ENTRANCE: Tableau #1

The first tableau, sited near the museum entrance, contains three elements. A video monitor displays a text drawn from a song by The Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy entitled `Famous and Dandy (Like Amos & Andy).' The text questions the positioning and interests served by our so-called critical art practice based around multicultural issues. It's refrain (with variations by X-PRZ) is "What will we do to become famous and dandy, just like Amos & Andy?" Hanging on the wall next to the monitor will be a 4X5 foot lightbox containing a photographic reproduction of Carl Andre's `Scatter Piece (Spill)' (1966). A text over the image reads "Diaspora". Around the corner to the left (the next image in a standard left-right reading of the installation) will be a 4X5 foot lightbox displaying a photographic image derived from television coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. The image depicts an aerial view of the urban grid of streets and burning buildings. A text over the image reads "Scatter". The juxtapositions of image and text present a linkages between certain tropes of minimalist sculpture, self-professed Marxisms, recent practices of "junk culture" claiming an aesthetic/historical relation with it, abstract modes of encoding the urban environment (and the power relations they imply), and our researches into the positionalities of Malcolm X and the participants (diasporics both black and white) in his construction and legacy.

Next Tableau.