28 JULY 2017 NATASCHA LINSSEN
ARTS AND CULTURE: ART STUDIES
MIRIAM VAN RIJSINGEN
THE RECOGNITION AND REFUSAL OF STRUCTURAL RACISM IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN VISUAL ART AND MUSIC
Stay Woke!
The Recognition and Refusal of Structural Racism in the African American Visual Art and Music
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Natascha Linssen 10837116
Arts and Culture: Art Studies Graduate School of Humanities
University of Amsterdam Supervisor: dr. M.I.D. van Rijsingen
Table of contents
Introduction………2
1. Coping with the Racist Gaze: Simone Leigh and Arthur Jaffa on New Ways of Seeing………11
- Refusal of the existing order in Untitled #1………. 14
- The historical awareness in Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death………. 18
2. Structural Racism in the Museum: The Revealing of Its Presence and Its Possibilities.. 22
- Mining African American history in the museum……… 27
- The Studio Museum in Harlem………. 31
3. African American Music: Activism in Contemporary Music and Music Videos………….. 33
- Don’t touch my hair………. 36
- Dead Nigger Association………41
Conclusion……….46
Bibliography……….. 48
Introduction
In September 2016, I visited the United States for the first time. I knew the country was at a point that it was going to change drastically, both politically and socially. The weeks preceding my journey I read a lot about the unrest within the lower middle class and how the black community (Both African and Hispanic community) were actively speaking out about the police shootings at unarmed black people, leading to many unjust killings. I was curious about the upcoming political elections and intrigued as to how the campaign between senator Hillary Clinton and businessman Donald Trump would develop. Next to that, I had followed the news and the visual and audio works created by artists active or interested in the movement of the Black Lives Matter. I was looking forward to seeing the related exhibitions and to read more into this issue. As soon as I arrived in Boston, I thought I was prepared. I thought I knew what questions I could ask the locals about the current political climate. I thought I would come to a deeper understanding about the way this country, which is built on immigrants and slavery, has come to a point where immigrants and colored people are not welcome anymore. Although I informed myself extensively prior to my visit, I could never have prepared enough for the immense impact the encounters with the locals as well as the visits to museums would have on me.
I will never forget the day that made me realize how divided this country is and how present the struggles of the black community are when viewing their art works. I was in Washington D.C. visiting the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery. Without knowing what exhibitions were currently on show, I saw two exhibitions right after each other. Both exhibitions included photography and many prominent African American artists were featured. However, what became clear is that these two exhibitions both offered very different perspectives. The first exhibition was “Jazz Portraits by Herman Leonard”. These were beautifully executed portraits of jazz artists. The accompanying texts celebrated Leonard’s abilities to show the artists at their best performing element. While the exhibition informed me about the “jazz scene”, I was wondering if this was a true depiction of the artists or if it was a more exoticized one, a Eurocentric view on African American people and their art?
The second exhibition was “Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl van Vechten”. The exhibitions struck me because of the honesty of what was depicted here. The portraits of the artists, politicians and other well-known people from Harlem were made against backdrops that strongly reminded me of post-colonial photography in Surinam and Indonesia when the
the photostudio and the democratization of photography came into being. The portraits in 1 the exhibition seemed neither exoticized nor spectacularized. The subjects were dressed in either their professional or informal clothes and not staged in a certain situation which would be preferable to a white audience. The exhibition combined Van Vechten’s portraits with texts from different sources. Some were parts of the autobiography of the person, or an artist’s work. Sometimes a quote by Carl van Vechten himself accompanied a picture. This exhibition had a big emotional impact on me. I believe it was the intimacy of the snapshots combined with the moving texts that touched me so much. The texts mostly told the stories of the sitters’ struggles to achieve their life goals. These people shared the same issue: the racism that got in the way of becoming the people they wanted to be.
What can be derived from the above experience is that the exhibitions at the Smithsonian provided conflicting ideas regarding the representation of African American people in the arts. On the one hand, there is a certain celebration of the artistry of African American people. However, it is a very layered and superficial one. The audience is given the idea that the African American artists in “Jazz Portraits by Herman Leonard” were highly celebrated for their talents, but at the same time the struggle and their fight against inequality is not mentioned at all. “Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl van Vechten” gives a richer understanding of how the African American artists, politicians and other “visible” and “popular” people had to fight for their position in society.
Another conflicting element to this experience is the position of the museum. What does the institution try to achieve with these exhibitions? According to the Smithsonian’s Newsdesk, the exhibitions were offered to “celebrate the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.” The newest Smithsonian2 museum was erected to seek “to understand American history through the lens of the African American experience.” This seems to contradict what has been displayed in the3 other Smithsonian museums in celebration of the NMAAHC’s opening, where in both exhibitions a perspective is given through a white man’s lense instead of an African American view. Therefore, it is interesting not only to regard the previously described experience from what I have seen, but also where I have seen it. In other words, the artwork
1 Strassler, Karen. Refracted Visions. Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java. Studio
photography created the option for Indonesian people of the middle and lower class to imagine themselves into a context to which they aspired.
2"Smithsonian Museums Celebrate the Opening of the National Museum of African American History
and Culture." Smithsonian Newsdesk . September 22, 2016. Accessed July 27, 2017.
http://newsdesk.si.edu/releases/smithsonian-museums-celebrate-opening-national-museum-african-a merican-history-and-culture.
3"About the Museum." National Museum of African American History and Culture. Accessed July 27,
alone not only delivers a certain meaning and perspective of African American people, but the institution and its organizational structure in which it is displayed are also founded upon certain ideas and viewpoints.
The NMAAHC, which opened in the fall of 2016, opened with the intention that the African American experience and history are of essence for the understanding of American history and culture. The museum includes a plethora of information and objects related to4 the history of the slave trade as well as its abolishment, times of segregation until now. It shows powerful displays that include objects from whips and shackles to archival material belonging to important African American people who fought for their equality. The museum sets a powerful tone in order to show another side to the story, the story of the African American experience. The story that seems to be neglected in the celebratory exhibitions of the Smithsonian. Thus, the question remains as to why institutions still display such one sided perspectives whilst new institutions, such as the NMAAHC, clearly show that a more all-encompassing narrative is possible in the museum. The problematic contemporary representations of the African American experience is in need of deeper exploration, to see how African American artists and institutions have represented themselves and refuse to follow the existing order of the contemporary artworld.
To gain a deeper understanding of the intertwinement of the art and politics of Afro-American people, I have decided to analyze artistic expressions created since the start of the #Blacklivesmatter movement. #Blacklivesmatter came into existence following the murder of Trayvon Martin. On the 26th of February, 2012, the 17-year-old was killed by a neighbourhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, who was not immediately charged. The police department stated that there was no reason to negate the shooter’s claim of self-defense . This event received a vast amount of media coverage and the hashtag5 #Blacklivesmatter became trending on social media platforms. This murder and the many that followed obtained both national and international attention. Anti-Black racism was put on the map again. I use the word “again” because although through #Blacklivesmatter there is a renewed awareness of the structural racism taking place in the United States, it unfortunately is not a new phenomenon. It is however a recent moment in post-slavery history and a term that deserves further explanation.
According to Womack, the relationship between the past and present and the impulse to map the relationship as such “represents a dominant philosophy of history, one
4Desantis, Alicia, and Josh Williams. "I, Too, Sing America." The New York Times. The New York
Times, 15 Sept. 2016. Web.
5 "About the Black Lives Matter Network." Black Lives Matter, accessed July 27, 2017.
that insists upon historical continuities, rather than ruptures, and attends to resonances across institutions, ideologies, policies, and economic structures.” The scholar indicates that6 within black literary and cultural studies this critical look is formed as the afterlife of slavery. She refers to the recent visibility of police aggression towards African American people, linking it back to the same aggression during the times of the Civil Rights Movement and the abolition of slavery.
The recent police brutalities show that anti-Black racism is still structurally and inherently present within the American society, as well as its political and judicial systems. In the same year as Martin’s murder, #Blacklivesmatter became more than a hashtag. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors turned it into a Black liberation movement. Within the organization, the founders motivate artistic expression as one of the ways to be active in the movement.
In the creation of art, artists cannot exclude her or his own background. It will therefore be interesting to see if and how African American artists have related their artworks to the black experience. The purpose and central question of this project is to see how has art opened up new ways for African American people to discuss and demonstrate against structural racism? Next to that, how has art and its institution been able to accommodate or prevent this? By relating contemporary art works to history and their institutional position, it will provide a richer understanding of the complexity of the artists’ position within the field of art. Ultimately, I believe this project will show how powerful art can be for artists who are trapped in a system due to history and its realities on both a political and social level.
Two approaches will be taken to give an understanding of where the political message is taking place within the arts.
Firstly, I will be looking at visual artworks. I will be mostly investigating what “seeing” means in African American artworks. It is important to understand what perspective the artists themselve take on this idea and what affect it has on the viewer. “Seeing” can be used both formally in the images that I will analyze to make my point, as well as literally in which artists discuss what “seeing” means to them and how this has contributed to the structural racism and their resistance against it.
The other approach I will take is an institutional one. It is important to frame “where” the seeing is taking place, who is participating in it, and what dominant positions are taken in this field where participants hold a certain “view”. It is thus also connected to the concept of “seeing”. The physical institution is also a major player in this field of perception and I will
therefore analyze certain institutions and artworks which address the powerful position of the museum.
The approaches may overlap as I use those both to give a richer understanding of the structural racism that the artists are addressing. However, I will try to separate them through chapters so a deeper understanding can be given about the levels in which structural racism is present.
Seeing has been conceptualized by many theorists. In this project I have selected a few from whom I think can contribute the most to structural racism and the resistance of it on the level of perception. The action has been conceptualized in terms like “the gaze” and “visuality”. There have been earlier discussions about the gaze within paintings. However,7 these debates did not go beyond the physical form of the canvas and if so, it was mostly focused on the inner turmoil it could achieve within the viewer. In the twentieth century, an awareness grew around the role of the gaze within the function of art. Art criticism noticed 8 that the gaze was also a way to communicate and a way certain information could be given to the viewer, who was simultaneously viewed as well. In this sense, the gaze “transcends” its function within the artwork as certain social implications were accompanied within this exchange of glances. Therefore, a gaze was not just a look anymore, but there was a 9 certain meaning and intention behind it. There is something political to it.
In the theories I am going to use to analyze the political aesthetic, there are some different ideas in what the gaze entails and contributes to the exchange of information.
Michel Foucault describes in The Order of Things a new way of thinking about the relationship between the viewer and the artwork with the use of Velázquez’ Las Meninas. In the painting, the viewer is confronted with the gaze of the painter himself and therefore a new relation is formed which is based on observing and being observed. There seems to be a political tension at play, in which it is not made clear who is in power or who is being gazed at. The viewer him- or herself is now also the subject of the painting. This exchange shows that no gaze is stable and the role of the viewer switches from spectator to model. Foucault 10 finds that the gaze is thus so powerful it can actually determine the relations between the viewer and the one being viewed. In Discipline and Punish he develops his ideas with the idea of surveillance, and how a subject can be controlled and disciplined by the use of this power.
7 Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is a well-known example about the contemplation and
reflection the viewer has of itself by looking at paintings,
8 Reinhart, “gaze.” The Chicago School of Media Theory, accessed July 27, 2017.
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/gaze/
9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.
Jacques Rancière’s ideas of the gaze are different here. Rancière’s ideas of dissensus and declassification show the importance of resistance to the current system can lead to new “ways of seeing”, in which the seeing is thus politically charged. Politics are aesthetic because its procedure leads to the creation of something that did not exist before. 11 To Rancière, it is the political action of dissensus that can lead to a new gaze, but it does not involve the power relations that the gaze holds according to Foucault. Instead, the new ways of seeing are a an active way of breaking free from the police order.
Although these ideas will be helpful in determining how the gaze can be used in African American artworks, they do not include experience of structural racism as is determined in the politics towards African American people. Therefore I have chosen to include the ideas of W.E.B. du Bois on this matter.
W.E.B. du Bois was an African American writer, scholar and activist, born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In 1903, Du Bois wrote the well-known The Souls of Black Folk. Based on both his knowledge in history, sociology and economics and his “black” experience, he published a collection of fourteen essays discussing the social history of being an African American in the United States. 1213His works cover a lot of ideas about the representation of African American people, and how they are being viewed. Du Bois developed the notions double consciousness, second sight, and the veil. He might not directly address the gaze, but with these notions he investigates how seeing and not being seen adds to the subordinate position of the African American in society. The scholar explains with the help of these ideas the problem of the gaze, the political charge of it but mostly the social effects that it has for African American people. Power relations are created with the gaze, which have been formed since the times of slavery. A sensation is created where the African American person feels he or she has to live and behave according to two ideals; one in which they want to be themselves but simultaneously have to be conscious of the fact how they are being viewed by the white people. The consideration of the African American experience will aid a richer understanding of the effects and power relations of the gaze.
The second approach in this project is focused on art and its institution, in which art and museums are active players in the social field. I will use Bourdieu’s ideas of the field and relative autonomy to suggest how artists have dealt with the politics of the museum. The
11 May, “Rancière in South Carolina,” 115.
12 Upon the fiftieth anniversary of the book, Du Bois stated that he did not want to update what he had
stated in this work, as it clearly reflected how he thought in 1903 and his thoughts have developed in the rest of his oeuvre.
13 The Souls of the Black Folk is not a scholarly work, but I follow Itzigsohn and Brown that his books
scholar shows with his sociological theories that museums work as institutions that are also socially conditioned over longer periods of time and therefore hold a position which have also encapsulated white-priviliged attitudes.
Since I will be using both music and visual art to answer the question on how art has made structural racism visible and recognized, I will use the ideas of Boris Groys to argue that the arts are in need to be valued at the same level of high art. Groys argues in Art
Power thatthese discussions of hierarchy within the arts have only led to the belief that art does not do anything other than “decorate external powers”, for it is politics that leads to a certain movement or resistance and art is merely complementing, reinforcing these political moves.14 The scholar moves on to say that this discussion has led to an idea that the system, market and art world are based on aesthetic value judgements which reflect the power and societal structures of the world we live in. Therefore art would not be able to be autonomous, to maintain an isolated sphere in which its own rules can be made. However, Groys states that there would in fact be an option for art to be autonomous, and thus able to resist external pressures and be a means to oppose certain forms of power; by rejecting any kind of aesthetic judgement. By leaving out any dominant force within the art system and world or as the scholar names it, a “hierarchy of taste.” 15
By abolishing this hierarchy and putting all artworks, whether these are visual forms, objects or media on an equal level, “every value judgement, every exclusion or inclusion, [can] be potentially recognized as a result of heteronomous intrusion into the autonomous sphere of art - as the effect of pressure exercised by external forces and powers.” And as 16 all forms of art are based on equality, a possibility for resistance can be built. Therefore, I have chosen not to confine myself to only the canonized, fine arts, but I will include other forms as well. For this project I have chosen to use both visual forms of art as well as music, particularly hip hop and RnB. These two art forms have been essential to African American artists to express themselves, to rebel, to make issues visible in a way that otherwise would have been limited by power structures. Besides, these genres have engaged the most with the current police violence and injustice towards African American people. By following Groys’ idea of democratizing the arts, these forms of art will be analyzed in an equal way.
Jacques Rancière writes in his Politics of Aesthetics that politics is the struggle of a group to get recognition within the existing social structure. 17 According to the scholar, aesthetics should not be disregarded, as the struggle happens over the “image of society”, 14 Groys, Art Power, 13.
15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 14.
17 Davis, Ben . "Rancière, For Dummies." Artnet. Accessed July 27, 2017.
thus what is allowed to be visible or spoken of. His ideas of the aesthetics of politics and vice versa will be discussed in the first chapter, and a discussion will elaborate on these ideas. Because how can artworks be autonomous and reflect society at the same time? Is it possible for a black artist to get recognition for her or his own position, both artistically and socially? And how have these artworks contributed to a renewed awareness of structural anti-Black racism?
The way I have discussed history and power structures may already have preluded my intentions to include Michel Foucault and his ideas of the panopticon and system of confinement. (Art) history will be dealt with here as a process to reflect how contemporary artists have come to their works. The dispositif is a concept coined by Foucault in which certain institutional and knowledge structures have contributed to keeping the power of a social body. In this case, chapter two will show how black artists have been kept in a certain framework through institutionalization and how they have been trying to break free from this. One of the greater examples that will be discussed here is Fred Wilson’s Mining the
Museum.
When observing the history of slavery and the time after its abolition, artistic expression has, in various forms, been the gateway to freedom for many black people. Artists’ creations cannot be touched by institutions. On the other hand, in 2016 opportunities arose for many African American artists to exhibit in museums and galleries. Are they somehow breaking free through these kinds of institutions? To understand and answer this question, I will look at the artistic expressions from an institutional perspective. However, throughout this whole project it will be important to take a historical approach as well. How have the arts contributed to new discussions on institutional racism? This additional question will be answered in the second chapter of this project.
In the final chapter I will go into contemporary black music, both hip hop and RnB. Next to analyzing their lyrics and the way they have developed music whilst reflecting on their black heritage, I will also look into the accompanying music videos. Although mainstream media see this visual expression of their music more as a commercial strategy, I would state that these videos have been thought through on the level that the visuals and the words are actually either in conversation with each other or even reinforcing each other’s message. W.J.T. Mitchell mentions in his Picture Theory that “the interaction of pictures and texts is constitutive of representation as such: all media are mixed media, and all representations are heterogeneous; there are no “purely” visual or verbal arts.” Mitchell shows that in an 18 era where we are overwhelmed by images, we should still pay attention to texts that
accompany images. In the case of black music videos, it will be interesting to see what relation there is between the words and the images and how they share an intimate story about history and politics.
I will not only consider recent theories. As we are discussing an issue which has its roots in slavery, it is important to understand the theories that have been created not long after the abolition of slavery. W.J.T. Mitchell for instance uses many of W.E.B. duBois’ ideas when discussing the political in word and image in his famous Picture Theory.
Artistic expression is an interesting output of the struggle endured by black people whilst fighting for freedom and equality. Racism against black people has a rich, complicated history and as I have mentioned previously it is also institutionally interwoven. It will therefore be interesting to look both at the artistic output itself as well as its position within the art institution. I will consider for instance the work by Simone Leigh. Leigh is a contemporary artist who has been given an artist residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem. During the discussion of both her work and the institution she was affiliated with, I will look how they have expressed their refusal of institutional racism towards African American people. In the past, there have been more African American artists trying to get attention for their social situation. Thus it is also important to reflect on earlier artworks and statements whilst discussing current artworks. Fred Wilson’sMining the Museum will be an important work to discuss here. Wilson sheds a light not only on historical objects related to slavery that are either forgotten in the archive or not mentioned on the display cards, but also raises the question what responsibility museum institutions have when it comes to dealing with issues such as slavery and racism. Above all, the question remains if a museum is aware of its own institutional position.
Before I delve into the theory of the gaze and the politics in visual art, there is one last thing to be pointed out. What makes art in the time of #Blacklivesmatter so interesting, is that it is art produced in the time of social media. Whereas some music videos would not have been allowed on MTV or any other tv channel, nowadays it is possible to find all music, mostly uncensored, on media such as Youtube and Vimeo. These possibilities make up for an interestingly new artistic output, and it should not be forgotten that contemporary black artists may find more ways to express themselves freely than during the pre-Internet era.
Coping with the Racist Gaze: Simone Leigh and Arthur Jaffa on New Ways of
Seeing
In July 2016, Philando Castile was killed by a police officer after being pulled over in his car. His girlfriend, and her daughter, were also sitting in the car and the girlfriend filmed how Castile was suffering after the shot while she is interacting with the officer. Castile was shot after trying to fetch his identification card out of his pocket after being asked to identify himself. The video went viral and became one of the many reports of police violence towards African American individuals. Following the event, historian Jill Lepore wrote that the video of the tragic event captured by Castile’s girlfriend reminded her of a photograph taken by Frederick Douglass. The portrait was featured on the cover of Life magazine of November19 1968, after the murder of Martin Luther King and the riots that followed. Lepore states that the cover was a “visual reminder of blacks’ capacity to embody citizenship, even if their so-called unruly behavior across US cities suggested otherwise.”20 It contradicted other photographs taken during the violent police encounters and the riots. What is interesting is that the scholar was reminded of a picture which holds a hopeful message whilst watching horrible footage of present-day police violence towards African American people. Womack finds this an intriguing comparison, as Lepore does not have a forward-looking perspective on the current events but rather refers to a past where hopeful messages were also spread. It is bittersweet realising these hurtful events are still taking place. This pairing shows that there is a “production of evidence capable of recognizing historical continuity, overlap, and transformation, that is, proof that the contemporary moment is best understood through its continuous relationship to the past.” 21
Lepore shows here that an image can contain a powerful message. Womack adds to this idea by analyzing the historical importance and pattern that can be found in imagery. The latter also refers that this orientation in black literary studies and cultural studies is referred to as “the afterlife of slavery”.
As I try to uncover the political power of visual art in this chapter, I will consider a few things in order to gain more insight in how contemporary visual art can contribute to the visibility and recognition of structural racism towards African American people.
19 Lepore qtd. in Womack, “Visuality, Surveillance, and the Afterlife of Slavery,” 191. Frederick
Douglass escaped slavery in 1838 and became a statesman, abolitionist and writer,known for his striving for equal rights for all people.
20 Ibid., 192. 21 Ibid., 193.
What makes an image powerful to a spectator? And how can a visual work be both aesthetic and political? These questions are essential to gain an understanding of the art works made directly related to or in light of the movement and the events leading to BLM. In order to find some answers I will take a look at the relation between the aesthetics and the politics of an image. And to be able to define the political of an image, I will firstly look into Rancière’s idea of politics.
The common associations with politics are the right to vote, elect a governmental administration, attend demonstrations etc. However, these are not the mechanisms that Rancière is interested in; it concerns the whole balance of equality within the system of politics. To achieve equality within the political system, the relation between the people in22 power and the dēmos has to be put into question. Thus, the scholar acknowledges that the 23 political situation is not equal at first. To create equality, what is needed is to put the current system into question. “Politics only occurs when these mechanisms are stopped in their tracks by the effect of a presupposition that is totally foreign to them yet without which none of them could ultimately function: the presupposition of the equality of anyone and everyone.” 24
It may seem as if this is the presupposition for most political thought, but Todd May points out that the position of equality within the political mechanism is different in Rancière’s ideas. Equality is mostly seen as the objective when one party within the democracy refuses to follow the system. But to Rancière equality means the presupposition before such resistance is expressed, the foundation of their actions is based on the fact that all men are equal. To put this in another way, in contemporary political philosophy, “equality is a debt owed to individuals by the governing institutions of a society.” 25 It is concerned with distribution of equal rights and power, and according to Rancière this is not a matter of politics, but a matter of policing .26 And he does not want to consider politics as such. That would mean that politics is passive: it is about what people receive and not about what they do or create. 27 He rather wants equality to be the inherent belief to start taking action. It should be the reason for people to reject the current system instead of achieving recognition for their right to equality.
22 May, “Rancière in South Carolina”, 108.
23 Rancière refers to the people living in a democracy as “dēmos”, because they are considered here
as an active political unit. These are the people who have been classified as less equal within the police order.
24 Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, 17. With “them” he refers to the dēmos. 25 May, “Rancière in South Carolina”, 109.
26 Policing, the police order, the police; with these terms Rancière refers to the unequal system that
determines who is allowed to see, to be able to act.
The question thus remains what is to be achieved, if not equality? This is where Jacques Rancière created the idea of dissensus.Whereas achieving consensus is common place in political thought, it is not what Rancière believes to be the result of political action. It is rather dissensus. This means that not only the division of power arrangements in the hierarchal order of society is put into question, but a certain clarity and epistemological understanding of the requirement to form equality within the social structure of society. Dissensus can therefore create news ways of seeing and change the perception as to declassify society as it used to be constructed.
Ultimately, there is some kind of compliance. This is not to be received by the dēmos, but to be requested from the established order. By actively refusing, based on the belief of 28 equality, according to Rancière the demonstration then works in two ways. It is imposed both on the people treated unequal and on the people standing high in the social order which makes the whole action emancipated. Thus, what makes his idea different from other theories is that Rancíère believes that if one wants to achieve a renewed balance within society, one has has to hold the presupposition she or he is equal to all others. Otherwise dissensus cannot be achieved. According to May, examples of successful political movements in Rancière’s line of thought are the emergence of feminist and queer studies departments in universities. However, the awareness of the self should also be considered 29 with caution. It could lead to identity politics. To Rancière this could be dangerous when undertaking political action as one would be emphasizing too much on one’s own history and oppression. This could then not lead to the declassification of the current order as proposed by the scholar, but to a reclassification in which the hierarchy of the police order is maintained . So what then is the product of this process of dissensus? That would be30 subjects.
“By subjectification I mean the production through a series of actions of a body and a capacity for enunciation not previously identifiable within a given field of experience, whose identification is thus part of the reconfiguration of experience.” May interprets this as the 31 creation of a “collective subject that is the subject of action rather than its object. That is 32 how the dēmos can break free from their unequal position without being objectified by the police order. Here I agree with May that politics is aesthetic: “it creates something that did not exist before.” From the unprivileged position a people can rise and make a change or33
28 May, “Rancière in South Carolina”, 113. 29 Ibid., 114.
30 Ibid.
31 Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, 35. 32 May, “Rancière in South Carolina”, 115.
something new leading to the declassification of an order that was not equal at first. Interestingly, Todd May concludes this product of politics by relating it to other artistic production stating that art can create “new ways of seeing and being seen.” 34
To illustrate these ideas, I will be looking at a few case studies that will show how an artwork can be political and contribute to the declassification of the African American position in the U.S.’ society. These case studies will also aid our understanding of the politics of the BLM.
Refusal of the existing order in Untitled #1
Simone Leigh is an American, mostly object-based artist who focuses mainly on the (female) black subjectivity. Although she tends to create ceramics and sculptures, during her artist residency at The Studio Museum in Harlem she collaborated with Chitra Ganesh. As
members of the collective Girl, the artists created the video installation Untitled #1 from the series My dreams, my works must wait till after hell. 3536 On screen, a nude female body lies with her face away from the camera. In fact, her face is covered by small grey stones as if buried by them. However, the female body is moving gently up and down to show the spectator that she is still breathing. The video is musically accompanied by Kaoru Watanabe. The music is tranquil, consisting of flutes and drums. At first, you hear the flutes quite profoundly. As time progresses, the music of the flutes fade away and the drums enter, the sounds resembling the beating of a heart. The scene seems serene as if the woman is sleeping. Then again, her head is covered by stones. Ganesh tells about the process of the video as following:
“My collaboration with Simone has evolved through a series of formal experiments. [...] We’re both interested in using the body as a metaphor. In the video, we are playing with scale -- manipulating the traditional relationship between the size of the viewer and the size of the nude. The spectator usually dominates the nude, but here the spectator is dwarfed by her. The woman on screen is also denying us visual access to her body and presenting us only with her back.” 37
It is interesting to note that the intention of the artists is to challenge the traditional relationship of the viewer and nudity by playing with the size of the image. They attempt to overwhelm the spectator through this formal choice. I would suggest that they have also
34 May, “Rancière in South Carolina”, 115.
35 Leigh, Simone. “After Hell.” Filmed 2011. Vimeo video 7:18. Published 2012.
https://vimeo.com/49785970
36Leigh, Simone, and Chitra Ganesh. 2011. Untitled #1.7'18".From the series My dreams, my works,
must wait till after hell . The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
focused on providing a new view of the nude and of a black (female) person. When looking at the art historical canon, nudes have mostly been depicted from the front, all based on the ideas of the primitive, derived from colonialism.38 Looking back at the discussion of Rancière’s dissensus, it could be said that this interpretation should be considered more carefully. I believe that the artists have made a deliberate decision to turn the body around and show it from the back, thereby diverging from the historical art ideal of the female nude. The female nude is situated in an undefinable space and thus it can be assumed that the focus is on the nude lying peacefully but not able to move, since she is covered by the stones. She does not seem active. However, she is displayed on such a scale that she apparently “dwarfs” the viewer. This artwork could therefore be in line with Rancière’s line of thinking. The artwork is active in the sense that it overpowers through the ambivalence of the nude whilst depicted on a big scale with the music confirming her state of life. Also, the gravel would kill the woman. Nevertheless, she continues breathing and thus she appears to defy death. By defying death, the artwork shows how black people still manifest against the39 current social order, this artwork achieves being political without directly referring to the struggle against anti-black racism.
Next to the artists’ ideas of creating a new perception, it is also important to regard the refusal from the other side of the screen. Indeed the nude woman does not seem to be very active. However, the decision of the artists not to show her from the front but the back, also sparks another form of refusal. It evokes a certain active decision from the woman not to display herself and to refuse eye contact with the viewer. This manipulation of seeing also evokes the whole mechanism, in which the viewer is faced with the history of black female nude and motivated to reassess his or her own position and how the refusal of looking at the viewer entails a refusal of the existing social order.
Simone Leigh points out that her practice has been object-based for the most part, with performance sometimes being the form of her artwork. 40 She continues stating that besides her exploration of black female subjectivity, she is also interested in a “black woman audience.” I believe these two explanations are important to mention here. 41
38 The black female nude is discussed well in the article by Alisha Acquaye. she refers to the work of
Kimberly Wallace Sanders explains the complexities of misogynoir from colonialism onwards in her book, Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture: “Being black and female is characterized by the private being made public, which subverts conventional notions about the need to hide and render women’s sexuality and private parts. There is nothing sacred about black women’s bodies . . . They are not off-limits, untouchable or unseeable.”
39 "Simone Leigh and Chitra Ganesh: Dak'Art 2014." Biennale Dakar. Accessed July 27, 2017.
http://biennaledakar.org/2014/spip.php?article166.
40 Bradley 2015. 41 Ibid.
The first comment states that a performative element can be key to her work. Although this is a general comment, watching Untitled #1 shows that the most important form within the artwork is the performance of the female nude lying down whilst covered under gravel. This performance raises a feeling of ambivalence. It seems both active and passive, hard to watch and tranquil at the same time. It is this struggle that the artist also seems interested in. On her website, the artist refers to an article by Dr. Myisha Priest called “Salvation is the Issue.” In this article the scholar discusses the community building in the 42 African American communities and pleads for the awareness of the social, cultural, political and economic position of African American women. When relating these ideas with those provided on Simone Leigh's’ website, a correlation can be found between the essay and
Untitled #1. Death does not have to be the outcome of a struggle, freedom can also be gained from it. Thus returning to the artwork, one can wonder why the artist decided to display a female nude. Because the body convicts the feeling of freedom, as political and feminist activists have using to show their freedom. The freedom of the body is taken a step further here by the decision to show it from the back. This is combination with the performance of the nude lying whilst covered by the stones links back again to the struggle as mentioned in the essay. The artwork is therefore a good form of dissensus, where the struggle for freedom and declassification is inherent in the different layers of the artwork. Both in form and content, it functions as a political piece that invites the audience to consider the social position of the African American people.
The second comment that Simone Leigh makes in the interview with Bradley is another point that needs to be analyzed here. The artist states that she is very interested in the female audience. I would conclude from that comment that she finds this audience most important in the creation of her work. But why is this? Does that mean we have to consider all her artworks as a form of activism as it is addressed mostly to a female African American audience? In the interview with Bradley she states: “I am not a public health expert. I am an artist. But my personal opinion is that the number one killer of black women in the U.S. is
obedience.” Obedience in this context relates to the conformation to the present system.43 Although this is an observation from 2016 about her work Free People’s Medical Clinic, this comment is also relevant to Untitled #1. The artwork presents obedience as leading to death but that a struggle or act of disobedience could lead to something else, to freedom.
This analysis leads also back to the emancipatory element in Rancière’s idea. To impose action on the established political order, one has to be reflective of its position which
42 Priest, “Salvation is the Issues,” 121.
should be equal and declassified. If Leigh imposes her work mostly to a female African American audience, it also means that she proposes to them that they must establish this presupposition about themselves. It may not be said in the artwork, but then again a representation is not the act of only “producing a visible form, but the act of offering an equivalent. [...] The image is not the duplicate of a thing. It is a complex set of relations between the visible and the invisible, the visible and speech, the said and the unsaid.” 44
Having established the political in Untitled #1, how does Leigh’s work relate to BLM? The art work discussed here was created before the murder of Trayvon Martin and thus before the creation of BLM. However, Leigh’s ideas resonate with BLM. In July 2016 her work was exhibited at the New Museum in New York. The exhibition was called Simone
Leigh: The Waiting Room and concerned the African American community medical care practices. During this period, Leigh organized a meetup with artists in the museum to discuss the BLM. In an interview with Interview Magazine about this exhibition, the artist is asked what her thoughts were on the BLM and historical memory.45 She mentions the shooting at the Mother Emanuel Church in 2015 where nine African American people were killed. She finds this an important but difficult event to mention. It seemed that the murdering was discussed and seen merely as a temporary event instead of put into a larger historical perspective. The church was founded in 1816 in Charleston, South Carolina, but was prohibited by 1831 after the Nat Turner’s Rebellion, one of the bloodiest slave rebellions in the Southern U.S. African American people were prohibited the right to assembly after the rebellion, but Mother Emanuel still met in secret with the African American community for 35 years. This is what Leigh finds wants to emphasize; the historical memory of the place which illustrates the history of slavery and racism within the United States. To her, it was made clear that “Black Lives Matter cannot be positioned as a purely contemporary phenomenon. The shooting at Mother Emanuel revealed a lineage of resistance dating back to its founding in 1816.”46 It is essential to keep in mind from what historical context the artwork derives from. This is also the point where Rancière’s theory does not add to the analysis of an artwork anymore. The scholar proposes a method of declassification of a system based on the presupposition that everyone is equal. This would mean that in order to activate the people to declassify the social order, the people have to neglect their historical background. History would put the people into categories which are set in a certain social hierarchy. This artwork shows that an artwork can be activist but there remains a need to be conscious about history. Rancière does not agree with this because this consciousness would lead to 44 Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, 93.
45 Simmons, “Artists at Work: Simone Leigh” 46 Ibid.
too much focus on the self and dissensus can thus not be emancipatory and the historical knowledge could lead to identity politics. However, I will follow Simone Leigh’s idea that BLM is not a contemporary phenomenon and that this historical knowledge leads to a renewal of activism in a contemporary context. BLM and the artistic works building on the ideas of BLM do not seek recognition, but rather to change the way today’s society is ordered. This approach is thus not focused on identity politics. In order to reach a better understanding as to how history can add power and relevance to an artwork, I will discuss Foucault’s use of history and ideas of knowledge and power.
The historical awareness in Love is The Message, The Message is Death
Michel Foucault does not use history to reveal a form of progress or regress in time; he uses it rather to point out certain problematizations over time and show that they do not only occur in the past but also maintain contemporary relevance. Through history, he analyses certain problematizations such as madness, sexuality, the self, punishment and so forth.47 It is used to aid the understanding that in the present, the same interesting phenomena occur as in the past. This does not mean that the past is used to analyze how certain issues have developed in the present. History is rather used as “a way of diagnosing the present.”48 This method creates a reflexivity which leads to thoughtful observation of present phenomena that may otherwise have been taken for granted. By looking at contingencies in history instead of causes, certain relations can be made without implying a direct cause and effect.
In Discipline and Punish Foucault states that he writes about “the history of the present.” He says this because he wants to invite his reader to consider and use moments49 of history, instead of just memorizing certain dates. It is more important to look at longer 50 periods of social history and see what can be gained from that knowledge. Foucault shows with this work how the history of punishment and prisons has changed from the eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century. The study shows that a transformation takes place within the form of punishment; corporal punishment is being replaced gradually by a more confined, secluded imprisonment. The control of the prisoners changed from physical punishment to a more psychological form of punishment. The punishment has historically
47 Kendall and Wickham, Using Foucault’s Methods, 4. 48 Ibid.
49 Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 31. Whereas Anglo-Saxon scholars were
still occupied by using major historical events and key players as important moments to use in their work, French scholars moved away from defining history by these canonical moments and focused on the social histories of unknown figures, such as the working class and criminals.
transformed also because the authority of the state changed; modern society is bourgeois and therefore controlled by the middle class. The middle class social agenda differs from51 the preceding aristocratic one. By changing individuals into harmless, obedientsubjectswith a new identity, the bourgeoisie holds power over the people. This is done by “producing
knowledge, a defining ‘truth’ about individuals’ behaviour and personality, only in order to
discipline them through social definitions of normality , material institutions [...] and the supervising judgement of professionals.” In order words, the state holds power through the52 different social institutions and by instructing the authorities. These institutions then instruct the people according to a certain social code that has been normalized by the state. With the example of penal history, Foucault shows that the focus on the self and personhood of the prisoners has lead to a belief that the individual can free itself if it follows certain instructions that are organized by the state. Thus, Foucault states with Discipline and Punishthat social history can show how power structures change and function within society. Here, the people are told that the self stands for freedom and rights, whilst it is a “trap that has been set in advance for [them] by middle-class interests.”53 According to Schwann and Shapiro, Foucault also indirectly criticized the cultural politics of the 60s on racism, sexuality, gender and so forth along the line of identity politics. The danger of taking these themes as focus 54 within academic work, is that the cry for freedom is just following the knowledge as projected by the state. How then can we use history in the understanding of contemporary artworks on institutional racism and in the light of the actions of the BLM?
In 2016, Arthur Jaffa created the video installation Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death.55 The video shows different scenes from popular politicians, sports heroes and musicians, the police shooting people, people walking and crying, all from African American descent. The images immediately give a sense of ambiguity. On the one hand you are confronted with images of African American prosperity, their successes in sports and music whilst on the other hand images of the police shooting of Walter Scott, Obama’s Amazing Grace at the funeral of Clementa Pinckney and famous speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X show the marginalization of African American people. These images, which are all raw footage retrieved from social media and digital archives are from both historical and recent events in African American history. Content-wise the artist shows images from well-known events which contribute to a certain identity politics.
51 Ibid., 11.
52 Schwann and Shapiro, How to Read Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, 12. 53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Brown, Gavin. “Arthur Jaffa and Greg Tate in conversation: Love Is The Message, The Message Is
Something which Foucault is critical about. However, the video also includes images and 56 stills of ordinary people, either crying or walking around, celebrating in sports stadiums. Tobi Haslett’s interprets the artwork as follows; “what emerges is not some stonily virtuous monument to Black history but instead a staccato commentary on the power of capital to link the pleasures of the spectacle to the terror of race.” The African American community has 57 been captured, enslaved and suppressed to make white people rich. This link to commodification can be found nowadays in fashion and music as well, with white Americans appropriating and exploiting African American trends. The video therefore gives way to a long-standing tradition of a community that has been suppressed at first through slavery and later more indirectly, by appropriating their culture and through displaying this discussion of freedom, it creates the illusion that African American people are able to break free. The artwork is accompanied by Kanye West’s track Ultralight Beam. This was a deliberate decision of the artist. Arthur Jaffa has always been interested in African American music. He states in an interview that “music is the one space in which we [as black people] know we have totally actualized ourselves; even though we keep inventing shit we don't ever have to write another song to contribute as magnificently as we already have.” African American 58 music is the one artistic form in which the people were able to express themselves freely without any involvement from their suppressors. The song is also fusing two musical styles, rap and gospel, which are both expressions of the African American people to swing and resist their suppression. 59
The installation is leaning towards a film essay, one which shows a social history of the African American community with a rhythm which leaves no room to deal with the striking images, accompanied with music that requests people to rise up and refuse the existing order. What Michel Foucault did by writing Discipline and Punish, is what Arthur Jaffa has done by creating Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death : “revealing knowledge, power and subjectivity as a scheme that often operates below our radar, since its procedures usually seem trivial and not worth protesting.” 60
What I have shown so far is how politics can create subjects who can declassify current political systems. With the above case studies I have shown how artists can also
56 Schwann and Shapiro, How to Read Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, 12.
57 Haslett, Tobi. "Object Lessons." Artforum, September 12, 2016. Accessed July 27, 2017.
https://www.artforum.com/film/id=65183.
58 Sargent, Antwaun. "Arthur Jaffa and the Future of Black Cinema." Interview Magazine, January 11,
2017. Accessed July 27, 2017. http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/arthur-jafa#_.
59 Haslett, Tobi. "Object Lessons." Artforum, September 12, 2016. Accessed July 27, 2017.
https://www.artforum.com/film/id=65183.
actively contribute to this process with their work. However, I do not fully agree with Todd May’s idea that the awareness of societal and political situation of oneself will lead to identity politics and thus a failed attempt of dissensus. With the help of Michel Foucault I have shown that the historical awareness of a subject can still lead to the dissensus as proposed by Rancière.
Filmstill of Simone Leigh’s Untitled #1, from the series My dreams, my works must wait till after hell.
Installation view of Arthur Jafa: Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death , April 2–June 12, 2017 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, photo by Brian Forrest
Structural Racism in the Museum: the revealing of its presence and its possibilities
“To see something as art, requires… an art world.” - Arthur Danto. In April 2015, a symposium held at the Smithsonian Museum dealt with the theme “History, Rebellion, and Reconciliation.” One of the discussions that continuously came back was that museums were able to offer neutral “safe or sacred spaces,” where people could deal with the complex issues relates to history, racism and institutionalization. 6162 It is interesting that the discussion stated that musea are able to offer safe or sacred spaces. Is this true and more importantly, what does this designation of the museum encapsulate?
In order to understand the power of the museum as an institution, I will discuss briefly how the public museum came into being and what kind of position it achieved within society. What will become clear, is that museums work with the same kind of presupposition as the institutions of confinement within Discipline and Punish. I will then consider how institutional racism is present within the museum and how this has been found in artistic practice.
African American artists have become increasingly more recognized since the 1970s. This can be witnessed by an increase of African American art in private collections as well as the representation in museal institutions, according to . Looking at the period in which 63 African American art has become more recognized, it is interesting to see how this tendency has occurred with the emergence of institutional theory.
As the public museum has tried to incorporate different audiences, both elite and popular, it still has a political agenda of its own. Bennet uses Foucault’s analysis of
Discipline and Punish to explain how the historical organization of the prison versus the museum differs. Whereas power relations are maintained within the prison/asylum/clinic through discipline, punishment and confinement, the museum works its power relations by showing and telling the visitors what to look at and learn. Although this may seem positive 64
61Wecker, Menachem. "Why Museums Should Be a Safe Space to Discuss Why #Blacklivesmatter."
Smithsonian Magazine, April 29, 2015. Accessed July 27, 2017.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-museums-should-be-safe-space-discuss -why-black-lives-matter-180955114/?-no-ist.
62 Clare, “Black Lives Matter: The Black Lives Matter Movement in the National Museum
of African American History and Culture,” 123.
63Mendelsohn, Meredith, and Tess Thackara. "How Advocates of African-American Art Are
Advancing Racial Equality in the Art World." Artsy, January 12, 2016. Accessed July 27, 2017. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-in-black-artists-pursuit-of-equality-these-17-art-world-leader s-are-changing-the-game.
in the sense that the goal is education, there is still a (certain) political agenda present. As I stated in the first chapter, people are presented with knowledge as if they are the ones in power, choosing to receive education. However, “the museum also [serves] as an instrument for differentiating populations. With certain behaviors acquired, the creation of the public65 museum was also a way for the state to control the population. Whereas at fairs or pubs people were able to be disorganized and free from control of the state, the museum developed social rules to keep the masses in control, “into an ordered, and ideally, self-regulating public.” This created a certain in- and exclusion of the population and a way66 for the state to discipline its people. Museums, both then 67 and now, have been able to regulate their power by regulating people’s behavior. The big contradiction here is that it is a museum’s intention is to be “a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.” But if it has its own political agenda in which 68 it attempts to manipulate people towards a certain behavior, how can it be representative of humanity? Above all the described above, how can this statement be true for a museum if its display is also selective, inadequate or partial?
It is evident that the museum as an institution holds high power. From the 1960s onwards, with the arrival of Conceptual art, different scholars have developed the idea of the particular power of the art world on the practice and displays of art works. I will follow here the ideas of George Dickie and Arthur Danto and add a sociological explanation by Pierre Bourdieu to clarify how this institutional structure works and ultimately, how this has affected the presence and perception of African American arts within the museum institution.
Arthur Danto introduced the idea of “the art world” in 1964 in his similarly named article. In the article he presented the issue of how to identify something as a work of art. He believed that with the rise of the new art forms of his time, such as Pop art, Conceptual art and Minimal art, their designation would not be possible without an art world. He explains69 his idea through Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. The artist displayed several Brillo boxes made of wood and painted as if there were made of cardboard. They may look like the general Brillo boxes, but this is a work of art and the regular Brillo boxes are not. Danto questions
65 Ibid., 99. 66 Ibid.
67 When public museums emerged in the 19th century.
68"Museum Definition." ICOM: International Council Of Museums. Accessed July 27, 2017.
http://icom.museum/the-vision/museum-definition/.
69 Van Maanen, How to Study Art Worlds: On the Societal Functioning of Aesthetic
then how this can be accepted as art and states the following: “But then a stockroom is not an art gallery, and we cannot readily separate the Brillo cartons from the gallery they are in, any more than we can separate the Rauschenberg bed from the paint upon it.” The scholar70 continues by explaining that what divides the Brillo Boxes artwork from the regular ones, is that there is theory of art behind it, which takes it then into the world of art. There is a certain agreement outside of the artistic practice which confirms its legitimacy. 71
George Dickie would go a step further and criticizes Danto for giving all the authority to artistic theory. According to the scholar, “a structure of persons fulfilling various
roles and engaging a practice which has developed through history” has been the determinant for classifying what art is or not. He takes a more institutional approach here 72 than Danto, claiming that “a work of art is art because of the position it occupies within a cultural practice, which is [...] an institution-type.” 73
It is interesting to see a rise in social considerations within the philosophical discussions on art. However, the social conditions of the artworld seem to be somewhat neglected. In 1987, Pierre Bourdieu wrote an article called “The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic.” He starts with Danto’s idea of an artworld which determines what is either an artwork or an ordinary object. Bourdieu observes that the philosophical discussion on this ontological question has led to the incorporation of sociological thinking without considering what this exactly entails. Although sociological instruments are used in the discourse, the74 philosophers neglect the social historical institution behind these. That institution includes a “relativation” common in the social sciences but neglected in this discourse . Bourdieu 75 re-analyzes the institution and shows that art can only gain its autonomy, its value and meaning as an artwork by containing a certain level of self-reflexivity. It means that the designation of an object as a form of art can only be understood when the “ cultured habitus and the artisticfield” are considered as well. Habitus are “systems of durable, transposable 76 dispositions [that] generate and organize practices and representations.” The artistic field is77 created by all agents from the field, from critics and scholars to museums and the art market with its auction houses and galleries. These agents determine what the artistic field entails and with their backgrounds which are historically also determined by their social, cultural and 70 Danto, “The Artworld,” 581.
71 This is different from Marcel Duchamp’s strategy of readymades.
72 Dickie qtd. in Van Maanen, How to Study Art Worlds: On the Societal Functioning of Aesthetic
Values, 21.
73 Ibid., 24.
74 Bourdieu, “The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic,” 201. 75 Ibid., 201.
76 Ibid., 203. The field is one of Bourdieu’s core concepts and is explained as a setting in which agents
and their social positions are established.
