[-empyre-] spatial flow /spatial justice

[Sarah Cervenak]

Lauren, I appreciate your elaboration of the state-sanctioned architectural
protocols of anti-blackness--the ways the state's investment in building
the world is bound up with its ongoing devastation of movement, the
dead-ending/no way outing of black life.  With respect to trap, it becomes
interesting to think of in relation to the musicality and artfulness it
engenders.  Thinking about the "trap" in relation to Harriet Jacobs
garret-the enclosure that opens, rezones another spatiality of black
freedom dreams against the teleological conceit of a world already said to
be built and sealed.  Thank you, Sarah

On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 1:25 PM, Lauren Michelle Cramer <
lmcleod2 at mygsu.onmicrosoft.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Johannes, thank you for a second opportunity to answer your question. If I
> understand correctly, you would like me to explain the social justice
> context surrounding these somewhat abstract issues of spatiality and
> architecture. (?)
>
> This is a constant concern in my research and something I am still working
> through, so for now I imagine my response will only be gestures toward an
> answer.
>
> So far we’ve discussed some architectures of black social life and
> collectivity that are radical and speculative. But I think this issue of
> context could be clearer if we talk about the flip side of the topic. To
> me, the terror of anti-blackness has its own very particular space and time
> (we haven’t mentioned it explicitly, but time has come up throughout this
> week because time and space are inextricably linked). I’d like to give some
> examples that have motivated my work that do not originate from scholarly
> contexts. First, was the murder of a 12 year old black child, Tamir Rice,
> in 2014. Tamir Rice was playing in the park with a toy gun when a neighbor
> called the police to report a person holding a gun in public. Only two
> seconds after Officer Tim Leohmann arrived on the scene, the child was
> dead. Lehmann told dispatchers Tamir Rice appeared to be approximately
> twenty years old. That means in two seconds the police saw Tamir Rice, aged
> him eight years, identified him as a public danger, and took his life. I
> simply cannot believe that everyone is forced to live and die at that speed
> although the investigative report after Tamir Rice's death called the
> shooting "objectively reasonable."
>
> Another example— I live in Atlanta and one of the characteristics of the
> city that can be bewildering or frustrating to visitors is the lack of a
> traditional urban grid. Instead, the city uses a street hierarchy, which is
> intended to slow traffic in residential areas. This design create dead ends
> and over the course of several urban redevelopment projects poor African
> Americans communities in particular have been isolated in these traps of
> urban planning. Over the last decade, “the trap” has been immortalized in
> hip-hop music as the hidden sites for criminal activity and a symbol of a
> cyclical lifestyle defined by danger and precarity. Again, displacing these
> communities was part of plans that were considered objectively good for the
> city because they moved in the direction of progress.
>
> These examples do not simply occur in architectural space. “The trap” does
> not become black because of the presence of black communities and Tamir
> Rice is not killed because his blackness causes a tragic set of events.
> These (fast and slow) forms of violence are initiated by the architectures
> of anti-blackness (what De Silva calls “universal reason” or simply “the
> World”). I think we could understand the examples you mentioned (the war on
> terror and the refugee crisis…) in a similar way— inclusion/exclusion and
> cause/effect are only the results of these architectural logics.
>
> So to be more “concrete” seems to simply get the physics, the order of
> operations, down first. That has to be the first step precisely because (I
> agree) we cannot simply move to the side of these architectures, step
> outside of them, or even turn them upside down. I do not want to present a
> case for the end of capital in the concluding sentences of this email
> (!!!!) but I think the picture you attached says it all. When President
> Obama looked through the goggles he said, “It’s a brave new world” and that
> is not reassuring.
>
>
> Lauren M. Cramer
> Doctoral Student, Moving Image Studies
> Associate Editor, InMediaRes
> Editorial Board, liquid blackness
> Department of Communication
> Georgia State University
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <
> empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Johannes
> Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk>
> Sent: Friday, April 29, 2016 8:56:42 AM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] spatial flow /spatial justice
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>



-- 
Sarah Jane Cervenak, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Women's and Gender Studies and African American and
African Diaspora Studies
UNC-Greensboro

*Wandering: Philosophical Performances of Racial and Sexual Freedom*
https://www.dukeupress.edu/Wandering/?viewby=author&lastname=Cervenak&firstname=Sarah&middlename=&sort=newest&aID=28646
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