BLACK/HELICOPTER: Tableau #2

About four feet to the right we see a group of four lightboxes placed edge to edge horizontally (total size: 4X20 feet). The first two lightboxes depict two frames of degraded video graphics which when read together form the word "BLACK". The next two images are identical frames of a helicopter as seen from below (from the perspective of the "urban underclass?") At the bottom center of each photo a different year is inscribed (1555, 1865, 1965, 1992). Questions regarding the production of history, language, representations, and their cultural perspectives are at stake here: who sees, who names, who records, when? The dates imply a story (history) behind the story: the historical conditions, issues, struggles that formed a figure like Malcolm and that construct our posthumous readings of his work.

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