#bis 332

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Materialism: People that we will never forget

According to Taja Lindley’s artistic video “This Ain’t a Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering”, she tried to maintain a political focus on the conditions of blackness in her performance, and by using different representation of material in the video to make further exploration of the relationship between politics and blackness. The video comes up with exquisite editing and well-planned movements to demonstrate her impressive and reflecting thoughts about blackness as a victim of Police Brutality and make people have deeper thoughts on the “Black Lives Matter” movement. The significant restored behavior “Don’t Shoot!”, performed by Taja, makes the sound keep echoing in the studio with the trash bags and balloons rotating and flying surround the performer. It is introduced as a healing performance by the performer herself, and shall we just analyze and understand her point of view together as a person who might be healed by this amazing video.             

(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/black-lives-matter-birth-of-a-movement)

In the beginning of the video, there are many black colored bodega bags with names written with white marker tied to the fence, lost on the ground, hang on the tree and waving in the air. As we focus more on these names, we could easily find out some names that related to the police brutality that we familiar with. Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown and the black people who killed by the police (a structurally white institution). According to Bonilla-Silva’s theory of institutional racism, it is “based on a system in which the White majority ‘raises its social position by exploiting, controlling, and keeping down others who are categorized in racial or ethnic terms’”. (Bonilla-Silva 1997: 466) While reading these names, I could feel my breath is holding for seconds, and I am just quietly feeling the time ticking forward.

(https://futuristicallyancient.com/2017/09/18/m-g-recap-the-bag-lady-manifesta/)

After watching the beginning, I’m starting to interest in how everyday objects (the bodega bags, trash bags, and balloons) embody blackness through performance in order to testify to the physical and structural violence that black people suffer at the hands of the police. In the video, Taja Lindley dressed in the costume that is made of bodega bags and trash bags. She dances on the stage that fulfill with those black colored bags and balloons. The movements of the performer lead the bags and balloons spin and wave surround her with sounds of winds and the music she created as well. The scene was fantastic and make me want to explore more about the materialism she applied in this video. As we known, the representation of bodega bags and trash bags would be cheap and easy to use by people in our daily life. Taja wrote names on it to use these bags as the representative of the black people who died because of police, also have a deeper meaning that shows the historical image of black people, which is related to slavery and trafficking. And the property of balloons, which appear with the bags at the same time, also tells us that black is fragile, weak and easy to hurt. But she tried to use her movement, not only to make people remember these names, but also to unite the blackness surrounds her. The movement of the bags and balloons is mainly on the lower part of the stage, which make Taja look like a giant leader and use her power (wind) to lead the rest.  The silence of the objects was breaking by Taja Lindley’s movement and become more and more active to respond her action. Gradually, the bags that made Taja’s costume had a connection with some bags surround her, which created a feeling of they are giving her power and become a greater unity. It indicates that black people should stand together and fight the social injustice for themselves.

(https://openhouseblog.nyc/2017/03/05/taja-lindley-this-aint-a-eulogy-a-ritual-for-re-membering-2/)

In her own point of view, Taja Lindley calls us to recycle the energy of protest, rage and grief, which represented by the bags and balloon in another meaning, to create a new world that black people could live peacefully with the other groups of people. It is a unique way to think about these daily objects as emotional power that could collect by her to help people get over all the difficulties.

                        (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/data-police-racial-bias)

In the end, I believed that my idea is matter because it is associated with the controversial topic, which is about racism and some of the power that forces African American into a danger situation. It might become the conflict between the black community and the police. And my question would be, if the police is killing blacks indiscriminately, who are they claiming to “protect and serve” actually? Who will protect black people from the police? Where can black people be safe? Are black people even included in society?

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Creative Response

Artist statement

During the creating process of this assignment, I chose to write a poem as the response of Taja Lindley’s performance “This Ain’t a Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering”. As a person from Asia, I also sympathize with the experiences faced by black folks. Taja used the restored behavior “Don’t’ shoot” and her performance with daily objects to introduce many examples of the police (a structurally white institution) brutality, which a force to oppress black community, to me. And I want to use my words as a protest to respond to her work.

As I asked in the blog post, if the police are killing blacks indiscriminately, who are they actually claiming to “protect and serve”? Who will protect black people from the police? Where can black people be safe? Are black people even included in society?

So, I used some of the books, poems and artistic works to enrich my work and ask the questions in an artistic way. I wrote the poem in Chinese at first, because most of the sources I read is also translated to Chinese to help me had a better understanding of their feelings. After I finished the creating, I started to translate it back to English and tried my best to find some rhyme feet as I can. So, at the beginning of the poem, I declared the people that I want to speak for, the people next to the cane, way down south in Dixie, between the world and me. These details are from a poem named “Sugarcane” by Nicolás Guillén, who is a national poet from Cuba; Langston Hughes’s song “Song for a Dark Girl”, which he wrote for his daughter to express the anger and sadness after he lost his daughter; and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book “Between the world and me”, which he wrote a letter in the book to his son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities that black people faced in the United States. So, I use these three phrases to represent all the black folks that be oppressed. The white god and god’s hand, which represent historical facts of white enslavement and the privilege that white people have nowadays in the society, which is similar to the white hand.

In the third part of the poem, I decided to use the Portuguese poet, Aguinaldo Fonseca’s poem “MÃE NEGRA”, which means the “Black mother”, to reproduce the feeling of black people who wants to be treated as equal as the other groups but got killed by the police because of structural racism. I read this poem in Chinese version so I may have a different and deeper feeling of the words.

And the last part will be the questions in a more artistic way and I feel like it fits the topic of Taja Lindley, which she recycled the energy of protest, rage and grief, as the bags and balloons stand for, to find a way of creating a new world that black people could live peacefully with the other groups of people.