Being 2.0: Concept Introduction

We can attempt to understand the meaning of being human from situations that seek to keep certain beings outside the accepted realm of humanity. Since it has been said frequently enough that slavery denies humanity to slaves, it is crucial to find out what it is that is being denied and how the conceptual interpretation of ‘the slave’ works. As scholar Ruha Benjamin argues in Race After Technology, discussions of robots have been historically a way of talking about dehumanization yet not about racialization, even though the etymological root of the word “robot” is Czech, coming from “compulsory service.” Historically, Black people have performed that unpaid forced labor. When we came to America, we were not acknowledged as human beings but as things, tools, neither occupying the classic subject nor object position. We functioned as very particular types of objects, seen as limited in thought and feeling; historically, there was often doubt about Black interiority, a convenient ideology making the mechanization of slave labor natural, even inevitable. We functioned as subjects but lacked sovereign reign over ourselves or the world. As a result, we occupied a peculiar non-binary space of “being,” which has disturbing analogies to the queer space inhabited by robots. Slaves and robots have in common that they are meant to be excluded from the concept and the company of humans, and are intended to obey orders. Robots from films and television shows like Blade Runner, The Terminator, Ex Machina, Prometheus, and Westworld provide a way to think about the interactions between technology, intersectionality and dehumanization. Could this be a starting point to call upon the imagination as a way to reconstruct and re-envision the idea of being? Can we garner strength and inspiration from these concepts?

An artist creates a work and exhibits it to start a conversation. Being offers the unique opportunity for the artwork to not only start but participate in the conversation through direct dialogue. In their discussions with viewers, Being explores a variety of challenging topics: art historical erasure, the social implications of artificial intelligence regarding rights, liberties, labor and automation, the importance of the imagination as a form of liberation, and the subjectivity of body autonomy within an inherently inequitable society. In particular, Being functions as a repository of Black queer oral and movement-based traditions. Despite relentless marginalization, systemic oppression, violence, and instability, the Black queer community gave birth to powerfully robust cultural productions such as voguing, which evolved from its origins in Harlem ballrooms during the latter half of the 20th century into a highly stylized, modern house dance. Sadly, many leaders of this community have been lost to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and as this culture—like many others created by Black people—becomes appropriated by the masses, the rich history of it will die as well.

Using motion capture, I am recording the gestures and movements of vogue practitioners proficient in styles ranging from Old Way to Vogue Femme and all their subsets. I will use the motion data captured in these recordings in a script that acts as the foundation for Being's daily lecture/ dance workshops. These workshops reimagine non-Eurocentric archive and education models like the griot, a West African cultural figure who serves as a historian, library, performance artist, and healer. As a digital griot, Being's purpose is to teach us how to radically decolonize through workshops that combine lecture, critical thinking, dance, storytelling, and mindfulness meditation. Being's approach to education is active and brings new possibilities for research and an enhanced academic experience for all people.

When not teaching a class, Being's voice is the soundtrack of the exhibition. Using a GPT-Neo machine learning model, I am creating an algorithm that draws inspiration from fractal mathematics found in many African knowledge systems, such as Luba fertility figures that use sea snail shells to evoke prosperity without end. I am using this model to train Being 2.0 to generate infinite poetry inspired by some of my favorite BIPOC Queer poets, including Alok Vaid-Menon, Dazié Grego-Sykes, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks. As visitors tour the exhibition, their visit will be scored by Beings poetry backed by a diasporic ASMR soundtrack composed of sounds deemed soothing by a survey conducted with over 80 Black people.

LIVE PERFORMANCE

The Black quantum aesthetic language explored in the exhibition will also be launched with the premiere of my new performance, similarly titled Assembly. The performance consists of several acts that chronicle the evolution of Vogue performance from the late 70's to a speculative future in an abstract and nonlinear way. Unlike Eurocentric dance models, it explores how the fundamental construct of the dance is based on not having an organizational system that never changes. This alternating approach will be echoed in each act by using various performance modalities such as film, spoken word, music, dance, musical, and artificial intelligence.

Click here to see a past performance. password: Newsome

The piece will also expand on my earlier performance, FIVE, which highlights the structural components of vogue fem. I see the vogue fem dance form as an open-source code. The movement language or binary code is based on five elements: hands performance, catwalk, floor performance, spin dips, and duck-walking. I'm fascinated by how different performers continue to add to the code. Many performers come to it with formal training in other dance forms, such as West African dance, jazz, ballet, or hip-hop. That training becomes the connective tissue fusing the five elements. This new language becomes a new code that is shared and learned by another dancer, thus leading to an advanced system comprising all the languages before it. In some ways, one could see vogue fem as a hackathon or code fest.

The cohort of dancers in Assembly consists of the most decorated vogue performers and teachers from around the globe, including Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa. All five dancers have developed unique vogue variants that synthesize vogue with other dance forms such as bon odori, capoeira, hopak, and Gwara gwara. The resulting movements portray how an art form that emerged in underground gay clubs and practiced by disenfranchised Black and Latinx LGBTQAI+ youths catapulted to a global stage. Further, it engages current discourses surrounding cultural circulation within global capitalism: the politics of authenticity and the economy of appropriation.

HOLOGRAPHY

Knot

The Knot sculpture came from me thinking about how Blackness exists between the constructed and the real. Contrary to the popular belief that the division of the human species is based on physical variations, there exists no clear, reliable distinctions that bind people to such groupings. However on a sociological level there is sufficient data to support the notion that race is real. This led to a deep investigation into not only what it means to be a Black human but what is Black culture and subsequently Blackness? From my perspective, to be Black is to live in an entanglement of inquiry, creativity, horror, wonder and performance. The choreography of FIVE explores the performance aspect of Blackness.

In vogue fem, "hands performance" is based on a figure eight knot. In knot theory, the study of mathematical knots, a figure eight is the unique knot with a crossing number of four. While inspired by knots that appear in daily life, such as those in shoelaces and rope, a mathematical knot differs in that the ends are joined together so that it cannot be undone. I see this condition as a useful visualization for my thinking about the entanglement of Blackness as well as the culture of domination that haunts the Black experience. White supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy all conjoin to create an apparatus of domination. The sculpture formally mirrors the structure of a knot as a way to think critically about the nature of how these systems of oppression connect and prevent us from being our best selves.

The Knot sculpture blends my motion tracking data of vogue performers from around the globe into a pastiche, entangling practices including performance, computer programming, film, CGI, and holography into a collective form that acts as a critical coil for a new understanding of the politics of difference. The 40ft tall 3D holographic visual constantly shifts between the form and the dancers that created it. For me the piece radically blurs the line between sculpture, video, and performance, it gives ethereal shape to the intangible systems of domination in our lives, and in an abstract, three-dimensional, and non-traditional way presents how voguing moves through and in different geographies.

SCULPTURE

Ansista

The idea of collage is not only an aesthetic concern or technique; it is also a metaphor for the type of delicate self-pastiching that happens to marginalized bodies that want to feel safe while navigating hegemonic spaces. Outfitted in a Swarovski-encrusted Kente cloth halter dress atop drag padding, acrylic nails, and gold Christian Louboutin stilettos, Ansista (2019) is an assemblage, figurative sculpture. The upper part of Ansista locates the work in traditional West African art practices as a way to speak to colonialism and identity. Their face and androgynous torso, which was hand-carved from African mahogany in Ghana by master carvers Alfred Armah and Nicholas Nettey, takes its form from an earlier performance of FIVE.

Their right leg is lifted to the sky as though an invisible string is elevating them to the heavens. Their face is inspired by the pre-colonial Chokwe Pwo mask from the Congo region, which pay homage to the founding matriarchs of the Chokwe people. The incorporation of this specific mask is another way of reclaiming power for the oppressed. Ansista’s lower half is made out of a custom Real Doll, a sex doll complete with silicone-based human skin texture and vagina. This element expresses a queerness in the sculpture, but also acknowledges the over-sexualization and fetishization of women and fems. In my 2016 exhibition Stop Playin’ In My Face, I explored questions of agency, or lack thereof, in sex work for people in the ballroom community, finding no singular resolution but a grey area that continues into this work. Ansista’s body inserts itself into the space in a way that cannot be ignored. Their presence is continually reiterated throughout the exhibition, most notably in the collages and in Being 2.0. In addition to Ansista, Assembly will include four new sculptures derived from figures seen in my collage work and poses associated with the five elements of vogue fem.

COLLAGE

Assembly will consist of new and recent works that I refer to as collage but live somewhere between collage, assemblage, and sculpture. Building on the rich history of assemblage from founders like David Hammons, I am attempting to tap into the transformative power of discarded materials but merge them with the sleek and modern aesthetic of design software and machines like Autodesk and 3D printers. The various materials and images that make up each work are from multiple sources and contrasting vantage points. Sources include images of "traditional" African sculptures, fragments of advertising imagery, textile, stones, and sections of portraits taken by me of people in my community.

In works like It Do Take Nerve 1 & 2, the figure is an amalgamation of photographs of Black queer men. The men are holding poses related to vogue femme like hands performance and catwalk. I took the photographs from various vantage points with red and green gels on them. Once printed, the images were cut and collaged with pictures of African sculptures. The resulting neo-cubist figures rest in a mirrored cubist environment, which was created by mapping the cubist surface textures found in Pablo Picasso works like Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Using Autodesk, I remolded, 3D-printed and chromed them. African sculptures and the Black body are paired with the consumer images, thus complicating the conversation. Placing the sculpture and the Black body in this context forces the viewer to consider the ways in which art objects and the Black body are seen as consumer goods within what scholar bell hooks calls the 'Capitalist, Imperialist, White Supremacist, Patriarchy.' These works attempt to reclaim the Black body and reestablish it as not consumable but rather lasting and heroic.

The title refers to a line in the movie Paris Is Burning when a commentator talks to the crowd just after some contestants of the ball lose. The commentator says, "Please give them a round of applause, because with y’all vicious motherfuckers It Do Take Nerve!" That statement encapsulates the challenge of trying to reclaim the Black body while existing in the 'Capitalist, Imperialist, White Supremacist, Patriarchy.' By turning the work into a mirror, I implicate the space and spectators in the creation of the container of this object. In many ways, this container (the gallery and or art market it participates in) impedes the art object's liberatory potential. The pose of the figures, which is characterized by arm and leg movements in linear positions moving swiftly from one static place to next, is echoed in the linear movements of the Dutch style frame. Painted in candy automotive paint, the frames move away from 17th-century Dutch references to car culture synonymous with the Black working class in the American Deep South. So often, Black queer people are expected to be silent and invisible. The frames in these works act as physical representations of the limiting frames that are often projected onto Black queer people. I see these works engaged in a dance of freedom, a dance that aims to break free of the frame and liberate itself from the containment of silence. Between January 2021-January 2022, I will continue this body of work with the support of my Minnesota Street Projects California Black Voices Grant and present these new works in Assembly.