least can certainly be,
> a productive type of “making.”
>
> I do want to acknowledge Marisa’s arrival and contribution to our
> discussion, which I personally find very exciting.
>
> I have questions for her:
>
> in relation to her description of formlessness as "a feeling about forms
> that exceed [the] capacity to discern pattern”, together with the
> implications of her theory of haunting, I wonder if this is also a way to
> talk about impersonal affect? In other words, affect that does not attach
> to any specific subject and sits in the middle — defines and shapes “the
> middle,” in fact?
>
> I would imagine, but I am guessing, that this would be the type of memory
> lodged in the black body that Elizabeth Alexander talks about in her
> response to the Rodney King video.
>
> And for me, but I could be wrong, it also speaks to Tommy’s reference to
> status change ( “water-to-ice-to-mist, to keep with the liquid-ing
> metaphor”), where blackness might act as an agent of transvaluation, as we
> see at work, for example in Fred Wilson’s “Metalwork" in which Wilson lays
> slave shackles alongside a silver tea set of the same area.
>
> Again, I mention a work that might be known to highlight (as Huey Copeland
> emphasizes) that blackness here acts as an agent of transvaluation insofar
> as it is the one thing that guarantees the relationality (the “likeness”)
> between these things. The silver tea set can be melted down and turned into
> coin, just like the slave is a material form of monetary value.
>
> I offer this as a response to Tommy and Marisa, and a way to engage
> something I am interested in: their expertise in forms of in-betweennes and
> their investment in movement, to hopefully help us think about possible
> ways to describe this blackness.
>
> Alessandra
>
>
> > On Apr 13, 2016, at 12:38 PM, Derek Murray <
> derekconradmurray6719 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Greetings
> > everyone!
> >
> > I have so many thoughts going through my head as I read your exciting
> > posts! In regard to Tommy’s question: “what if we all took time to
> > make black art?” I think that true intellectual work is a creative or
> > artistic act, even in its most citational iterations, as long as it
> > searches, transcend dogmas, and strives to creative innovative new
> > forms of knowledge and thought. In fact, what we are doing here on
> > this forum is inventive, resistant, subverting of hegemony—it is queer
> > and “post” and liquid, among other things.
> >
> > The formal structure of language; its rules and rigidities pose a
> > particular challenge, but linguistic eloquence produces an affect that
> > music cannot, and vice versa. Obviously, the same thing could be said
> > for dance, film, performance art, painting, etc. Everything has its
> > place, and at its best, can do the work that we are all yearning
> > for—if we are open to it. Embedded within an advocacy for affective,
> > formless, blackness is a utopian impulse: one that yearns for a more
> > primal, pure, and originary expressiveness that transcends social
> > antagonism, and the stain of racial marking. I’m not sure this is even
> > possible, though I’m not sure I want it to be, because it is so much a
> > part of the human condition.
> >
> > It (racism) is one type of trauma among many, but so much transcendent
> > thought and action have been produced as a result of one’s expression
> > of pain. We see this across identities. In regard to blackness
> > specifically, I’m not speaking of the often-fetishized noble suffering
> > black subject, the social symbol that sentiment is projected onto. I’m
> > thinking more about abstract feeling and form, and movement, and
> > materiality, language and code—a very nebulous and unarticulated
> > expressiveness that exudes what we call “blackness” or soul, or
> > whatever. We know it when we feel and experience it; when it’s stirred
> > in us—but nonetheless it evades all that is knowable, what is tangible
> > and what can be articulated. But how do we separate black sentience
> > from pain?
> >
> > Most good art was/is given birth by suffering, but black people are
> > restrained and publicly shamed for expressing their pain. We’re still
> > fighting for our right to feel and to express, especially in the face
> > of continued and persistent indignity. Why are black people not
> > allowed to feel and express their pain, except in prescribed modes and
> > acceptable ways? There is perhaps no room in society to even
> > acknowledge that it’s real. I think this is the ontological conundrum
> > of blackness that Alessandra speaks of: that fault line between
> > afro-pessimism and afro-optimism—an ambivalence towards the presence
> > and legitimacy of black feeling.
> >
> > However, in closing, I must say that I don’t see “hopeless exclusion
> > and constant invention” as separable. One gives birth to the other.
> >
> > Cheers!
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 5:41 AM, Marisa Parham <mparham at amherst.edu>
> wrote:
> >> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Thanks for
> >> this, Jason. I was up early this morning reading Jones’ “Northern
> >> Hieroglyphics” essay and it’s unclear, in a good way, how I’m going
> >> to transition into the rest of my day…
> >>
> >> In general I’ve finally caught up to you guys and this list, and have
> had the privilege of reading this week’s posts back to back. What's going
> to happen to me once I have to wait for the next post?
> >>
> >> I am really compelled by this turn in the conversation toward motion.
> Affect in theory-land is circulation and for me it is difficult to
> conceptualize affect without motion, without movement from one person to
> another, or even within the space of a single body, for instance the
> eruption of the past--memory.
> >>
> >> Affect is structure, an architecture of response, even when it is a
> form without a name. I don't think that this is the same as formlessness,
> of which we have very few examples of in the world. I struggle to think of
> one, but I have also had a long week and cannot be trusted. I do know that
> I often substitute the term 'formless' for when I mean 'big,' which is to
> say that what I call formlessness is in fact a feeling about forms that
> exceed my comprehension, that are beyond my capacity to discern pattern.
> Blackness is big.
> >>
> >> To be clear, I am not sure this is in the same vein as the earlier
> discussion about form, but this is what came to mind when I read it. And I
> am also thinking about the tension between optimism and afro-pessimism, an
> interplay that gives us some interesting analogs to work with.
> Improvisation simultaneously epitomizes newness, while also always being
> underwritten by memory.
> >>
> >> I should tip my hand and note that much of my own current work is based
> in my background in memory studies / memory theory, which over time has
> come to inform my work in the broader field of digital studies. I am not an
> artist, but I am deeply invested in questions of theory and practice, and
> in trying to determine when it might be useful not to let phenomena mainly
> emerge as metaphorical. I have arrived in digital studies by thinking about
> memory in the African American historical context, which led me to develop
> a theory of haunting, which is the language I give to how memory circulates
> without proper origin, for instance how one person might remember another
> person's experience and so on. In my current terms, thinking about memory
> and affect gets me to the digital because it gives me a way to think about
> reference in black life, without having to make a claim to monolithic or
> avowedly shared identity. In the name of motion, the digital sacrifices
> origin but, set free to circulate, at every instance of its emergence it
> reproduces something perhaps just as important as origin. Probably.
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