#WENEEDARTRIGHTNOW

A gathering of artists responding to this moment

[weneedartrightnow]

A LANGUAGE FOR QUIETNESS (or, when words are not enough)

Art is where and how we speak to each other in tongues audible when “official” language fails, it is not where we escape the worlds ills but rather one place where we go to make sense of them.” – Elizabeth Alexander, The Black Interior (2001)

“The inner life is not apolitical or without social value, but neither is it determined entirely by publicness. In fact, the interior – dynamic and ravishing – is a stay against the dominance of the social world; it has its own sovereignty. It is hard to see, even harder to describe, but no less potent in its ineffability. Quiet.” – Kevin Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet (2012)

These days I often find myself lacking the right words, or even trusting that when I find them they will even be heard. I’m also too concerned with the world and distracted by mind chatter to feel fully satisfied with the signs on the page, or the echo left in the room. As a natural introvert my instinctive response to such dissonance is to retreat: back to the drawing board, to basics, to the primacy of a heartbeat. I find myself wanting to be stubbornly and unapologetically mute, and at the very moments when it’s inconvenient: before a lecture, in conversation, preparing for teaching, writing this blog post. This is not a confidence issue. I’ve given away a lot of words. From my experience they are a bit like Love, you sort of have to give them freely to get any back. No, it is an emergent symptom of our time. A potent mixture of exasperation and breathlessness, and that pain in the throat, which comes from trying to find a quiet spot just above the cacophonic din. The din that is ahistorical modern politics, and socioeconomics, and all those unresolved conditions of coloniality: separatism, prejudice, amnesia, chauvinism, poverty, materialism, insensitivity. The din that is intolerance as it meets representation, and the traumatic news, and the daily barrage of emails accompanied by everyone broadcasting in tweets and status updates and messages, just trying to be heard. Incessant noise.

I just want some quiet, and I want to be quiet and let that state of be-ing have its own incisive quality of expression, of knowledge production.

So when I am asked to respond to the inquiry of why we need art now, I am contradictorily overwhelmed but also resolute that there is language I can share. A language I have been exposed to my entire life that can speak to and through my absences of words. The language of the visual artist: those intrepid souls who “notice things”;[1] who crawl behind and in-between; who absorb and radiate concurrently; who dare to make marks. These are the folk who have made challenging but expansive company, and whose works have also been the vehicles through which I attempt to speak about the constellation of themes comprising Black/African subjectivity. History, identity, home. Absence, presence, sentience. The archive. Afro-futures - which is to say creative imaginings about what lies before us, and the experience beyond this earthly realm.

Therefore I offer to this dialogue three artworks for meditation, in no particular order. They reflect the space/time/atmosphere with which I am preoccupied. And each artwork is a response to anonymised and imagined subjects, whose quietness foments agency. They are grace-full. People of and suspended from history, with whom we can be doubly familiar and alienated. It is not necessarily our right to know them, but in the gift of each presence lays an opportunity for reflection. Facing them, facing ourselves, facing the past, facing the present:

1) Lorna Simpson. Corridor, 2003. Double-projection video installation. 13 minutes, 45 seconds.

Curatorial Note: What is shared and transformed when we witness the lives of two Black women separated by a century? Lorna Simpson constructs a portal of memory set in two iconic Massachusetts historic houses: Coffin House in Newbury and the Walter Gropius House in Lincoln. Here we encounter the ordinary activities of imagined women at critical moments in the American modernist project. Both are performed by the artist Wangechi Mutu, who provides an uncanny continuity. They do not speak neither do they acknowledge our presence. Simpson seeks to explore (in her own words) “the agency in not communicating”. We can only watch their gestures across the delicate bonds of time. The soundtrack also fuses the music of two impresarios similarly speaking across a hundred years:  piano prodigy “Blind” Tom Wiggins (1849-1908), and the abstract jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler (1936-1970).

2) Whitfield Lovell. In Silence, 2003. Charcoal on Wood, and doll bed. 26.5 x 26.5 x 8 inches.

Curatorial Note: There are so many possibilities provided by Whitfield Lovell’s revisioning of anonymous African-American people from 19th and early 20th century photographs. He is an artist that tends to their orphaned images and lives, taking care to draw their faces again on new surfaces and producing installations that combine their portraits with resonant artefacts. Thus for the young woman with a top bun and flower in her hair, there is a dolls bed. We might imagine several biographies flavoured with innocence, loss, even pleasure. Perhaps she is a teacher or suffering from melancholy or both. It is necessarily ambiguous. But the bed signals life beyond the image. Speaking of his work, Lovell says: “I want to evoke a sense of place, to be able to feel the spirit of the past for a moment, to feel the presence of these people.”

3) Carrie Mae Weems. A Broad and Expansive Sky - Ancient Rome from the Roaming Series, 2006. Digital chromogenic print, 73 x 61 in. Charles Guice Contemporary.

Curatorial Note: A Black woman in a black dress roams through historic spaces and landscapes in Europe. She is statuesque and her back invites us to participate in witnessing, since she will not show her face. A spectre and a guide, a body of reference who is unmoored from context, she confronts architectural expressions of power. Here, however, in the tenth photograph from the series, she faces the sky and the sea in ancient Rome. The shoreline is a continuous host for departures and arrivals; its watery memories riddled with losses of life from so many transatlantic sagas we still do not have enough words to convey. So, are we to remember or forget with her? Reflecting on the making of this series of photographs, Weems has said: “I thought, then, perhaps I could use my own skin in a sort of series of performances. That I could use my own body as a way of leading the viewer into those spaces—highly aware—and challenging those spaces.”

Dr Temi Odumosu - Denmark

[1] Listen to Grayson Perry’s 2013 Reith Lecture “I Found Myself in the Art world”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03g9mn1

[weneedartrightnow]

#4. Look, Here We Are. Let’s Throw a Party.

We are left with the question of how parliamentary democracy has brought us a rabidly anti-democratic president, and whether we now have to prepare to be more like a resistance movement than a political party. After all, at one Trump rally in New York tonight, the Trump supporters shamelessly revealed their exuberant hatred: “we hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want to take our country back.” —   Anton, commenting on “A Statement from Judith Butler,” on e-flux 

Let’s face it, first of all, the grossness of it: this is what we’re up against. Out-loud, legitimised fascism.

It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by this – by the violence that reaches into our bodies, our families, our communities, and our memories. It’s easy and, oh wow, is it justified.

Protest at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline

But it’s also easy to get trapped in the narrative that there’s nothing that you – we – can do. It’s not as simple as “Well, if they can throw a rally, so can we.” Trump, like Brexit, appears to enjoy the support of the populist media, of wealthy donors, of mainstream politicians and businesspeople, and of the organs of civil society.

Wait, come back. Keep reading. As Rebecca Solnit writes, “Trump was such a weak candidate it took decades of scheming and an extraordinary international roster of powerful players to lay the groundwork that made his election possible.”

Which brings us back to: be more like a resistance movement than a political party.

Protestors in Portland

Or maybe: we need to be more like a party than a political party.

For nearly a decade now, the police and licensing authorities in London have been cracking down on club nights, often in an implicitly racist manner. But I think dispersing people from clubs, raves, pirate radio stations, protest camps, and squats has another, bigger motive behind it: to stop people – particularly marginalised people, told we are worth less by dominant culture – thinking we can organise.

I look around in my area of work and see an explosion of collaborative grassroots creativity that says otherwise: film clubs, radical film networks, mobile and community cinemas, bringing more diverse films to ever more diverse audiences. At the same time I learn about Sisters Uncut, Black Lives Matter UK, 3 Cosas, Sex Worker Open University, the Dost Centre, Women for Refugee Women, Frack Off, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Media Diversified… because it’s the same people, the same ideas and strategies, crossing over and cross-pollinating between them.

Sisters Uncut (c) Claudia Moroni

It’s you. It’s me. It’s us. Look, here we are. We’re doing this, it’s happening. Not always without debates and disagreements – that’s healthy. And rarely with the support – financial or emotional – that is really needed. But to stop the sensation of the world falling to pieces, I keep looking at what is also real: the people who, everyday, are putting it back together.

So here are some prompts and inspirational poster quotes to get you going.

1/ If You Can Throw a Party, You Can Overthrow a Party

I don’t mean this as in: take a note from the Tea Party. Shadowy evangelical billionaires are hardly grassroots.

But I do mean don’t let the parties we have pretend they’ve been around since the dawn of time. Look at Podemos and Syriza: they challenged and changed the political conversation, they developed new ways of building alliances and developing policy. Could it be you that starts the UK equivalent? Why not. If you can throw a party – get people together in a room, get them moving – you can start a party.

Syriza rally, Athens

2/ Movements Move, That’s Why They’re Called Movements

You don’t have to march (on foot and/or on wheels, as needed), but some kind of physical presence can help share ideas and create connections. Being in a place together – and making movements there, whether dance or agit-prop or chanting – generates an energy that in itself is positive.

But this also works another way: movements change. Even if they start as one issue, they might take in more as more people join or the depth of the issue is revealed. Be flexible and open-minded, think about how your burning cause connects to the next person’s. Because if you pull together, the wall will fall faster.

ADAPT protest, Washington DC

3/ Speaking Out is Scary

This is not meant to put you off, but to acknowledge that the public forum is a dangerous place. Gina Miller, who brought a successful legal claim on Article 50, can’t leave her house because of threats.

But she did what she did anyway, most likely knowing – as an immigrant woman of colour – what was coming for her. If 1000, or 10,000, of us had signed up to her action, it would be harder for the faceless trolls to intimidate us.

If two people speak up on a bus or train where someone is being racially abused, it’s harder for the abuser to continue. Or even one person. Anyone can arm themselves with a few skills. It’s so scary, my word, is it ever. But what people like Miller know is that the threat, the fear is going to happen anyway whether you speak out or not. And the more space we make for fascism, the more general that threat will become.

Gina Miller outside court

4/ Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions.

These work, on all levels. And they’re not the easy option. Giving up PayPal is hard, it’s built itself in to how I do my job. There’s lots of lists available online, based on rigorous investigation, that show investors in UKIP, how to #BoycottTrump, and more.

With all the money you’ve saved, spend positive: support grassroots organisations, people in your community making art and change, co-operative and worker-owned businesses, and each other.

Protest in New York (c) Jewish Voice for Peace/Jake Ratner

5/ Do It Together

What is a party? It’s people. It’s the opposite of demagoguery, of the strong solo protagonist. It doesn’t have to be hundreds of people, especially if you have social anxiety or PTSD, or struggle with crowds for other reasons. And that’s not to discount cats, dogs, hamsters and other welcome presences. They’re just less good at stapling/photocopying/uploading/baking/putting out chairs/planning/outreach/booking coaches than they are at caring and loving.

Because, as everyone who has ever thrown a party knows, there are parts of it that are challenging, nerve-wracking, eye-rolling, and just plain dull. After the fact, what you remember is the good times, the euphoric highs when people connected and the drop was just right. But it’s not about the night, it’s about the before and after. Planning. Guest lists. Moving furniture. Cash and carry. Cleaning up. Stress.

From Leeds for Change

There are equivalents (sometimes literal) of all these in all political, social and cultural organising. And they all go better if you have one, or two, or more pairs of hands (metaphorical or literal; prosthetic or otherwise) added to yours. Turning the pre-party into the party is the secret – finding joy in the process, through togetherness.

Start with a party where we dance together, and maybe we could end with a party that represents us all.

[weneedartrightnow]

#3. Not a River in Egypt

And here is me today in the world:

backwards and forwards between yes, you look hot

in that outfit and your children are beautiful, like like like,

like the video of that rat in the lab pressing the red button.

And a tweet about some obscure techno DJ,

And the compulsive need to share the colour of my socks,

and the quiz about what kind of friend I am that spammed

my inbox. Every click another tick of the clock.

I write hearts and kisses and there are photos

of a dinner party, the long lost friend in a onesie,

cats in various comical arrangements,

and mega mega white men with their anger, anger, anger.

And in a generation, when we’re shovelling the firebreaks,

amazed at how the world burned so bright, so fast,

you will have every right to turn and ask me

what I was doing back in the days of denial.

Julia Bell

[weneedartrightnow]

#2. Chaos - Momentarily at Rest

- '...and if a single image could suffice to capture the geopolitical drama of this moment in the world, this would be it. Never to make light of the medical misfortunes of actual human beings...but here lies Steven Woolfe. Of British, Irish, African-American and Jewish descent and yet, would-be leader of Anti-Immigration party UKIP. Sucker-punched & collapsed upon the floor of the European Union building. The result of shady, internal fracas. Blow delivered courtesy of fellow Brexiteer 'Hookem'. A single visual metaphor for a tsunami of catastrophe unfolding on the global stage: From the tanking of the British pound, to the pounding of Aleppo to the pummeling of Haiti whilst climate change denial prevails, to the collapse of peace referendum in Colombia, to the unrepentant hurricane of sexual predation etched in every orange vein of one trumped up Republican candidate on the perilous war-path to 'Make America Great Again'.

This lone visual captures chaos, momentarily at rest.' -

Jan Asante

[weneedartrightnow]

#1. In Other Peoples’ Words

He is an adventurous dreamer

He can sit at his desk

Yet be in peril,

Go to the kitchen for a coffee

And dodge bullets on his way there and back

All just by grazing on his thoughts

He’s been to every country

He’s ever wanted to visit

On Google Earth

He’s walked down Fifth Avenue

Climbed Everest

Kicked sand in the face of a Carioca

On Copacabana beach

Marvelled at the fact

That Jamaica’s ocean and sky

Are really billboard blue

Versed in dog-eared one-liners,

He has won acclaim with other peoples’ words,

His heart beats for someone else’s love

His courage roars in someone else’s battle

His soul yearns for someone else’s heaven

His head bows before someone else’s god

And every now and then

Self-awareness wafts

Through an open window

Jolting him

He entertains his reality for a moment

Before he dodges bullets on his way to

Close the window

Oladipo Agboluaje