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Presented
by University of Southern California and
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Art Exhibition
Introduction by Erika Dalya Muhammad This exhibition is held in conjunction with the conference Race in Digital Space taking place at MIT on April 26-28, 2001. I wish to thank the conference coordinating committee, and all who helped to make this exhibition possible. Issues of race and ethnicity ferment in digital space. The art in this exhibition explores how electronic culture influences the constructions of identity, race, and nationhood, as our conception of the historical document evolves. The artists featured in Race in Digital Space not only use digital media to comment on digital culture, but they also employ digital tools to comment on the chronicling of history, and to anticipate future realities. Program One of the film and video selections features personal stories and testimonies. Many of the works demonstrate a wry sense of humor as they visually examine how the construct of racism is positional and relational. The impact of new media on visual culture has taken many forms, the most dominant of which is the cut-and-mix techniques employed by many of the artists here. Borrowing from popular music, jazz, and DJ culture, the artists featured in Program Two of the film and video section are attentive to audio resonances in visual images. The combination of video, break-dance, and graffiti-inspired pieces creates a dense, yet comprehensibly magnetic, hip-hop complexity. Program Three features film and video works with Afro-futrist themes, and demonstrates an aesthetic that illuminates a complex global Diaspora, originating in Africa but transcending race and ethnicity, which is defined in terms of modes of expression, paradigms of perception, and systems of symbolic communication. The uncovering of cultural identity is not an essentialist practice, but rather a way to communicate stories of the past and imagine narratives of the future. The CD-ROMS and net.art in this exhibition demonstrate the elliptical nature of digital documentation‹their interactivity offers examples of how to make digital experiences corporeal. The community-activist websites, many featuring the work of youths, revolve around the utopian aim of translating digital investments into "real world" activism. The hyperkenetic "impact aesthetics" created by remix engineers and editors is often far removed from the realities of daily life. In the sonic exercises featured here, an amped-up level of interaction and manipulation allows you to "hear" the digital habitats and political foundations created through the use of hi-tech tools. The works featured in this exhibition offer examples of how cultural and social interactions define our uses of technology.
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Click
here for the conference overview |