This IS Sanford Biggers’ “The Somethin’ Suite” at The Box on the occasion of Performa ‘07. I heard someone grumbling after the 8 o’clock performance tonight that this work was nothing but Kara Walker redux. Really? Whoever that was missed it. But before I get too far into my response to some reactions to the work, let me attempt to respond to the work itself.
The final curtain call provided the biggest hint of what Biggers is trying to tell us, or better, show us. The performers took their first bows holding large mirrors facing the audience. LOOK AT YOURSELF! This to me was the central theme of the work. Look at what you have been reduced to and look at how you have reduced yourself. If Walker’s work were about horses, maybe Biggers would be talking about horses too, but truly a horse of a different color. Much of the work was about looking. Clearly it is what we were doing as an audience. Tonight we watched a history of black entertainment twisted, flipped and tripped out to show us what this stuff really looks like, who is responsible and why. (Hint: the “why” is the so-called different color).
The opening act, Twintro, tells us why: The Southern Belles talk about the dead, those living without dreams, and the calloused. Even fire does not feel hot, nor does it burn. What else then that consumes and destroys do we fail to feel, and worse, take off our shoes and dance in? But if we could see, or better, sense things properly, if we only knew how to look, what would these images look like? These are the questions The Somethin’ Suite asks and answers.
There are aspects of the piece that are direct and accessible. The commentary on the reality television show, I Love New York, and how black people wish there was some way to keep white people from seeing that show! Cooning 2007-Style. I think everyone got that. Krak Addict from anotha planet was clearly a parody of rap performances that exploit women, but after CX KiDTRONiK said fat girl/skinny girl for, like, the 300th time, anyone paying attention would have had to ask themselves, “okay, what else is this about?”
A woman I spoke with after the show was beside herself with dissatisfaction. “There is nothing original here,” she exclaimed. The minstrel theme has been mined and this conversation is not new she told me. I was intrigued at the intensity of her protest over the time she said would have been better spent staying at work. I couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever consider the possibility that the problem of originality may not lie with the work, but with the beholder.
What is original about Biggers’ exploration of “this problematic, stereotyping as racist propaganda” (artist quote) is its invitation to the viewer to do better, think better…be better. The work asks us to look at these issues in a new way. Not as something others are doing or have done over the decades and shame on them for doing it and shame on those people who participate in their own exploitation and the exploitation of others. No, Biggers is saying something more. Indeed, shame on us for not having more imagination, more faith, more courage to think more of ourselves and others. In this way, the work provokes a very intimate, internal conversation…one that’s hard to do when calloused and hardened by the world. It is far easier to externalize, historicize and criticize the problem.
The woman I mentioned above went on to say she was offended that the television show Good Times was put on par with degrading rap lyrics. After all, Good Times was an important television breakthrough about a hard-working black family. (Word!) An interesting reaction considering that none of us went to The Box tonight to explore the “progress” of black representation in the media. But, I understand that it can be more comfortable to look at these images in their most positive light, that is, to find the upliftment in them. Truly, without Hattie McDaniel there would be no Hallie Berry. Right? Exactly. Now what happens when one takes the contrary view, as Biggers has done, and announces that if you look closely, it is all garbage. What if there is nothing redeeming? What if redemption itself has died?
Imani Uzuri performed brilliantly in Cheshire — her white face make-up not only a reversal of black face, but also evocative of a death mask. Her grotesque facial expressions and pained howling of Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit should have stunned everyone in the audience to silence rather than illicit a pocket or two of laughter. It wasn’t funny. We were to look at her in all her contortions, dress falling dangerously from her body as she suffered to tell that story in song. She showed us what the history feels like, what it looks like: twisted and ugly.
My favorite segment was the tap dance audio mixed subtly with contemporary music and accompanied only by a bright spot light shining down on stage from above. The absence of a tap dancer to look at was provocative on a number of levels. First, on the experiential level one cranes one’s neck and one waits for the tapper to appear, but he doesn’t and so heightens the anticipatory sensation that continues and builds throughout the segment. Second, on a participatory level I found myself imagining that an invisible man was on stage performing for us-we just couldn’t see him. Here, about mid-way through the performance, was a piece that itself was a kind of summary of the entire work. It asks the questions: What do you see? What don’t you see? Are you even looking? And also suggests what we must do which is engage all of our senses and imagination-be our own creators. This segment also challenges us to consider a world where all the African-American performers throughout history have vanished (or never existed). What would or could the images of African-America be today if we erased everyone from the tap dancer to the rap dancer? What if we could engage our imagination and dream up new, different, (better?) images.
Biggers does not show us what such other images might be or look like- that is for us to do. He does shame us into wanting a do-over, or at least we should. A post-post(-post) minstrel cycle that starts at home, by looking in the mirror. The Somethin’ Suite invites us to step outside of the box and recognize that it is not the conversation that lacks originality and not Biggers who is a redux-ivist, but all of us.
