The project is a multimedia installation combining video, photographic lightboxes, and projected slides of text and image. This work is an array of impersonations examining notions of Black male identity, the impossibility of defining black masculinity in isolation, and the residues of sexism and homophobia informing simplistic reversals of white masculine tropes. This website documents the graphic elements of the piece (photographs, slides). The videotape (12:00 Color, Stereo) re-works elements from the installation tape adding a rap music soundtrack. It is represented here by stills from its opening passage and its ending credit sequence.
Space A (23X30')
A. PRONE? (BLack Power): Sue Williams/Toni Cade Bambara/Stokely Carmichael
Photo lightbox floor piece triptych (5X12') composed of three 4X5' color duratrans. Piece will be surrounded by four walls approx. two feet high painted black.
Grid of 6 video stills of Stokely Carmichael. Top half - 4 stills / Caption: "Black Power?"
Bottom half - Text fragment from Toni Cade Bambara quoted by bell hooks on the position of women in the 60s Black revolution / 2 stills
3 images of`Rubber Bondage Woman' overlaid with text from Sue Williams sculpture of prone female (Irresistible 1992).
Vertical row of 3 video stills of Stokely Carmichael.
Text fragment from Toni Cade Bambara quoted by bell hooks on the position of women in the 60s Black revolution.
B. Video
Guns and Poses (Remix - 1995): (Originally 21:00 Projected 12X16' High on wall. Reworked into a single-channel piece 12:00 Color, Stereo sound)
The video combines text, stills, and moving imagery sutured by dissolves and wipes. Slick & easily legible Pop surface: deploying the violent Black male projection (stereotype) as central model, heroic figure, and exploited buffoon of fear-mongers in the media. Moving images: clips from Gangsta' rap videos, LA Rebellion 1992, "Jam" Michael Jackson/Michael Jordan video and other film sources.
SPACE B (4X30')
C. NT YT FREE STYLES: The Middle Passage
80 Color Slides, 2 projectors. Text slides of transcribed jokes by Richard Pryor on Race, Sex, Drugs, and The Police. Ocassional interuptions of images of crowd reactions with text captions by Charles Manson (on the relation between criminals, the public, the media, and the state) and David Hammons (on the relation between artists, audiences, and the art system.)
SPACE C (23X30')
6 Monochrome 4X5 foot photo lightboxes
`He wasn't supposed to end this way' (Masculinity & Drag)
A collage of images from the film `Paris Is Burning'. (Video Stills) Based on the NYT review of Calvin Trillin's book `Remembering Denny' by Michael Dorris, the text has been reconstructed to focus on the notion of all masculinity as drag and "Realness" as a malleable, unstable construct, a performance medium for contradictory inscriptions of gender, race and class.
About X-PRZ