#philipp farra

[sangthipolyt]

[sangthipolyt]

[riting]

Hanging with Clarence by Rodney McMillian

John Story on Hanging with Clarence

In fall of 2019, artist Rodney McMillian presented Hanging with Clarence, a performance based on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1986 commencement address at Savannah State University.

The piece was staged at the Bethlehem Baptist Church, designed by the late Rudolf Schindler. A 2013 Los Angeles Times article described the church as “the lone example of Modernist architecture to cross Los Angeles economic and racial boundaries in the era of Jim Crow housing covenants.” The structure was built in 1944.

McMillian, adorned in a Catholic priest’s garb and snakeskin boots, approached the stage with two female performers. They made a slow march toward the church pulpit, while McMillian chanted ominously and the supporting vocalists harmonized. The phrase “dogs holler” pulsated in each line of his lament.

The artist took to the podium and a switch of character occured. He became the proud icon of black conservatism, Supreme Court Justice Thomas (though in 1986 he was Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).

Throughout the speech, the tone of McMillian’s Thomas was self-congratulatory. An awareness of personal triumph was identifiable.

Then there was a turning, a burst of sensuality. Red lighting emanated from the walls and ceiling. McMillian dropped and gyrated to a tune about an “unholy fountain” (reminiscent of the late Prince Rogers Nelson).

Several such bipolar oscillations occurred. The dignified regal Justice Jekyll switched back and forth with Mr. Hyde. In one interlude, Mr. Hyde exclaimed “terrorize yourself!”

In Thomas’ closing, he praised the previous generation, particularly his own mother. The qualities he uplifted in them were pious, humble and Christian; a silent endurance of suffering. An attempt to raise a future generation above the limitations of their own.

In the end, the audience is left with the age-old Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy. Thomas, a black man in the highest branch of the judiciary, preceded only by Thurgood Marshall. Respected worldwide, the hope of so many, yet also Anita Hill’s terrorizer. What shifts occur in his psyche? The judge is known for his reticence on the court, compared to his colleagues. Perhaps McMillian is imagining what stirs under such stoicism.

John Story is a filmmaker and writer from Orlando, Florida, who now resides in Los Angeles. He is currently developing a coming-of-age screenplay about his hometown.

Philipp Farra on Hanging with Clarence

Two to three parts, a modernist church built in 1944 by Rudolf Schindler on the corner of Compton Avenue and 49th Street in Los Angeles, a commencement address speech from 1985 by Clarence Thomas, historical material placed in situ by a seemingly religious performance: a wooden crucifix behind the performing Rodney McMillian. The performance-concert: lighting, photographers running around, a public that sits in church benches while witnessing the spectacular event happening in front of them. McMillian recites parts of the commencement speech by Clarence Thomas at Savannah State College on June 9th, 1985, interrupted by performances—with Shauna L. Howard and Tekeytha Fullwood—of funk-rock songs written by McMillian and Tamara Silvera (“Living in the Buckle (for Mary)”, “Kill Me”, “Gas and Tabasco” (2012-2016)), George Clinton and Fuzzy Haskins (“Miss Lucifer’s Love”, 1972).

What is the history of that church, the connection of church and speech, and gospel, and modernist architecture, that lends itself to the re-enacting, re-performing, re-appropriating of Clarence Thomas’s speech? A pageant that embodies contradictions. In a contemporary performance landscape that often essentializes race and identity this performance is a reminder that race does not—

The performance complicates the notion of an easy understanding and reading of history, race, and, thus, identity. The discourse of identity politics presents race as a fixed entity, but how is it that a category that identity politics takes to be a fixed essence turns out to be so indeterminate?[1] Obviousness might be one feature of ideology: there was no obviousness in Hanging with Clarence. McMillian—who kept changing characters during the performance— between the speech of a former civil rights movement activist who is today a conservative Associate Supreme Court Justice and, between songs like “Miss Lucifer’s Love” and others of his own composition, McMillian as a writer, speaker, performer, singer.

It is complicated, history is complicated, History is complicated, a good complication. History has to be remembered, analyzed and reworked to inform the current discourse and future discourses, it seems that is, what McMillian communicates.

[1] Asad Haider, Mistaken Identity, Race and Class in the Age of Trump (2018): 43

Philipp Farra (b 1991, Schoenebeck (Elbe) Germany) is an artist currently based in New York City where he attends the Whitney Independent Study Program. He is interested in narrative structures and questions of representation through a Marxist lens within the context of art.

Hanging with Clarence by Rodney McMillian was presented at Rudolph Schindler’s Bethlehem Baptist Church in Compton on November 23rd 2019 by The Underground Museum, as part of the show ‘Brown: videos from The Black Show’, curated by Megan Steinman. It was performed by Rodney McMillian with Tekeytha Fullwood and Shauna L. Howard. The songs were written by R.M. and Tamara Silvera and produced by R.M. and John Whynot. The performance was co-produced by Rodney McMillian and Scott Benzel.

Special Thanks to Optima Funeral Home, Tunic Sound and Cauleen Smith.

Rodney McMillian lives and works in Los Angeles. McMillian explores the complex and fraught connections between history and contemporary culture, not only as they are expressed in American politics, but also as they are manifest in American modernist art traditions.

Photos by Christel Robleto, courtesy of the artist and The Underground Museum.

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