Teaching and Research with Archives

As an open-access journal comprised of educators, scholars, and librarians d…[Read more]

Themed Issue

Issue Editors:

Jojo Karlin, CUNY Graduate Center

Stephen Klein, Digital Service Librarian, CUNY Graduate Center

Danica Savonick, CUNY Graduate Center

Teaching and Research with Archives

As an open-access journal comprised of educators, scholars, and librarians deeply c…[Read more]

February 26, 2015

Program’s Extra Support for Community-College Students Is Paying Off

By Katherine Mangan

“A program at City University of New York that surrounds […]

Spring 2015 | Mondays and Wednesdays | 7:45-9:00 am

Rathaus 112

http://www.futures.gc.cuny.edu/introtonarrative

Instructor: Danica […]

HyperCities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities

Thursday January 15, 5:00- 6:30, reception to follow; books available for sale.

Jurow Lecture Hall at New York University Silver Center, […]

Since April, when this photograph appeared in The New York Times accompanying an article entitled “Republicans See Political Wedge in Common Core,” I’ve been haunted by the disjuncture between the emphatic […]

“Mapping the Futures of Higher Education” (IDS 70200)

Cross-listed ANTH 80600; ART 80010; CL 80100; CRITICAL SOCIAL/PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY; EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY; […]

Unlike entering an […]

*This blog is a work in progress that I intend to update*

It was only after visiting Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety,” on the subway ride home, that we realized how much more painful the sugar sculptures looked in digital photographs.

At the exhibit, I had to keep reminding myself that this is probably “supposed to” look like blood; these melting sugar sculptures are probably “supposed to” look like fire, and evoke scenes of violence. Looking back, though, I want to linger with my underlying assumption that good art needs to make us uncomfortable. I realize that before ever walking into the old sugar factory, I had already “read” the exhibit: it was going to reveal the geologically slow processes of history, layering the violence of slavery and sugar plantations into the present. Part of my experience was framed by this understanding, as I looked for “evidence” that would support it (the decline and dilapidation of the small brown children, the unblemished enormity of the white sphinx–the word “monolithic” kept coming to mind).

And this violent history was present, but so was a lot else. When you’re there–in the moment–the sweet scent is intoxicating and the lighting (in the late afternoon) is enchanting. It felt like being in an ambrosial cathedral. Like “A Subtlety,” cathedrals also invite reflections on violent histories, though they’re often visited for their beauty, rather than religious value. Both times I went, I had to consume something sweet afterwards. I couldn’t think about anything else until I sipped a mojito or ate gooey cake at Smorgasbord (going to Smorgasbord after “A Subtlety” deserves its own post). Both times I viscerally felt my body’s craving for sugar like an addict (and those of you who know me can attest to the reality of my sugar addiction). As an “homage,” it commemorates the lives of brown children that were the conditions of possibility for this craving. In trying to think through what the exhibit does rather than represents, it made me move towards sugar at an alarming rate.

In contrast to what I thought the exhibit ought to make me think about, the ambers emerging from these melting sugar children were so visually stunning that I couldn’t help remarking on their beauty, while simultaneously having ugly feelings about doing so. This fallen subtlety in particular contained shades of amber that I didn’t know could exist.

I think it is in the spirit of the exhibition to pay attention to its minor details, which are only minor–or subtle–from a privileged perspective, and to linger with the elements that are supposed to be background and peripheral, but are oftentimes the unseen infrastructures that silently perform. The first thing that struck me was the gorgeous, sweeping font used for the exhibit’s title, offset by the sans serif capital letters of the surrounding description. From the “y” tickling the “u” to the cleavage atop the “s,” the font is sensual and indulgent, like sugar once was and still both is (and is not).

Throughout the exhibit, you are invited to photograph it and tweet about it through the hashtag #karawalkerdomino. The result is that people milling throughout the warehouse alternate between viewing it from behind and beyond a lens–though let’s not forget the glasses and contact lenses that mediate most viewing experiences. Many of the photographs contain these spectators and their lenses, interpolating them into the exhibit itself. Especially surrounding the sphinx, viewers standing alongside her are placed at the level of the subtleties, inviting comparisons to their gorgeous, decaying bodies. For me, the exhibit raised more questions than it answered about the type of encounter–with art, with history–solicited through its invitation for digital participation. What, for instance, is at stake in sharing photographs of the exhibit? How do these invitations to share and participate relate to the complex histories crystallized in the sugar sculptures?

It’s commonplace to remark on how a photograph doesn’t do “justice” to the real thing. But in this case, and perhaps in all cases, the photographs reveal additional dimensions of the exhibit. Skirting discourses of justice and attendant assumptions of fairness, the photographs honor the exhibit by further complicating and proliferating its nuances/subtleties. In the photographs, the statues look like tar, like the pictures of blackened lungs used to scare children away from smoking. Each subtlety is surrounded by the slick of an oil spill.

The photographs foreground violence against bodies in a way that being there does not. Unlike being in the space, where I had to keep reminding myself that these incredible statues commemorate violent histories, there is no honeyed aura surrounding the photographs. These photographs are simulacra: reproductions for which there is no original. Morphing from one moment to the next, “A Subtlety” illustrates the thermodynamics of social change, how violence against African Americans has not disappeared, but transmuted into new forms.

The dissolving ballerina gracefully arches towards the sticky light refracted in her future. Although the syrupy sweetness of the exhibit will disappear when the factory is demolished, these pictures will live on. As will the sap on the treads of our shoes.

Here, I’ve provided only my own photographs, though many others are available through Twitter.

Some things I want to continue thinking about (and would love to hear others’ thoughts on!):

How the exhibit relates to technology and collaboration. Although it “belongs” to Kara Walker, it was made possible by massively collaborative efforts and advanced computer technologies. In addition, the exhibit seems to expand as it implicates contributors through digital mutations.

In “Founding the Public School” (in Black Reconstruction, 1935) Du Bois illustrates how the education of African Americans constituted the origins of public (or “common”) education in the South: “Public education for all at public expense, was, in the South, a Negro idea” (638). More specifically, “common school instruction in the South, in the modern sense of the term, was founded by the freedmen’s Bureau and missionary societies, and that the state public school system was formed mainly by Negro Reconstruction governments” (664).
“One Southern Congressman’s speech represents the strength of this
fear. “Woe be unto the political party which shall declare to the toiling
yeoman, the honest laboring poor of this country, ‘Your children
are no better than a Negro’s.’ If you think so, you shall not practice
on that opinion. We are the rulers; you are the servants! We know
what is best for you and your children. We, the millionaires — we, who
are paid out of your pockets, will take your money and will send our
children to select high schools, to foreign lands, where no Negroes
are, but you, you who are too poor to pay, shall send your ragged,
hungry urchins to the common schools on such terms as we dictate, or
keep them away to stray among the treacherous quick-sands and shoals
of life; to wander on the streets and learn to syllable the alphabet of
vice and crime, or stay at home, and like blind Samson, in mental
darkness, tramp barefoot, the tread-mill of unceasing toil!” – Du Bois, “Founding the Public School.” Black Reconstruction. (1935)

What is community college? Well, you’ve heard all kinds of things. You’ve heard it’s ‘loser college’ for remedial teens, twenty-something drop-outs, middle-aged divorcees, and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity. That’s what you heard, however… I wish you luck!
– Dean Pelton, opening lines of the television show Community

 

Emily T. Bauman, “Black […]

What are the algorithms that calculate beauty in facial recognition software? To what uses are they put? Is beauty independently calculated, or does it correspond to another variable, such as race, age, or gender?

Richard Lam, 2011.