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Lauren Halsey
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And now the episode. We talk about Lauren Halsey’s exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Chris Bayley.
It's a maximalist environment that led us to a discussion about art, freedom, identity, revolution and care. It also allowed us to find out more about the myths and origins of the term Afro-Futurism, which surprised us a great deal.
To know more about the exhibition: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/lauren-halsey-emajendat/
We also mention Emily's friend, an artist using street signs in her work. Go to Instagram and check her out! @janeroerevolution
Music by Sarturn.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Exhibitionistus' Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Joanna here. Welcome to Exhibitionistus.
Lauren Halsey's 'Imagine That' Exhibition Discussion
00:00:13
Speaker
Today we talk about Lauren Halsey's exhibition Imagine That at the Serpentine Gallery, curated by Lizzie, Carrie Thomas and Chris Bailey. It's a maximalist environment that led us to a discussion about art, freedom, identity, revolution, care,
00:00:31
Speaker
It also allowed us to find out more about the myths and origins of the term Afrofuturism, which I have to say surprised us a great deal.
Art and its Connection to Community and Identity
00:00:41
Speaker
This episode unexpectedly located us as spectators in our freedoms and in our edges, as you will see.
00:00:49
Speaker
It also reminded us that one of the things that connects us is probably the ability to dream without systematically placing our own desires at the centre of dreamscapes. You know, dreamscapes are not always about us and world-making is a joint effort, specific at times to groups that not always had the possibility of even having one.
00:01:14
Speaker
dreams are actually realities in the making. But this is really what we've learned ah by visiting and talking and researching this incredible exhibition. And we also kind of got to the conclusion that all of this may very well be one of the facets of joy. So without further ado, come with me. Let's push the doors of the serpentine and discover this incredible world of Lauren Halsey.
Podcast Format and Hosts Introduction
00:01:56
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Exhibitionistus. If you're new here, this is the only conversational podcast where we visit solo exhibitions in London to discuss them here in this recorded space. From an art specialist perspective, me, Joanna Piannevers, contemporary art writer and curator, and from an outsider's albeit passionate and many times erudite point of view, I'm talking about my lovely co-host, who I will let introduce herself.
Maximalism and Site-specific Elements in Halsey's Work
00:02:25
Speaker
Oh, so kind. And yes, I'm Emily Harding, an art lover and an exhibition goer. I don't know how erudite, but ah it's it's a great pleasure to view exhibitions and discuss them with you, Joanna, and with the dear listeners, a phrase that I am picking up from you very much so. So this exhibition is is Lauren Halsey. Imagine that at the Serpentine, and it gives a lot to consider emphasis on a lot because there is a maximalist theme going on throughout it. So it's at the Serpentine until the 23rd of February in London. It's a site-specific installation, which makes it, I think, kind of an additionally interesting. It's also really inspired by funk.
00:03:13
Speaker
the group Parliament in particular, which I loved because, you know, you can kind of go down a rabbit hole of funk on title or Spotify or wherever you stream your music. the star Did that ring a bell for you? Oh, God, yeah.
00:03:28
Speaker
Oh, 100 percent. I was wondering. I was wondering. Yeah,
Reflections and Reactions to the Exhibition
00:03:33
Speaker
definitely. And yeah, no, it was it was really fun and Funkadelic, you know, all those bands. But for me personally, it was a this kind of whole this exhibition was a real roller coaster. So I was super excited to see it when I kind of saw it online. And then I had a bit of a disorienting experience within the exhibition.
00:03:55
Speaker
and i And I was like trying to land on where I felt about it. it was yeah you know I left with it still pretty up in the air. And then you know I did research for the podcast. And I i feel now like I'd like to return to Halsey's perspective with more knowledge than I had
Podcast Anniversary Celebration
00:04:15
Speaker
before. like That could be an interesting ah huh world to go back to because, as we said, there's a lot. So there certainly would have been a lot that I would have missed and a lot that um deserves more attention. Totally agree. Totally agree. I also want to go back and experience it again for sure. It's one of those where this episode makes so much sense for it um because there's so much to find out about Lauren Halcy
00:04:43
Speaker
about the exhibition, about the choices that were made, the project itself, what it
Ways to Support the Podcast
00:04:49
Speaker
links to. I mean, there's a lot to talk about, and I really can't wait um to dig in. But before we go into it, I just want to inform our listeners, our dear listeners, that we're now officially one-year-old babies. Take your first step.
00:05:09
Speaker
exactly Tattering around, holding on to the coffee table. exhibition's a toddler. So on the 25th of January of 2024, we dropped our first episode. And I think you should check this episode if you discovered us midway. I'm just going to tell you that Emily was manhandled by a security guard while trying to get some nudes. So if this doesn't pique your interest, I don't know what will.
00:05:42
Speaker
Ah gosh, can you remember one year ago? Innocent, sweet innocence, yeah. The innocence. Marina Abramovich exhibition, yeah, will live in my memory forever.
00:05:55
Speaker
but But um more importantly, I would like to thank you, our listeners, followers, subscribers. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. And please, if you want us to continue to grow and to develop,
00:06:15
Speaker
You can do lots of things to support us. So you can, ah first of all, subscribe to the podcast. you know I know it sounds very abstract, but it does count. Yeah, totally. It's really important. um You can leave comments and ah there's platforms that allow you to Spotify in particular. um You can leave comments there. So far, we only have one. It's in the Mike Kelly episode and it says, ah ladies.
00:06:41
Speaker
pick up a brush. So I would really urge you to contribute with other kinds of comments. I mean, we really love that one. We cherish it. It's the first one. But um I didn't know personally that Spotify had comments. So that's why I'm talking about it because um We are not all aware of what we can do and how we can interact with podcasts. And actually you can, and you can send us ideas. You can give feedback as well, which is always important. So please, please contribute. yeah Because when we go to the analytics of Spotify, there's that one comment.
00:07:16
Speaker
It's there. It's looking at us all the time. And as much as we love it, we'd like it to have friends, you know? Yeah, I think it feels lonely, you know? Yeah, As it should, honestly. But anyway, um another thing you can do is to leave us a rating, ah to leave us a review. Tell us what you like about the podcast. You can also tell us what you don't like about the podcast, which of course,
00:07:42
Speaker
We have to urge you to do, but you know be kind, be nice. We do listen and we're very interested in knowing how we can make things better, what you like, what you prefer, what you want more of, what you want less of. Ratings are very important um as well. Another easy thing to do is just um tell your friends about us. just talk about the podcast, put the word out there. And finally, another thing that you can do, and obviously this is really important to us as well, is to support us financially. Obviously, um we want to continue doing this and we want to grow.
00:08:21
Speaker
And for that, we can also rely on fan support. So we have a Patreon page. You can be a member of our page for a really, really small donation monthly. But we are also adding a PayPal account where you can do just a one-off donation because I know it's easier for a lot of people to do that. So we will have that in our newsletter, in our Instagram account,
00:08:49
Speaker
in our website and in the show's notes. So please think of us. I know Christmas is behind us and January is a tough month, but you know we don't need big donations. Lots of ways to support us. Independent journalism is what we do, and therefore we really, really need your support. So tell me, Joanna, what was your week in culture like? Well, um I just got back from France, us from a small town called Amiens, where the Frac Picardi is located. So at Drawing Now, so I'm artistic director of Drawing Now Paris, which is an art fair dedicated to drawing that takes place every year in March, last week of March. um So we have a partnership with the Frac.
00:09:36
Speaker
And ah we do that because it's a collection and a space that is exclusively dedicated to contemporary drawing. So I curate two shows there every year, um more or less around the time of the art fair in March. And that's what I did ah last week. And this year, I focused on the notion of codes and notations for the exhibition. um You know, when written words are no longer enough,
00:10:04
Speaker
to convey what you want to convey, think music and dance notations, but also mathematical signs, etc. And I took inspiration from Emily, a really important artist in France called Jacques Fergle, who passed away in 2018, I think at 90,
00:10:21
Speaker
um He was a really, really interesting artist. He was an afishist as well, which means that he would um retrieve posters from the street and make collages with them. um He's quite an established artist by now in France and a historical one. And he also had a project that he started in 1969.
00:10:44
Speaker
called the socio-political alphabet, which was composed of signs ah that were socially and politically motivated and that he would find in the streets and that he would collect. Cool. I love that. It's so compelling.
00:11:00
Speaker
yeah I mean, i you know yeah, that's that's really cool because it's like you can think of like the peace sign and you know people putting that around everywhere in the 60s, but there's so much more and so much more depth to them now. i mean A friend of mine is ah is a street artist and she does a lot of the um she does a lot of stickers.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yeah. With various kind of different signs on them and you know through her instagram account you see so many you see the variety of. Of different signs that that there are and wow what a great idea to kind of really capture and distill those.
00:11:40
Speaker
Wow, maybe we can put her Instagram account in the show's notes. Yeah, we sure can. ah Her name is Paula Finbow, but the Instagram account, I think it's Jane Roe Revolution.
00:11:54
Speaker
But we'll put that in there. We'll leave it in the show's notes. And that's exactly what he took inspiration from, but obviously also from slogans. And, you know, 69 was that period was quite a revolutionary period and a period of protest. So, of course, he kind of drew inspiration from that. And the cultural highlight for me, I'm getting there, is when I was shown at The Frack a book of Benjamin Perret, who was a French poet, with Vilgli's alphabet. Oh, there's a fox peeing in a bush right outside my window. Excuse me for being very distracted by it. Okay, picking up again. So, Benjamin Perret, French poet. um So the text ah that was published in this little booklet, ah it was called the Poets de Zona.
00:12:50
Speaker
It was written in 1945 against the use of poetry by politically motivated agendas, namely the Communists, so Benjamin Perret was a Trotskyist, he was part of the surrealist movement as well at some point,
00:13:06
Speaker
um But it was also against criticism but about of poetry as being escapism because, and I love this sentence of the text, quote, they scorned dreams in favor of reality as if reality were not one and the most overwhelming of its aspects, unquote. The text is quite something. I really urge you to read it. You can find it in English.
00:13:30
Speaker
online. But more importantly, Perret has a stance against poetry as a liberating tool and equates fascist and democratic poetry, or communist, obviously. That was kind of the aim of his text. So he equates both.
00:13:46
Speaker
um Both are chained to the ideas of God or nation or both. So of course, this is very um contained by the period that he was writing about. He was living in Mexico at the time. He had such ah look him up he has such an incredible life. So he was against the ah poetry being attached to ideas of belonging.
00:14:08
Speaker
rather than total and unconditional revolutionary irreverence. um And we go back to so many things discussed in past episodes, right? Such as you know when we talked about American curator Helen Molesworth's comment about how we went from ideas of revolution and anarchy even in exhibitions and in art to ideas of caring.
00:14:33
Speaker
and community in art spaces and exhibitions in particular, which falls right into the subject today. right yeah it really is It really is the subject. But to be honest, I was really mostly taken by the book ah that I kind of had in my hands. It was published in 2004. And the thing is, you manage to read it.
00:14:56
Speaker
despite the subverted graphics of the letters. um So for example, A becomes the anarchist A, O is the swastika inside a sort of multifaceted kind of roundish shape. And you can read the text, but you read it in a sort of syncopated manner. So it's as if you're reading, undid the words even more,
00:15:19
Speaker
and created a whole of the meaning. So I was just so taken by this book. It was such a special moment in the week. It feels like there could not be something more up your straight person, you know? i mean If you know me. it has Yeah, it has like, you know, your your love of just like words and letters and the written text and then to have that absolutely infused with all sorts of other abstract meaning through these symbols. I can imagine that was i can imagine your joy and pleasure in that. Yeah, it was fantastic. It was a special moment. Thank you Christophe at the Frac, who showed me the book. um They have an amazing person who takes care of
00:16:04
Speaker
all the books and all the catalogs. um And they choose, they always have books available um that connect to the exhibition that they're showing, curated by Christophe, but also by the artists and the curators who are there. So it it is a really great institution to work with and and I had a wonderful time. So, but how about you?
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, for me, pretty low key, but I finished a book from one of my favorite authors, Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman is the name of the book. She won a Pulitzer for it in 2021.
00:16:36
Speaker
And it's, you know, for those who may have cracked the spine of an Erdrich novel before and found them a challenge because she is really known for using magical realism in her work. And kind of she messes with narrative timelines quite a bit. She's one of those authors where you really have to pay attention. You know, it's hard to, it's hard to be nodding off to sleep in, in her, in her works. Usually this,
00:17:03
Speaker
book uses a more straight narrative structure, and there is some of the great symbolism and sort of magical realism that she's known for in there, but it's a little bit more in the background in this one. But she's a Native American from Minnesota, so from my home state, and she is totally a local luminary.
00:17:26
Speaker
um And the book follows the story of a night watchman, which is roughly based on her grandfather, I think it was, who worked at this jewelry settings plant that had been put on the reservation. His real kind of purpose was working with the native council to resist the federal government's push to erase Native heritage and rights. i mean there was you know I mean, obviously, the story of Native Americans is a long and rich, but with the US government, you know they'd been pushed and pushed and squeezed into these reservations. And then at a certain point, they were like, oh, no, no, um we're just going to say that you're Americans now. so
00:18:08
Speaker
anybody can come into your lands and and buy them. and you know You've been horribly ah treated and you know you've had genocide and um you know massive, massive ah disenfranchisement economically, educationally, et cetera. And culturally. And culturally. But now the this this particular move was to just say, we're not going to have any protected lands because we're just going to see you as regular Americans. and So, obviously, there was a big push against this. You know, it's a real thing that happened in history, and she's building up this novel around that historical thread. It takes place in North Dakota and a bit in Minnesota, and it's just another great offering of a Native writer telling the story of what has happened to Native Americans throughout time and in very recent history, too.
00:19:06
Speaker
Wow. um I'm so glad that you know Native American voices recently have reached some of ah the mainstream platforms, and and that's absolutely amazing. um And it's great because you know the story has been very hushed, and it's good to know you know a bit more about it, but also a bit more about the present and the future of these communities.
00:19:31
Speaker
and not just kind of like stick them to an ah an idea of the past that is very tokenizing and and romanticized. and ah yeah That's amazing. i I think I'm going to have a look. I hope I have time to pick up a ah novel at some point this year. I would super, super recommend it. Amazing. She's brilliant.
00:19:52
Speaker
Okay, um so we are about to push the Serpentine's south gallery doors and enter the topical world of Lauren Halsey, if not for the fact that she is LA based and wildfires have literally consumed the parts of the city and killed many people there, which is a terrible, terrible thing um that um has happened in this turn of the year.
00:20:22
Speaker
But anyway, moving on to Lauren Halsey, do you want to introduce us to her, Emily? Yeah, it's my great pleasure. And and i'm I really am so happy that we're doing an episode that is so LA based, considering the ah heartbreak that's happening there now. I mean, obviously, as you say, people have died, but people have lost everything. And there's something very specific about the loss with fires as well. It's like,
00:20:49
Speaker
A flood comes. The things are kind of mostly still there only in a, you know, in a different form and you you choose to then get rid of them. But it's like with, you just see ash heaps everywhere of people's lives. And yeah, it's just been so heartbreaking.
00:21:07
Speaker
So I'm going to start by citing a great write-up in The Guardian about the exhibition by Khadish Morris. But there are so many other reviews of the exhibition and info, and there's info on Lauren Halsey out there.
00:21:22
Speaker
I saw this super charming short on YouTube of an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Halsey. And at a certain moment in the short, you see the both of them on stationary bikes, which was really cute.
00:21:37
Speaker
um So yeah, so I really enjoyed a podcast episode as well with Halsey and George Clinton, who's the founder of Parliament, super famous funk band from the late 60s. They're still going, to be honest, but that was kind of ah when their heyday was sort of late 60s, early 70s. He's in his 80s now. Yeah.
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, and it's this incredible this interview between the two of them. Honestly, look it up. It's on the David Zwirner podcast. I think it's called Dialogues. Through this episode that we're having now, it will become clear why that connection is so important.
00:22:16
Speaker
But the the interview between Clinton and Halsey is just beautiful. It's like people across generations, you know different sort of ah artistic mediums, but but have this lively sense of connection. And yeah, it was really, really nice. And he' is he's just like a super sweet guy, yeah super sweet old.
00:22:39
Speaker
you know artistic elder, really. yeah yeah And not to jump the gun, I think that's one of the strengths of ah Lauren Halsey, isn't it? Because she really is looking into a past and different generations before her and also ahead of her. But but that's that's kind of one of the moving things about her, I find. Yeah, totally, totally.
00:23:02
Speaker
So Lauren Halsey was born in LA in 1987, more specifically South Central LA, which is where much of her work is physically and conceptually centered. As she grew up, her dad was an accountant, her mom was a school teacher who apparently brought home lots of craft supplies, ah home for Halsey to play with, which again is something, a feature of of this exhibition in particular, you can kind of draw a line there.
00:23:30
Speaker
Her first love was basketball, which is also reflected in the exhibition, but her parents really pushed a more academic route. She eventually graduated with a BFA from the California Institute of Arts, aka CalArts, as did Mike Kelly and Judy Chicago from other recent episodes. And it for me personally, it was kind of fun to be like, oh,
00:23:55
Speaker
I think I'm seeing the vibe. you know i mean you know there is There is a thing that was going on there that feels very specific, would you agree? I was expecting that comment because when we started with l LA, it was through Jewish cargo.
00:24:13
Speaker
And I remember expecting you to be super knowledgeable about LA, California, the scene. yeah And I forget that the United States is bigger than Europe. I mean, you're from Minnesota for Christ's sake. So you just are discovering with a whole lot of insight compared to me, obviously, and probably being even more extra careful to not contain things um, and characteristics too quickly. But I was wondering, you know, how you would feel about having done like, this is the third episode about that scene. The West and the American West has a fascination and a connection to land and space that
00:25:04
Speaker
that is different than the rest of the country. I mean, if you think of like the great novelists, you know Steinbeck or Wallace Stegener, I mean, these people who you know were California writers to their bones or or or American West writers to their bones really.
00:25:24
Speaker
And you know, you certainly see that in Judy Chicago with like the, you know, the colorful explosions of, you know, the land projects and things like that. And I mean, Lauren Halsey is really different. She is not, you know, she's not reflecting the natural environment as much, but environment is is really at the heart of of the work that she's doing and representing that environment rather than an internal idea or something necessarily political. I mean, there are internal ideas and it is political in a way, but there's- Yeah, Mike Kelly, too. The expansion of the projects in time and space.
00:26:09
Speaker
of Mike Kelly, although he's not originally from California and or from the West Coast. He comes from Detroit. And there's something like, I mean, I think maybe with Mike Kelly and Lauren Halsey is there's sort of this cacophonous thing that they both have. I mean, I'm thinking of like that second to last room of the of the Mike Kelly show, which was just like everything everywhere all at once. And Lauren Halsey definitely has that same thing going on where you're almost like, what is my focal point? Like where where am I supposed to land in this room? I'm not sure. But I think it's interesting because she she then went to the East Coast, she went to Connecticut and
00:26:54
Speaker
finished in MFA at Yale in 2014. So Yale is a really prestigious, it's one of those Ivy League schools, right? Yeah. But i i when I think of Yale and the arts, I think of drama.
00:27:09
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. There were a couple of encounters, though, that put her on the path of art. And the first was her exposure to funk music, which we talked about. um This was, you know, she's on her parents' computer in the early aughts and she comes across the funk band Parliament on LimeWire. Remember that, folks?
00:27:31
Speaker
ah For those who aren't familiar with funk music, you have a glorious exploration ahead of you. It's a style that emerged in the late 60s, has its roots in black empowerment and expression. Parliament is a biggie, um but there were lots of bands in sort of the late 60s that were kicking off with Funkadelic, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind, and Fire.
00:27:54
Speaker
I mean, these were enormous bands. Funk is maximalist. So you know lots of band members, lots of wild outfits, makeup, different characters, none of them had to relate to one another.
00:28:10
Speaker
Um, you know, it was, it was a, it was a very slippery gender spectrum that was on display. I mean, uh, George Clinton used to wear these long blonde wigs and dresses and, you know, but there was never like, you know, a question about his sexuality as just this was his expression in the band. And, and that's, you know, that sort of community open aspect really, really seemed to speak to Halsey.
00:28:39
Speaker
and you know yeah and inform her work. But that opened us as well. So i I read a review that was about that was you know kind of um fixated on this idea of funkersizing the space, which is what she proposes to do in her artwork and her installations. And she was expecting music.
00:29:02
Speaker
And the idea of funk, and it took me a while to understand this in Lauren Halsey, is that funk is a philosophy of life. It's this idea of not having a fixed ah structure.
00:29:16
Speaker
that then you have to hold on to. There's ah an interview in the catalogue with the two curators, Obrist and Lizzie Carey-Thomas. And they are trying to understand what is the project, because the basis of this exhibition is that she wants to develop a sculpture park in South Central LA. And the last answer is her saying,
00:29:40
Speaker
I don't know. I don't want to behold to any plan. I want to see what people are doing. This is a live thing in the present, in the now, and so I need to remain open to that.
00:29:52
Speaker
and That was fascinating. Yeah, I know, I know. I think it's really special. The second kind of point that ah helped her put her on a path of being an artist was she met a fellow LA artist called Dominique Moody. And this inspired an interest in architecture and inspired me to look up Dominique Moody and was a very satisfying trip down an internet rabbit hole. So go and check her out as well, really interesting artist. Halsey said, I knew I didn't want to become an architect with a capital A, but I thought I could navigate the language of architecture through art. So she was drawn to ancient Egyptian expressions of of heritage through architecture. So of course, there's obelisks and you know, you think of
00:30:43
Speaker
Cleopatra's needles, Sphinx is examples that can help tell the story of the people for their, you know, their history and their hopes for the future. And Halsey was inspired to do this for her community in South Central LA, primarily by building community gardens in vacant lots. There was also, because There was so many rabbit holes in this investigation. I don't know more than most, right? I just feel like there was just so much exploration, unique amalgamation of what sort of puts an artist together or, you know, their world. The other influences she talks about is a dad.
00:31:25
Speaker
and the connection between her dad's headspace, the way he thinks, the way he connects things, and Sun Ra. There's a great video of her working on a piece, ah one of these community gardens in a vacant lot. And this this lot is on a corner in a massive LA intersection. It looks like where a big box store might have been at one point.
00:31:53
Speaker
across the way you can see a Macy's and a giant parking lot. And you know you can you can imagine what she built within that with celebration of South Central culture and how that is juxtaposed in those you know super commercial, super LA consumerist kind of spaces.
00:32:13
Speaker
And you know it's actually injecting a bit of like what is the history that is behind that place. I mean, you know she as she says, her families lived there for generations you know as part of the Great Migration. that Since in the 20s, a whole century of a progression ah in that history for the Black community, where they arrived from the Eastern South, let's say, and they migrated there um in, you know, obviously from a very segregated space in the hopes of getting more freedom, more work, and that's when her family arrived there. And then progressively, South Centre LA
00:32:56
Speaker
became a place where um the Black community thrived, grew. ah Now there's also a Latino community. So there really is a community that started in the 20s, lived segregation, built their own community in that space.
00:33:14
Speaker
um that is now really thriving, as Lauren Halsey shows us, that stimulates her to imagine her family coming in, her parents as well, um you know the the Central Avenue, which was also historically connected to music, how what what would have happened there in the 60s. And that's very much something that really, really feeds her imagination, but also makes her work. So she talks about the fact that everyone has a garden over there and that the first sculptures she did and she she made for the Hammer Museum and ah the first exhibitions she had were made in that garden by the family and the friends with her um because she was thinking about that garden and what that space could be and how it could be a communitarian space. so I mean, l LA used to be a Mexican city, like it started off
00:34:11
Speaker
Los Angeles. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so the Latino community has been there literally forever. But yeah, so we have funk, we have architecture and community, specifically South Central LA all oozing out of Lauren Halsey's art.
00:34:28
Speaker
And in the podcast interview, she talked about how when she made art in the beginning, especially, she required so much help from her family. You know, parents, cousins, her brother established this principle of community and art. I should mention, as as the art specialist here, her career was born in 87, so she has had quite the career.
00:34:51
Speaker
in terms of institutional projects. Obrist mentions the fact that him and Lizzie Carey Thomas discovered her work at the Mocha in Los Angeles, so the Museum of Contemporary Art, where in 2018 she was ah invited to to do a show that she called We Still Here There. And it's very close to what we have at the Serpentine with a very big environment with these kind of fake rocks and mounds and corners with a lot of archival stuff that she collects and then places and collages into the space. Another highlight, I think, that is quite connected to her project here is the Roof Garden Commission at The Met in New York in 2023. Yeah, that's a great one. And just to say, there's some great videos about that on YouTube that I really encourage people to check out.
00:35:46
Speaker
It's called the East Side of South Central Los Angeles Hieroglyph Prototype Architecture 1. It is, again, this idea that what she's doing are prototypes for this dream she has of building a sculpture park in south central Los Angeles for the community, with the community, in the community. And finally, I have to mention, so in 2024 last year, she was part of the Venice Biennale, the 60th Venice Biennale in the Arsenale, which was actually the first place where you had mass production.
00:36:28
Speaker
So the Arsenale was a very long building where you build ships and it was kind of, um you know, like we have now in, in ah you know, like in a factory when you have things that are in the line of production and apparently in, I think in the 17th century, 16th century, you could build a boat in a day at the end of that line. So that was kind of, it's interesting to know that we talk about mass production related to the industrial revolution, but actually,
00:36:57
Speaker
ah But the ships are so connected with colonization, capitalism. Interesting. indeed yeah And so she, in that context, has this project called Keepers of the the the Crown. And these are a couple of ah pillars.
00:37:12
Speaker
ah that are these columns um that she takes from and she borrows from Egyptian ancient architecture where they're very monolithic and at the top they have these faces exactly in the style of Egyptian sculpture and they all bear faces of her family and friends um and they are engraved as well, like Egyptian monuments, ah so kind of reliefs, ah but they have words that come from her culture, her community. like i'm I'm looking at the picture now, like Black Fang, pride, expressions of community that you also find in the exhibition.
00:37:58
Speaker
So she's had these really beautiful landmarks in her career yeah and that took her to this Open Time Gallery where we discovered her in the UK for the first time. Yeah. And I mean, I think just to add to that, ah she has the Summer Everything Project in l LA, which she started in 2019, which is a community center. That said, I think we're ready for a break. We've introduced Lauren Halsey. So we'll be with you in a little while.
00:38:41
Speaker
Welcome back from the break. Um, I think you're going to bring us into this exhibition, right? Yes. Yes, I will. You push the doors and it's an explosion. It is. Yeah. Explosion is exactly the right word. Yeah.
00:38:58
Speaker
So it's an explosion of decorative objects and obsessive making, gluing, stacking, cutting, collaging. You're immersed in a universe that hits you as being super specific and as specific, I imagine,
00:39:21
Speaker
as it is foreign to you if you're not familiar with the community Laura Halsey represents here. So chances are, for most of us, this will be a new experience. You move across it clockwise, which is an unusual direction in the South Gallery. So you perform a sort of circular walk through three rooms, right? Including the entrance. Yeah. And and just to say, like that entrance,
00:39:49
Speaker
The spectrum of the types of objects that are in there i mean you go in and there is like the the on the floor there are rugs that you would find in a home. You know i mean one of them is depicting children it looks like they're praying and then there's lots of kind of animal um skin kind of rugs around.
00:40:10
Speaker
And so you go from like this domestic sphere to things that should be outside, like sphinx and you know big animals and sculptures that you could imagine in very large scale, but you see them in miniature scale here. And then the wallpaper is outer space. you know So it's like you are going from like you know sitting around someone's coffee table almost you know that you could imagine sitting on one of these rugs to outer space. I mean, it is just such a big spectrum of of time and space that she's representing. ah Totally. And the entrance is very dark, so as if like really giving that impression of interior. And the reason why you go clockwise is because that last room, which I always find a very difficult room, it kind of creates a lull in the exhibition,
00:41:01
Speaker
That first room has a long, long wall. It's kind of a corridor-like, and it has a long wall to the left with windows. So it has a very specific connection to the garden, and the idea for ah Lauren Halsey was really to think of Kensington Gardens as something that you don't have over where she comes from that much. And it's such a feature in this city, and it really makes a connection between the way you are in a garden
00:41:37
Speaker
and the way you are supposed to experience the exhibition. The exhibition becomes a place where you spend time, you observe, but you're also immersed in an atmosphere as if you were you know doing a stroll and spending some time in um in a garden. yeah Yeah, totally. And so there's that kind of conversation going on there, which also took place in the Met rooftop garden that she created. That was very much in conversation with Central Park, which was right there.
00:42:12
Speaker
And, you know, she was thinking about what people, what parts of the structures people would actually be able to see from the park. And, you know, there's ah Cleopatra's needle and she's doing, you know, so kind of something in response to that, a little bit of call and answer. And so, yeah, so that's definitely something she's played with before.
00:42:33
Speaker
h Definitely. So suddenly the exhibition space um has become a very involving urban area where you can relax, you know, you can chat, you can look around you. There's even a little fountain in the central space, so the central room of the Serpentine South Gallery, which is also the most gregarious. there's It's really where people spend time. um There are at least two places to sit um But I read in one of the reviews that you weren't allowed to, but then I saw someone do it. Me too. and i I did scratch my head. I was like, I don't know if that's legal. ah Waiting for the police to come in and cuff them. After our experiences, my recent Hayward Gallery experiment, I'm here to fall uninterested in physical contacts with the artworks.
00:43:32
Speaker
because That's over for me. yeah yeah So this relation with the garden is great to know because um so that's also in the text at the entrance. You learn that that was one of the inspirations as well as the funky sizing of the space. um Because I mean, if you are confused by maximalist decorations, you may not get that. So When I talked about explosion, it is a maximalist environment in the strictest sense of the word. Even the window paints have color. yeah And so there's pink, I think there's a blue as well. So to be very honest with you, if I hadn't read that there was a relationship with the garden,
00:44:21
Speaker
I don't think I would have even looked outside because there's so much stuff. I mean, even the floor is elevated by a structure that is a sort of mosaic-like structure with transparent glass, um which I'm presuming is Perspex, and you can see through. And underneath your feet, you're basically walking over lots of a paraphernalia of objects palm trees, toy cars, images of people, signage, stickers. Yeah, absolutely. And that's all underneath your feet as well as the yeah the the huge amounts that are sort of on the walls and around you.
00:45:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's so much to look at. There's a seedy covered room forming a sort of fish scale pattern. There's shop signs. yeah There's collages of children, people, so from ah cuttings of photos or newspapers or magazines. There's statues. There are a green plants.
00:45:26
Speaker
ah Sculptures made of resin, a bit like you would find in fun fairs. One of them is ah a black child sporting basketball clothes, so I knew that Halsey wanted to be a basketball player in her teens. ah There's a video of a street view with people playing and passing that's quite blurry at the end of that corridor, like ah First room, there are lots of pyramidal fixtures often covered in mirrors with words written across um ah them, but also other objects such as free person or my hood. There are lots and lots of symbols of blackness from the hair to the long manicured nails in sculpture form as a fountain. um And so you know that all of this represents a specific place and a specific community.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I got to say two things. So I went there after it was after the sun that had set, so it was you know it was after 4.30. I thought 4.30 at the moment in the UK. Yes. So it was really dark, so I didn't get that sense of the light coming through those windows, so I didn't notice the color on the windows at all. I didn't even really notice the windows, to be honest, because it was so dark outside.
00:46:41
Speaker
And that fountain was not working when I was there. Same. Okay, yeah. So i yeah I didn't even kind of clock that it was a fountain. i it was It was one of the most captivating kind of sculptures in the whole exhibition, I would say. yes i I was really kind of found myself you know settling in on that for a long time.
00:47:08
Speaker
but But yeah, it wasn't until I read some of the reviews and saw some pictures of it actually acting like a fountain that I was like, oh, I didn't see that. Yeah. And there isn't that sound element that is talked about in the reviews. Yeah, for sure. This is where I was confronted with my complete ignorance of this context. And also, I think with my own identity as a person who ah will not relate from the inside to um this environment created because ah Lauren Halsey is very specific. She's a queer woman um and she's very specific about her projects being about Blackness, about her own community, but also the fact that in many of the spaces, of course, Brown and and Black people will
00:48:00
Speaker
have or see themselves in this space. So that was really apparent. um And also my ignorance of LA, so I've never been there. And my relation with this side of LA, perhaps a bit further south, is with Inglewood.
00:48:15
Speaker
which is at times mentioned in Halsey's collages and installations, I noticed, through Issa Rae's series Insecure. I don't know if you've watched that. So this aesthetic is really unfamiliar to me. And so i i was as I was in the space, I was trying to place it. And that I kept being reminded of my kids' Guinness record books.
00:48:37
Speaker
because they have lots of metallic, glittery, shiny surfaces. Neon greens and yellows. And the catalog is exactly that. It has this kind of shiny lettering and font that is very round and curved. Yeah. And I gotta say, just like that room with the CDs all over, I just loved it. It was just, you're bathed in iridescent light, you know? And I loved that about it, the shininess.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, and there's this aspect of ah of the iridescence of the the these materials that also kind of points to the idea of layering and of kind of the reality being made of folds and of different aspects. The same space has different aspects to it and has different readings and different relations and different um connections to it, which is really beautiful because you know that it comes from recuperated materials um and and makeshift constructions and handcrafted things. um Because, I mean, Lauren Halcy is a maker.
00:49:42
Speaker
She is an archivist, as she says so herself. She goes around the neighborhood. She collects things. She buys these, for example, there's these animal toys or animal miniatures that she buys from people in the street that are made by people there. And she was kind of thinking, okay, these will be the animals of the park. And so she collected them. She really sees herself as a visual but material culture archivist. And I think that's really important So for me, it immediately connoted as American, which I know is such a horrible reduction because America is made of so many things. yeah But just to say that it felt like something very far. And also, you could see that there was these kind of icons. So you have Lionel Richie, which made me crack up. Yeah, it's kind of ah in kind of a lengthy sort of side-laying pose with one knee up. It was good.
00:50:36
Speaker
There's an 80s sweater going on. A top one of those rock seats kind of structures, yeah but very small. And then you have lots of images of people from the neighborhood. You learn that some of them have passed away as well. There's some hardship as well. And they're they're a bit like angels in Christian iconography, where you don't know where they come from as a spectator, obviously, like us.
00:51:05
Speaker
other people will know very well who they are, and that's the richness of this proposal. And for you, there are kind of these beautiful, joyful, smiling creatures hovering around those saints, which are the known um icons that are there as well. you know there's There's kind of all that community in there, placed in a way that is very joyful and very playful, and at the same time connected to making, obsessive collecting and making. I can imagine what her basement looks like, just full of stuff. in Just absolutely chock full of objects that have inspired her at one time or another.
00:51:50
Speaker
and will play a role in a in a in something that she makes you know at some point. There's another aspect to it that I realized later. She's concerned with an experience she had when she was a kid where she would move out of ah South Central LA to school and she would see the the difference in neighborhoods where there were streets with no protections, and then there was a part where ah shops seemed to be protected from violence and seemed to expect violence and economic difference between those neighborhoods. and Therefore, when you enter this space, there's also something
00:52:34
Speaker
that is an an important aspect to everything she collects, which is that nothing is precious. The only precious thing that you might think would be an expensive thing or something unattainable, but it's written. It's not the object itself, it's Gucci, which obviously is kind of also denoted with a certain blackness, with a certain style, with a certain street style. um But it's written as a sort of a slogan ah rather than being represented by stuff. So the stuff that is there is cheap stuff. It's stuff that is made of plastic and even the the kind of rocky mounds that she produces, they're white and theyre and they bear lots of iridescent colors that are very neon, bright colors.
00:53:20
Speaker
And they look plastic. As you know, I am quite baffled by maximalism. Not intellectually, but like sensorially, really. And we talked about this during the Dido Moriyama episode. I get really overwhelmed. I don't know what to look at, how I feel. I think my brain just stops. And I was feeling a bit you know discombobulated in the space.
00:53:50
Speaker
And I was there with my friend, Liberté, with whom we did the episode about art advising, Liberté Nuiti, and she said the word Utopia. And suddenly it kind of constellated the Utopia, the dream, the megalomaniac, nonsensical idea of bringing a whole culture, a whole neighborhood, a whole group of people, a whole self-determining,
00:54:19
Speaker
self-affirming ethos into a context that is completely disconnected from it. And of course, geographically, but when you say geographically, the everything else gets dragged into it. In Kensington, old school, old values, tradition, knowledge, museums. And then there's the Serpentine, sponsored by Dior and the Luma Foundation. You know, it's the whole context.
00:54:48
Speaker
and It is it feels like a utopia and the title of the show which is written in this kind of slangy kind of way of of writing in English um in many communities So imagine that is imagine that so it's dream dream this um and so um There's ah suddenly this idea of this self-described archival impulse behind the project, which actually makes me think of Vilge's collection of revolutionary and protest signs amalgamated in his drawings. yes yeah
00:55:29
Speaker
But there's no sublimation here. So there's no, I'm going to take this and put it into drawing form and appropriate it for myself. um Here, this is a sort of Madame Tussauds of South Central l LA. She talks about human sized maquettes. So these projects are maquettes that you can go into. And so the question for me here was like, how do I you know, see this, connect with it. Is it culturally? Is it an aesthetic? um And I would also be intrigued, you know, to see how English, Black and brown, young, middle-aged, older people from different backgrounds connected to it. So yeah, so that was kind of the question for me.
00:56:12
Speaker
there and then, you know, in in the exhibition. I'm curious to know how you experienced it. So first of all, I want to thank Liberté for Utopia, because I think that is a word that captures it. And it's funny because it is described that way. I mean, Afrofuturism is also something that runs through Halsey's work. And she talks about, you know, having this sort of idealized representation of where she's from, in part because of what you mentioned in terms of you know going to other neighborhoods and seeing how things are different and that gentrification that's happening in South Central l LA, she wants to resist that and make sure that there's a canon where this time and place of her upbringing is is captured and and um and preserved.
00:57:03
Speaker
But yeah, i so when I saw the exhibition online, I was really excited. I was like, wow, I'm going to be going into another place, and I'm going to you know have this very you know fully sensorial experience of you know South Central LA as she offers it.
00:57:26
Speaker
and So I was really excited about it and I went there and those doors opened and i was i you know I felt overwhelmed as well. I felt like there was so much to look at. There were so many suggestions.
00:57:43
Speaker
that i I was looking for a focal point of like something to help me latch onto to make sense of you know of you know these animal skin rugs and the outer space that was happening on the on the wallpaper, etc.
00:58:00
Speaker
and And I had a hard time locating that. And so it was like, OK, I'm just going to take a breath and just be here. And this is how I feel right now. There's often that kind of chatter that goes on in my head when I first enter an exhibition, which is like deciding whether or not I want to like it or not right there and then. And that's it. you know And I kind of got to ride that out anyway.
00:58:24
Speaker
But um walking through that second room, the long room, where there was the video of you know these people dancing in the street at the at the end of the at the end of the room, um that felt like a focal point. And and that gave me a bit more, that gave me something to kind of hold on to and to understand, you know, where the signs were coming from, et cetera. And the the last room, um you know, I really, really enjoyed. I think that those, I think that, you know, look, this is supposed to be a park, right? This is supposed to be a space where people come and hang out. And I almost wish there were just more benches.
00:59:12
Speaker
because it it felt like the kind of thing that needed that. And like you, I was afraid to sit down. you know there was There was a young woman sitting there and there was this part of me that was like, oh, they're going to get you. you know like but they And they didn't, obviously. I wanted ah ah wanted somewhere to linger because there are there is so many suggestions and so many things where you're like, I wonder what that is about you know and where you kind of need to make sense of it.
00:59:40
Speaker
that I think that those benches would have been really, really helpful to sort of allow people to relax and really become infused in the space. So when I was there, I felt kind of, you know, yeah, as I say, kind of uncertain about about it and and uncertain about what I made about it, going away and doing more research on her.
01:00:05
Speaker
you know, gives a lot of context and I think that some exhibitions don't need a lot of context. And I think this one would have would have helped me more, which would which is why a repeat visit I think is is absolutely necessary. There are expectations that you have through the exhibition text about the funk, about the park, about the way you'll be in that exhibition that are confusing because the exhibition, for me, was an experience of looking. It wasn't an experience of spending time
01:00:40
Speaker
It was an experience of discovering more than an experience of spending time in the place, observing, playing, talking like you would have in a park. And I really thought long and hard about it because um I was definitely thinking of this idea of bringing a community.
01:01:02
Speaker
So, the difference between the previous episode, Zanelli Moholy, who also brings their own community as a non-binary, queer, Black artist in South Africa, taking pictures of people from South Africa, bringing them into the museum,
01:01:20
Speaker
and then doing the self-portraiture of their own body and enacting some things in the photographs. For me, there's a storytelling there. And in this situation, there's, again, a Black queer artist who identifies as female, ah who brings but to the forefront of the iconography, blackness, and their culture and and the culture of that huge group in the world, very located in a city, within a big city, so a very small part of that city, but the the the meaningful part for her and for her community.
01:02:03
Speaker
And it's brought as a maquette, so it's brought as real-size things. So it is an environment. It's not storytelling. It is a sort of simulacrum of a space that is not known to you as a spectator in the UK, and that was voluntary. That was the goal. The goal was not to tell stories. One of the things that I was a bit surprised by is that if you don't do the research around the exhibition, and that's why I've talked about angels,
01:02:35
Speaker
um you see people. you You know that there are people from the community. You see them. You don't know who they are. You don't know the stories behind them. And and that's voluntary. you know There is no explanation of the context. There's a real um want to focus on the community and not to bring like Zanele Muholy brings at a certain point an individual perspective into it. And that's kind of what was missing for me
01:03:06
Speaker
going back to Benjamin Perret's text, which is, poetry is unconnected ultimately. which is a European stance that he had against futurism, against communism, um saying you know poetry and art in general is the space of irreverence. and One of the things that I found really interesting was that I was so baffled by the this ability to be to adhere completely
01:03:40
Speaker
to an aesthetic and an identity. Whereas with Zanele Moholy, there was this diversity of the LGBTQIA plus community that was showcased there. There was their experience then as a subject of of photography. And here it is like this thing of adhering completely as a person. So I misunderstood that because it's not an identity thing. It's a community. It's a group of people. It has nothing to do with the identity of the artist. And when you hear the artist speak, there's really this concern first and foremost, ultimately across the whole work with an iconography, with ah but a life, a real life in the present. um And that's something
01:04:27
Speaker
that is interesting because I would say that here, the revolutionary, the irreverence is brought by the space. It's not the artwork in itself, but it's the fact of placing that community in that space that automatically turns that work into something much freer, especially in the place where you don't adhere as a spectator. you know I imagine in in great part, the people who go there, I mean,
01:05:02
Speaker
in majority um the I mean, I can't tell you the exact percentage, but museums and galleries have to study ah the profiles of their visitors. Great majority, white. There's a white ah spectatorship in this space.
01:05:23
Speaker
um And that is really interesting. And I think that's exactly, for me, the core of that project, which ah for me as a white woman, a European white woman, became about thinking about that gesture, not as much the experience in the space, but really thinking about that. um And I came across this really interesting article in The Guardian yesterday while doing my research by a social analyst called
01:05:54
Speaker
Um... I'm looking at the article right now. So the title is, Are we a racist society? The majority of us say no, but science begs to differ. And so his name's Keon West. He's the author of Science of Racism. And it is a truly beautiful article. um So he's a social psychologist. That's who he is. And he talks about the fact that if you ask people whether they're racist or not, they will say no.
01:06:25
Speaker
yeah But how can you measure racism? And he claims that there is a measuring that is quite you know objective. Studies made with, would CVs go ah on top of the pile and and under the pile? Black people have to send 50 times more CVs to have the same number of calls than a white person. So he numbers like ah ah very objective examples of the very crude reality And in museums, it's the same thing. The spectatorship is mainly white. And he talks about unconscious racism and how ah undermining that expression is. So there's unconscious racism, and there's, on the other hand, implicit race racism. Because when you talk about unconscious racism, tests were done as well, scientific ones, that you forgive yourself
01:07:18
Speaker
because it is unconscious. So you're not the master of it, you inherited it. Whereas implicit means that it's there and you have to be accountable for it. I situate myself immediately there, and I think that's and a wonderful you know thing to experience and to dig into.
01:07:37
Speaker
and to understand exactly the gesture of doing that, of of bringing this community there, and also ah enjoying the joy of it. There is a lot of joy in that space. yeah There is no victimization. Wow. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you. and i mean i think so well said too. Thank you for that. That's that articulation of the difference between Moholy's perspective and what she's bringing through storytelling and what Halsey is bringing through atmosphere and, you know, experience of being in a place. That was really important because I did find myself comparing the two and I wasn't sure why
01:08:22
Speaker
you know I wasn't sure why I felt like I wanted Maholi's, but I think you've nailed it. It is because she's telling me a story and she's bringing me in in a way that is very different. there's ah there's a very There's a side door that Lauren Halsey is going through that is about, here's the community and all of its wonder.
01:08:44
Speaker
and you can be here for a while. It's a place rather than a story. So thank you. Yeah, that's really yeah that's really helpful. And yeah, that that whole thing of of racism and you know that it's you know that it's not a choice that only abhorrent people make.
01:09:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah. yeah it is You have to include yourself in that narrative as a white person. Absolutely. It is just in the water we drink, unfortunately. um um Yeah, it's a really important thing to remember. Wow. Brilliant. Great. so i mean I think there's this you know this issue of Afrofuturism and Afropessimism that's alive in her work. And you you did some digging into that, didn't you?
01:09:29
Speaker
I did, yes. because um So we had i've we've had an experience of Afro-pessimism through the Ariadine exhibition at the ICA last year, and we had to look into that a little bit. I also went to, during the pandemic when the museums reopened, to the Toyin Oji Odutola exhibition at the Curve Space at the Barbican. She's a Nigerian-American artist.
01:09:54
Speaker
who was very much inspired by Afrofuturism. So that's the first time I came across that term. The exhibition was incredible. It was these charcoal drawings based on a fiction of ah ah um a mythical community in the African continent that was a matriarchy and the men did the labor and the drawings were fantastic. There was music. It was a really beautiful show. In the interview of the catalogue. Lauren Halsey does mention that as something in the beginning that inspired her because ah George Clinton, ah the funk movement was very much, Sandra as well, connected to that notion. So from the Tate website, the term Afrofuturism is explained. ah So I'm going to quote straight from that.
01:10:43
Speaker
The term Afrofuturism has its origins in African-American science fiction. Today, it is generally used to refer to literature, music, and visual art that explores the African-American experience, and in particular, the role of slavery in that experience. Central to the concept of Afrofuturism are the science fiction writers Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delaney, and the jazz musician Sun Ra.
01:11:09
Speaker
who created a mythical persona that merged science fiction with Egyptian mysticism. It is this otherness that is at the heart of Afrofuturism. Those inspired by Afrofuturism include the musician George Clinton, the artist Ellen Gallagher, and the film director Wannuri Caillou.
01:11:31
Speaker
So um I thought that probably Lauren Halsey's work could be linked to that. um And so just to counterbalance and bring a ah whole panorama of these discourses and these terms, when we explored Afropessimism, we um situated it. um in the popularization of that term by Frank B. Wilderson III, who grew up in Minneapolis.
01:12:00
Speaker
um nice emilyilton boy from from from is He's a neighbor. um So this theory, Afropessimism, explains that racism against Black peoples is so deeply rooted that it's almost impossible to overcome.
01:12:19
Speaker
And so there's this kind of toing and throwing between one and the other. I found an article of Kaddish Morris's about this American poet called Dennis Smith, um who goes from one to the other, so from Afrofuturism to Afropessimism in his two books.
01:12:41
Speaker
um One is called um Don't Call Us Dead. hey It was very lauded, won the prize won won several prizes, um where the idea is imagining a world liberated from anti-blackness. And then in his recent book called Bluff,
01:12:59
Speaker
There's an almost Afro-pessimist take according to the Guardian journalist. He's from ah George Floyd's hometown and is the the the book is very much um traversed by ah that and what came about um in in the aftermath of that. So there's this kind of toing and throwing as if Afro-pessimism and Afro-futurism was kind of like a sort of a ah two ends of a ah very complex spectrum of the the reality of Blackness, particularly in America. I would really urge you
01:13:37
Speaker
to read these books. um I was almost going to read ah two poems, from one from each book, because it's so incredible writing. It's also graphic poetry. There's one called Dinosaurs in the Hood, where he imagines. ah So they imagine, because they're a known binary as well, ah they imagine um the Jurassic Park, but only in blackness. against the So they go over all the tropes of the black character that dies all the time and thrillers. The first is always the first victim, etc. And they imagine a Jurassic Park that is completely devoid of all those all those kind of containing
01:14:18
Speaker
and crushing tropes for blackness. And then in the poem Anti-Poetica, in the the recent book Bluff, a lot of the lines are, a poem cannot feed you, a poem cannot solve and a social injustice, and he almost apologizes in the book for having been so utopian. so And then in the catalogue, just to close this chapter up, there is a text called against Afrofuturism by, it's a very angry text, by Harmony Holiday. And it's a really interesting text where Harmony talks about the fact that thinking about the future takes away the responsibility of the now move and takes away your agency
01:15:08
Speaker
And also, by the way, the term, and that's why Tate, if you're listening, please change your website. Harmony Holiday says something really critical, which is that Afrofuturism was coined by a white scholar in the 90s.
01:15:30
Speaker
and was developed in a book where ah one of the people interviewed is the Delaney, the writer i mentioned in the Robert Delaney in the Tate website. It's a really difficult read. I read some bits of it. um and Another thing that Harmony Holiday doesn't do is to name.
01:15:52
Speaker
the author just not to give that person a platform. So I dug up and I um i kind of checked the source. so I was like, really? So the person who coined this term is Mark Derry, who's an American cultural critic, writer, and lecturer. And in 1993, he coined the term for a book of interviews. And so he was the one who named that.
01:16:19
Speaker
And so that really surprises me. I would have guessed that it would have been much further back than the 90s. Yes, me too. you know i'm I'm surprised it's as recent as that. That's really interesting. I was very confused by Harmony Holiday's text that starts, the West is resolutely doctrinaire and the invention of a shiny new doctrine often reinvigorates the indomitable colonial impulse subtly or otherwise. Under the dictatorship of the most effective doctrine, the will of a group of discrete individuals is often trained on one aesthetic genre whether or not its protagonists agree. Such is the case with Afrofuturism, a term and doctrine coined by a white academic in the 1990s to help make sense of black science fiction
01:17:07
Speaker
which has since been deployed to collapse the work of disparate Black artists and thinkers into one over simplified silo. So the text is really interesting and quite um indomitable itself.
01:17:22
Speaker
so just to finish and to close up this contextualization, I guess, and also kind of this education harmony holiday makes a case for this idea of agency and being in the now, which we also talked about regarding Zanelli Moholy, which is they're doing the work now in the community and not just documenting it or bearing witness. They are actively engaging with change and trying to promote change, namely through activism or community-oriented projects. And that's something that the term Afrofuturism cannot encapsulate and cannot destroy. And so at the end, Harmony Holiday writes, knowing this, and from the vantage of the renewed paradigm, Lauren Halsey's work, which belongs first to South Central Los Angeles, and then
01:18:16
Speaker
to the collective imagination of that place as a myth, and then to the use of myth to render the reality there anew by inflecting it with tones it already carries quietly and unceremoniously can be seen as a blueprint for anew now. If we refuse to displace her vision onto the future, what is her testimony about the current of Black desire and pleasure and friendship today, right now, as you read this. How does her friendship with George Clinton guide her building of funk mounts and stages for him that can fit into her hometown today? And why is this work exhibited in museums and galleries without being brought directly to urban planners? How can her fantastic become part of the Black mundane and real?
01:19:10
Speaker
And will the circle be unbroken? Will you seek entry in the into that reel at its most unglamorous and functional? Risk vanity to be there or attend only as it becomes art object and simulation. If you can only process the black every day by pretending it lives outside of time, then love is absent and you as a spectator become a grim reaper and thief.
01:19:36
Speaker
Halsey's work resists that or forces us to confront it, entering to the tune of America Eats Its Young and leaving in the song's mouth. Wow, that is, yeah, goodness. Afrofuturism, born in the 1990s from a white scholar.
01:19:58
Speaker
That blows my mind. I mean, so I just looked up the um National Museum for African American Heritage that's in DC. Yes. Yeah. and And there's a curator there who's talking, I mean, he talks about Afrofuturism. He doesn't see that He just says that it was originally coined in scholarly circles to explore how black writers and artists have utilized themes of technology, science fiction, fantasy, and heroism to envision stories and futures. I don't know. I mean, I'm wondering, like is that is that is she 100% on that identification of of it being born in 1983?
01:20:38
Speaker
Yes, yes, um i've I've looked into it. And what I saw, and again, admittedly, I didn't read the whole book, just saw some excerpts. And there was this kind of thing of like, how come black American authors haven't explored fiction? I mean, or science fiction, I mean, it would seem to be the ideal place for black identity to expand, because it would be creating a new world from scratch and therefore affirming themselves.
01:21:05
Speaker
which is yeah a great idea, but it's not your place to have it, and certainly not to question a Black author about that. And it also speaks to a huge ignorance. I mean, I only knew Octavia Butler or of Octavia Butler a couple of years ago. yeah I had never heard of her before. And, you know, and even Ursula K. Le Guin, I heard learned about her very late, earlier than Octavia Butler. So, but black, white science fiction authors,
01:21:38
Speaker
emerge and later, black female authors emerge. you know There's always this cadence of white feminists and then or white female, whatever, and then you know ah the the the same category, but with a different ethnicity comes later. so there's this um pattern really in the culture. So it was the author himself who didn't know about the reality of science fiction, you know, having been explored already before he had the crazy idea that it would be appropriate to, you know. So that's the criticism. I'm talking about what I read partially
01:22:20
Speaker
on the winter webs. So again, take this with a grain of salt. Do your own research as I will continue to do mine. Yeah. So that was kind of like my ah huge rabbit hole. And in the meantime, yeah I discovered the new poet, Dennis Smith. Go into it, read it. It's beautiful. Wow. Brilliant. I mean, there's just so many questions and so much to explore off the back of this exhibition of Lauren Halsey's work and I mean, God, she's young. There's so much more that's going to be coming from her and more things that she can that she can bring to us in the wider world from her very unique and really special point of view from her community. so
01:23:05
Speaker
That's just fabulous. And thank you, Joanna. I mean, this has been just a fantastic conversation. I have really enjoyed hearing your articulation of the difference between Moholy's exhibition and Halsey's exhibition, you know, resonance in a very, very different way. um So yeah, so thank you for that.
01:23:26
Speaker
Well, it was my pleasure, and it was a pleasure chatting with you as ever. Apologies if I misread, misquoted, misinterpreted any of the things that I talked about that concern a community that is certainly not mine. Lauren Halcy, thank you for making me doing do this. Thank you, Serpentine, for having this exhibition that really, really questioned a lot of things and I will certainly be going back and you still have time to do so as well. If you're in London, it's open until the 23rd of February. So that's it. It's there for you. And if not, Lauren Halsey, I'm sure is very young, has other things coming up in your hometown, in your country, for sure. But more specifically, and more importantly, in South Central,
01:24:13
Speaker
l LA, may she continue to build that community, support it and expand it. All right, well thanks everyone. Take care and see you next time. See you next time. Bye bye.