Paris, 18 Octobre 2013, 13.00, Les Lycéens Sont Dans La Rue Pour Protester Contre La Stratégie Du Gouvernement

Vintage Album Artwork | Hailing from Benin, D’Almeida Blucky et Les Black Santiago.

Image courtesy of Radio Diffusion.

Wangechi Mutu and Her Post Human Kenyan Mutants by Edgar Arceneaux

Edgar Arceneaux: I did have a third category of how I see you using materials, which is synthetics, be it hair, mylar, sheets of vinyls that look like wood. These are things that have the qualities of being natural but are actually made with machines. Blurring the lines between organic and synthetic imbues your backgrounds with additional associations to concepts of science fiction. When we talked about particles, bleeds, and strains of interactions in your art materials, these are also the same fear-inducing qualities of the antagonist in much of science fiction, fantasy and horror genres films today. Dispersions of airborne viruses producing zombies or wiping out of society with an incurable disease, or on the genetic level, dealing with bio-technology, genetic manipulation, mutation, genetically altered foods and the cloning of human beings. All cause radical restructuring and conflict within both the human body, as well as the societal body. In most Hollywood films, disfigurement is treated as something to be suppressed, pushed back into the shadows, but in your work, you use it as a means to dispel illusions. In spite of that, your work is very seductive to so many people, could you talk about why you think that is?

Wangechi Mutu: I don't even know what people are actually seeing, I can only see through my eyes, or how it feels to be making it, or what if feels like to see these characters created in their environments. I do know that I have a deep fascination in what is considered to be "not-normal," what is considered to be the quintessential look where an ethnicity is considered to be normal. Who came up with and why? What is the purpose of coming up with those delineations and categories? In many ways I see it as a thread running through my work. I see it in pinups, in female insects to cyborgs, everything has this question of beauty, appearance, perception, our claim to understand a person's history and their intentions is based on appearance. That is why I play with this notion of what draws you in, what gives you a sense of comfort, gives you a set of codes that allows you to judge this person. "Oh, I know this person, they're morally in the right place," and I can therefore allow them in. As a non-American, as someone bureaucratically and officially alien, that term itself raises questions about what that means anyway. If you see any depictions of alien in Hollywood or mass media and apply it to yourself, there is inevitably going to be this disconnect or questioning. That's where some of those things come from.

Khayelitsha, a human dumping ground of about 1 million people was built by the apartheid government and continues to be maintained by the current neoliberal ‘democratic’ regime. The townships are hell on earth. They are a space that dehumanises all those who live in it. by The Tokolos Stencil Collective

Barkley L. Hendricks, Lawdy Mama, 1969

chris marker alain resnais Statues Also Die (1963)

I am not exotic - I am exhausted

Yto Barrada (via manufactoriel)

On Gendered Violence and Racialized Prisons

In this Race, Crime & Citizenship Symposium about the role of prisons in the criminal “justice” system, scholar and commentator Kimberle Williams Crenshaw explores the presence of a large race-, and gender-based prison system shaping understandings of citizenship. Series: “Voices” [8/2006] [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 11879]

How do you know I’m real? I’m not real; I’m just like you. You don’t exist in this society; if you did, your people wouldn’t be seeking equal rights. You’re not real; if you were, you’d have some status among the nations of the world. So we’re both myths. I do not come to you as the reality, I come to you as the myth because that’s what black people are, myths… I’m actually a present sent to you by your ancestors.

Sun Ra, Space is the Place (1974)  (via lordsofsoundandlesserthings)

The fact is, I don’t think SF can be really utopian. I mean utopia presupposes a pretty static, unchanging, and rather tyrannical world. You know: ‘I know the best way to live, and I’m going to tell you how to do it, and if you dare do anything else…’

Samuel R. Delany, interviewed in 1986, “On Triton and other matters” (via notesonresistance)