injunction of their action on its essence, rendering itself “an affectable thing.” 5 Video—historically and as deployed by Lazard, Cokes, and Lee—pulls the hermetic artist into the wider orbit of a collective consciousness, with sympa- thizers real and imagined, scenarios near and far. No feat of engineered psychological fortification from the world’s smorgasbord of atrocities can disguise the truth that we want to be a part of something, despite the promise of recrudescence. The din and clamor of infernal gaping salivating prattling of other people are also immanent to us— we who refuse to refuse our shrillness, vanity, and selfishness. We need ugliness like air and water. We risk, capitulate, and are implicated for belonging. This is uncon- ditional self/love. Contemplating how these three artists use video (laced with text) as a medium, I think of the “antiportraits”— “recalcitrant” installations that prominently utilize text and sound to mediate histories and depictions of slavery—that Huey Copeland favors, artistic expressions that “do not come easily to hand” and that rebalanced the calculus of cultural currency in their erstwhile era of feel-good multiculturalism. 6 These videos—vigorous and macabre events they may attempt to actuate; afflicting their audiences and creators alike—do not condescend to surrogate the ennui and weight of our existence. Pinky promise you’ll hold me as the world ends?
Toward a Global Idea of Race a, erreira da Silv 5 Denise F 31. , 2007), a Press ersity of Minnesot (Univ , and the t, Slavery Bound to Appear: Ar 6 Huey Copeland, ersity of (Univ Site of Blackness in Multicultural America 19, 201. , 2013), Chicago Press
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