C4N0N5 0F EXCLUS10N

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This impossible project seeks to address the exclusiveness of the Western art and literary canons. Through the re/construction of an inclusive and interactive online platform, Canons of Exclusion exaggerates both the exclusionary and inclusionary binaries necessary to contemporary canons in flux. The resistance of contemporary attempts at canon intervention prove inadequate when the major quality of the canon is exclusivity. Our project explores the feasibility of universal inclusion as it begs to be amended. Recognizing the attempts made by Gates and Shanken in canon reformation we too attempt to reconcile the exclusionary practices of canon formation  through process-oriented html, hyperlinks and images. Although our title recognizes the marginalization of peoples and art forms, the project embraces the performing qualities of new media art proposed by Laura Marks: “through unity arises infinity.” Our endeavor to establish an online canon demonstrates the infinite hybridity of new media interfaces and the possibility of an all inclusive canon. Here we can transcend the limits set by institutions, we are only limited by the boundaries of our collective imaginations.

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APPLE HANDS -- Is Apple advertising racial?

Click Here for the art project

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“Islamic aesthetics has some suggestions for Western art theory because it shifts the site of meaning from the image to the body of the viewer" In regards to figuration and the body of Christ, "Western art theory is thus limited in its applicability to Islamic art” IS THIS A DOUBLE STANDARD THAT IS WORTH EMBRACING? "Another common quality of new media art and Islamic art (especially its abstract variants) is that the work of art plays out in time, unfolding image from information and information from the infinite. This takes place in both the work, as it carries out algorithmic instructions, and the attentive recognition of observers." DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS OR NOT? Could you argue that without the proper tool box, one cannot make infinite meaning? That it is impossible to properly perceive Islamic art without a knowledge of Islam's history?

(Laura Marks 61)

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“How does the debate over canon formation affect the development of African-American literature as a subject of instruction in the American academy?” (pg. 22) “Is black poetry racial in theme, or is black poetry any sort of poetry written by black people?” (pg. 26) "But my pursuit of this project has required me to negotiate a position between, on the one hand, William Bennett, who claims that black people can have no canon, no masterpieces, and, on the other hand, those on the critical left who wonder why we want to establish the existence of a canon, any canon, in the first place" (pg. 33) Is it possible to publish a canonical anthology, such as Gates' without reinscribing the notions of hierarchy, patriarchy and exclusion that he acknowledges are problematic? Does the creation of an African-American literary anthology run the risk of being essentialist?

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Fotoshop by Adobe

Does this satire enforce or challenge Marks' engagement with aniconic suspicion?

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Points of Discussion: Henry Louis Gates Jr. 

Gates recognizes the tension in the black anthology between, the presentation of unifying themes (of struggle, racism, of difference) vs. the impulse to form an integrated canon of American literature, “The bonds of literary tradition seem to be stronger than race” (pg. 30).

Gates discusses the nature of the canon as a means of racial subjugation. He notes, “part of the history we need to teach has to be the history of the ideas of the canon, which involves...the history of literary pedagogy and of the institution of the school” (pg. 34)

“The return of “the” canon, the high canon of Western masterpieces, represents the return of an order in which my people were the subjugated, the voiceless, the invisible, the unrepresented, and the unrepresentable” (pg. 35)

Gates recognizes the tension between the black subject as a socio-political construction and also as a lived reality, “it's important to remember that “race” is only a sociopolitical category...At the same time – in terms of its practical performative force – that doesn't help me when I'm trying to get a taxi on the corner of 125th and Lenox Avenue” (pg. 38)

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Communities, Collaborations, Exhibitions, Institutions

This section focused on the various collaborations that occur with new digital art forms and highlights the creative collective or community. 

This is found in projects such as ZKM, the Software exhibition, and Rhizome.org. 

Art by Matthew Plummer-Fernandez for their community fundraiser. 

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Bodies, Surrogates, Emergent Systems

The art in this section is looking at the cyborgian nature of human existence. The relationship between real people and synthetic life is highlighted in these works. 

Artists: Stelarc, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, and David Rokeby

Image by Stelarc

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Islamic art does not represent the divine but asks the worshipper to conceive of it

Laura U. Marks 48

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Gates identifies the formation of a canon as a political act, despite its connotations as a natural compilation, untainted by particular social and political agendas. Despite reservations surrounding the canon's patriarchal, hierarchical and politically suspect underpinnings, Gates embarks on the publication of his own anthology of African-American literature. Gates recognizes the formation of a canon as a political act that gives voice to marginalized groups that have been silenced, historically. Gates notes, “...how effective and how durable our interventions in contemporary cultural politics will be depends on our ability to mobilize the institutions that buttress and reproduce that culture” (pg. 34).

"A well-marked anthology functions in the academy to create a tradition, as well as to define and preserve it” (pg. 31)

“..my pursuit of this project has required me to negotiate a position between, on the one hand Willam Bennett, who claims that black people can have no canon, no masterpieces, and on the other hand thos eon the critical left who wonder why we want to establish the existence of a canon, in the first place” (pg. 33)

“...our attempts to derive theories about our literary tradition have been decried as racist, separtist, nationalist or essentialist...long after white American literature has been anthologized and canonized" (pg. 38)

"African-American tradition must not be defined by the pseudo-science of racial biology or a mystically shared essence called blackness but by repetition and revision of shared themes..." (pg. 39)

+ more

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Interactive Contexts and Electronic Environments

New Media Art that looks at a participatory aspect that leaves the final product infinitely open ended. 

Artists: Le Corbusier, Keith Piper, and Toshio Iwai.

Nintendo DS game by Toshio Iwai.

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Simulations and Simulacra

Simulations, Shanken describes, are copies whereas simulacra are reproductions where distinctions between original and copy become murky and the simulacra has the same level of primacy and authenticity as the original. 

Artists: Myron Krueger, Char Davies, and Jeffrey Shaw

Image by Jeffrey Shaw "Legible City, Responsive Environment" 1988-91 

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Other advancements in the formation of an African-American canon were seen in Calverton's anthology, which introduced the inclusion of black vernacular literature (i.e. literary forms specific to black tradition). Calverton notes, "It is no exaggeration...to contend that [the Negro's contributions to American art and literature] are more striking and singular in substance and structure than any contributions that have been made by the white man to American culture" (pg.27).  Calverton invoked a rhetoric of American nationalism, a discourse which had previously been used to subjugate African-Americans, to identify black literary prestige (as it was original, unlike white Americans who insufficiently mimicked the work of their European forebears). + history

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Networks, Surveillance, Culture Jamming

Exchange, transfer and collaborative creation from remote participants using computers and telecommunications resulting ing telematics.

Artists: Roy Ascott, Julia Scher, and rtmark

Image by "Always There" by Julia Scher