By Sarah Rotman
Based on the premise that "inequalities in social class and
race and are not the product of natural factors" but instead
are "a social, cultural and political construction," Mongrel
produces art and technology that enables minority artists while criticizing
the "exclusive nature of emerging technologies." Composed
of London artists of varied racial origins, Mongrel is a flexible
collective engaged in making things and helping others explore their
own ways of making things.
The Mongrel website serves many functions: to educate people about
their cause and their organization; to document and archive their
projects; to promote current projects and workshops; to offer their
skills as consultants on art and technology production and social
awareness workshops. The design of the site is fairly simple yet powerfully
visual, and works effectively to reinforce the content and the message.
The splash page is composed of a grid of multi-racial faces, which
flash and alternate, each of which link to the main site. This grid
recalls the obsessive classification of racial features by turn-of-the-century
eugenicists such as Francis Galton, yet it reclaims the database from
its denigrating nature and uses it in an equalizing way. No race is
more prominent than any other, but none are objectified or made grotesque
as they were in Galton's composite portraits. On each of the feature
pages, the text is overlaid on an image, a close-up photograph of
a Mongrel body part (an ear, an eye, a nipple). This method also serves
to make each race somehow anonymous and yet unified-is there really
a difference between a Japanese nipple and an Afro-Caribbean nipple
other than the color? If the photos were in black and white, could
you tell the difference?
The only criticism I have of the site is that the headings are somewhat
confusing (what is the difference between product, project, software,
and archive?), but this is only a minor issue. Overall it is a highly
innovative concept, a worthwhile project, and an effective execution
of digital technology to enhance and enable the Mongrel message.