"By Any Means Necessary." Text fragments will be placed over an enlarged drawing of the figure positions of slaves in the hold of a ship (a figuration of that strange, lost space between Africa and America where millions of blacks perished in the name of profit).
A video monitor displays a text drawn from a song by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy entitled `Famous and Dandy (Like Amos & Andy).' The text questions the positioning and interests served by our so-called critical art practice based around cultural issues.
A text over an aerial view of the 1992 L.A. Rebellion reads "Scatter". Think of the linkages between certain tropes of minimalist sculpture, self-professed Marxisms, recent practices of "junk culture" claiming an aesthetic/historical relation with social critique, and abstract modes of encoding the urban environment. How does the culture industry position Malcolm X and the audience (diasporics both black and white) in his construction and legacy?
DANCE: Examine the forgotten steps, the loopings, frustrations, denials of racial difference. The dance floor with its implications of a broad sociality is also a contested space of libidinized exchanges. (Scatter, splatter.) The steps, the negotiations between multiple identities and agendas, the articulations between poses are visceral and contradictory moments. In the social dance we use patterns to feel free; choices, stances, tastes: still, a logic of exclusion obtains here. Perhaps marginal sites with separate discourses, images, sounds, reading processes are required preparation for immersion in larger cultural currents (we practice our steps, a new religion, a reading of histories, a path to righteousness, a source of strength). A little space of our own may signify both a school and a prison (separatism as a strategy may preserve many elements of the status quo, sexism or homophobia, for example). Think of the art world as an exclusive little disco. Think of black nationalism as one, limited, logical reaction in the face of exclusion. Think of Malcolm X shifting his mode of address: saying different things to different audiences. Think of the different Malcolms we construct on the basis of our desires, fears and prejudices. Dance.
Dream. Welcome to the American dream and the living nightmare: the home, the mythic promised land at the end of diasporic journey. Did we all arrive here by the same means? When will we all arrive? Connect the American dream with black victimization, the segregation of opportunities, housing patterns. Consider how notions regarding crime, real estate values, and safety are central to the fears racist discourses seek to inspire. Suburban ideals for some folks require urban deprivations for "others". "I don't see any American dream. I see an American nightmare." (Malcolm X)
By the way taking the position that Malcolm X's work and it's reception by blacks and others historically and today are highly constructed phenomena subject to a variety of interested readings is not a reductive ploy, or fictionalization designed to disempower. Rather pointing out the constructedness of these phenomena CAN BE A STEP IN LEARNING TO STRATEGICALLY INTERVENE IN THIS WORLD WITHOUT RECOURSE TO MYTHICAL, AHISTORICAL NOTIONS OF TRUTH, INTEGRITY, HISTORY. Xs work is in no way diminished by an awareness that every word is not literally true. The strategic necessity of rhetoric, fiction, exaggeration, an openness to coded, multiple readings is part of the social history of his intervention, his effect, his ability to move people, and frighten them. Malcolm X created and recreated himself several times. No version is more true than another, though some are easier for us to love, hate, emulate, or disavow based on our own fears, desires and ambivalences. When we speak of "the Real Malcolm X" aren't we always speaking about the Malcolm X we prefer ideologically, the one we can appropriate for our own psychological empowerment. When black people want to feel blacker than they are, less complicit with white America, when white people want to claim themselves completely innocent in the crime of slavery, (or self-absorbed in guilt) don't Malcolm's fiery excoriations of the "white devils" help produce this effect? (Slavery is over. I never profited from it. I'm not a racist. It's the blacks who produce racism. I'm just a victim. . .)