History, Conflict, and Social Justice
About the works
Islanders, Auriea Harvey. This work is a 3D scan made in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. "Facial casts of Nias islanders JP Kleiweg de Zwaan 1910”, an installation of early 20th century life casts. I never stop wondering who these people were. What is so appealing about broken things? My 3D capture was done in less than ideal circumstances, leading to the broken nature of the model. I contemplate something lost to time. Impressions of forms taken, better whole than broken... and yet. The video capture is me playing with the sunlight I’ve set up in my 3d program, complete with clicks and drags.
Baldwin Taking AIM, Bayeté Ross Smith. Based on a James Baldwin quote about the declaration “... give me liberty or give me death ...”
Beauty and Horror - The Squeeze, Leila Weefur. This excerpt of Between Beauty & Horror is from a video installation exploring the symbiotic nature of beauty and horror. The installation is a diptych, divided into two long corridors on opposite sides of the gallery, separated by a constructed wall with two panes of two-way tempered glass installed. The film’s poetic narrative explores this particular duality as an intrinsic part of the Black experience. It posits abjection, violence, and eroticism as the ingredients that make up the “between” and are considered to be the binding agents of Beauty & Horror. Exploring the eco-geography of Blackness, this diptych focuses on the sensorial and somatic experiences that gives blackness a distinct and inherently racialized materiality. This work looks at Beauty & Horror using the symbology of the blackberry fruit as part of the eco-geography and a metaphor for the Black figure.
The Archive of The GUIDE VR, Clareese Hill. The Archive of The GUIDE is an inquiry into spatial computing as a space of rest. The Archive acts as a way of undoing the canonical ideologies of the role knowledge production. The Archive is an unconventional proposition of alternative spaces for ideas around Black studies, Black Feminist studies, Post-Colonial theory, without replicating the problematics of Western critical theory. The Archive connects through the use of poetics as a tool. The Archive is a way of creating an agency around learning and resisting through immersion. The Archive is a way of challenging the linearity of time and space and the validity of knowledge production by intentionally leaving out mainstream philosophy. The Archive unhinges theory from the privilege of the academy and makes it accessible. The Archive grounds theory in the right now, activating it as a tool to survive everyday life for identities that seek an intentional Othering.
Submerged, Antonio Roberts. Edward Colston was an English merchant, philanthropist and politician whose involvement in the slave trade was often overlooked. In June 2020 his statue in Bristol was toppled and thrown into the harbour during Black Lives Matter protests. Through tearing down statues we don't rewrite or erase history but instead reveal more about it. It is increasingly important that we learn more about the history of our country and its leaders and face the full reality of its past.
Making the Time invisible, Ruben Natal-San Miguel. This photography series is focused on capturing the last vestiges of the vibrant street culture, the traditions and lifestyles that are quickly being eradicated due to the aggressive gentrification that’s invading almost every corner of NYC. For the past eighteen summers, Ruben Natal-San Miguel has traveled around New York City by bicycle and on foot searching for what it’s like to live in these parts of the city. The artist has been able to find not only a vibrant and colorful vision, but also a happy and very meaningful life lesson.
Statue Of Liberty, Alfredo Salazar-Caro. MMXX.
Queen Bee is Stinging Mad, Liss Lafleur. On June 28, 1969 in New York, it was documented that a butch lesbian named Stormé DeLarverie was hit on the head with a billy club and handcuffed at the Stonewall Inn. She was bleeding from the head when she turned to the crowd and screamed, “WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING,” sparking what we now know as the Stonewall riots. Although this event is remembered as one of the most significant in LGBT history, Stormé and other QPOC are often erased from archival narratives. Queen Bee is Stinging Mad is an HD animation that depicts a virtual stained-glass window of Stormé DeLarverie sitting in Central Park. The audio accompanying this work is a remix, made in collaboration with JD Samson, and represents the songs that were documented to be in the Stonewall jukebox when the riot occurred. An edited 5-minute version of this work has been produced for this exhibition.
Be Yad Ar, Shaghayegh Cyrous. Be Yad Ar is a video in remembrance of Iranians killed during the nationwide civil protests and 6 days of national internet shutdown by Iran's government on November 15- 2, 2019. The demonstrations sparkled to showcase people's frustration toward the %50-%200 increase in fuel prices and brought up various fundamental issues such as endless corruption, absence of social justice, and overall economic meltdown due to the lack of management and the United States sanctions.
RTTT, Mohsen Hazrati. RTTT [Render Truth Through Texture] Project is a research about mirrors, reflections, and their significance in Iranian mystical literature. the origin of this motif goes back to Ancient Persia. Later on, sing the concept of mirror and reflections got more frequent in Farsi literature due to its potentials and aspects. There is a useful technique used mostly in realtime game engines, called RTT (Render To Texture). It is rendering from another camera in the scene and stores the rendered data into a texture to use it as material for an object. This technique is usually used for visualizing mirrors and reflections, each of these textures could show a specific perspective of the running virtual world or contain pixel data from another parallel scene. each of them could have its own specific field of view, size, light, and any other properties, and render in the main camera context as well and follow the main camera properties. Each texture could tile, repeat or spread in many objects in the virtual world and stand for a specific message, reflected on an object in the scene. these textures could act as part of a whole image or content which is spread into objects in the scene. just as a drop could represent the ocean. I find this technique so interesting and meaningful to discover the unity and multiplicity concept trough. As in Persian literature mirrors and reflections describe how each part of the universe may have its own universe within and reflect a vision. Knee, as a part of the human body, and due to Its connection with the forehead, while sitting sad, heartbreaking, thinking, ashamed, etc, has been inspired by many Iranian poets and writers, Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr (Persian poet 967-1049) used the human knee for the first time, later, this concept has been developed in many creative ways and used as many kinds of metaphors, such as a ship, school, observatory, Mirror, etc. in which the poets represented this way of sitting as a way to disconnect from the world and discover in mysterious worlds, meanwhile, some poets like Khaghani and Abdul-Qādir Bedil pushed it a step further and used it as an ideology and talked about theirstudies and gainsin their spiritual journey by their knees.
Halema'uma'u, Tiare Ribeaux. Kanaka Maoli (native Hawaiians) see Pelehonuamea, a volcanic deity and goddess, as their living elemental progenitor. She is associated with the volcano Kilauea and as a living entity in Halema’uma’u crater. Prior to western contact, offerings, chants, prayers, and a deep reverence for Pele were needed to approach the crater. As an extension of techno-colonialism of Hawai’i Island, drones and satellite monitoring through LIDAR and InSAR technology, positioned above the crater, actively shoot lasers on the land to detect surface deformations at Kilauea’s summit. Halema’uma’u Crater and Pu’u O’o crater is connected to Pelehonuamea’s sacred body, and this technological monitoring can be seen as a continual invasion of the island, and the Kanaka Maoli’s spirituality. As this technology attempts to predict Pele's movements, as a force of nature, she can never be fully predicted. Chants honoring Pelehonuamea are combined with LIDAR and aerial drone footage, juxtaposing these two belief systems.
Runaway VR2, Jamel Chapel AKA Jam No Peanut《MC 听不懂. Runaway is a virtual reality music video that takes viewers into the world of African-american bilingual chinese storyteller, MC Tingbudong. From night markets in Taiwan to rural farmlands in Yunnan, back alleys in Shanghai to studios and venues in Beijing, the video takes viewers on a trip through China’s underground music scene. Originally a freestyle about the immigration crisis, Runaway combines Tingbudong’s distinctive bilingual flow with off-kilter production from Brooklyn-based international music collective, Found Sound Nation --bouncing between dream-like vignettes, hyperreality overlays and blue screen errors. While Runaway was created using real-life footage from the artist’s journey through a state-department funded music diplomacy program in 2018 and independent solo tour in 2019, it brings an imagined internationalist future into perspective. With coronavirus ravaging the chinese lightlife scene in 2020, Runaway stands as a relic from a pre-pandemic era--reflecting the role of technology in preserving, altering and augmented memory.