Displaced Data read your posting to the ISEA multi cultural list 17-12-96 with some mystification over your accusation that those people who voiced concern over the lack of representation of artists of colours at an INTERNATIONAL Symposium of Electronic Arts, ISEA 96, Rotterdam were engaged in what you define as "victimlogy".
As your letter is based very specifically on the Black (African, Asian, Caribbean) British Arts scene, and Displaced Data is specifically named, we feel that we need to respond to your public comments, publicly. However, we suggest that further comments on this list in response to our comments would seen as leading away from the main purpose of the isea-multi cultural list and as such should be taken off this list; and if need be moved into some other arena, as they are specific to the Black British experience and do not move the debate for greater diversity at ISEA 97&98 any further.
Your use of the term "victimology" suggests the articulation of an epistemology based on the premise of being a 'victim'. Your positioning of a this plenary debate at ISEA 96 as the articulation of some 'victimology', an analysis of art/discourses which calls for greater representation Sean Cubitt shares with mainstream critic Robert Hughes, we find highly problematic. For within western discourses, there have been two dominant responses have emerged to the Black presence within western modernity, the Black as either a 'victim/problem'.
To position the Black presence as one which is subject to 'victimisation' by some immoral, irrational and unreasonable force because of some unique characteristic which is beyond their control (i.e.. the colour of their skin). Racism becomes within this discourse a moral problem, where by the enlightened members of the majority, just have to educated their less enlightened citizens, and then Blacks could be welcomed into the mainstream. Thus, leaving in tact the systems of exclusion and domination.
The 'victim' discourse refuses to see racism and other forms of oppression as historical, cultural and economic constructs, which constructs Black people subjectivity in a multiplicity of ways so as to position them as primitive, marginal, irrational, disenfranchised. It is a position refuses to accept that race is socially constructed within a myriad of complex discourses, rather it positions race as a result of some biological accident.
This term 'victim' positions the Black as passive, unable to articulate any agenda or aims, only able to articulate emotion, pain and suffering rather than reasoned argument. Furthermore, it positions all Black people as ahistorical 'victims' of the moral crime of 'racism', positioning all Black people regardless of age, gender, sexuality etc. as fundamentally the same and experiencing racism in the identical ways. Leading on the one hand for mainstream organisations who accept this position to 'choose' an individual Black person to be the 'authentic' voice of Black people's suffering. This Black individual is chosen on the premise that they are the bearer and spokesperson of some form of racial authenticity.
This is a position which individual members of Displaced Data have fought against. Any one who is aware of the individual work of any Displaced Data's members and Displaced Data itself, would be abundantly clear that Displaced Data and its members opposes this position. Displaced Data seeks to claim neither 'authenticity' as the "voice" of artists of colour or to engage in a discourse which seeks sympathy, pity or to claim a status based on being 'victims'. Rather Displaced Data is interested in the continuing formation of cross cultural dialogue, which is based on an understanding of the cultural context in which work by artists is produced rather than on nostalgic backward glances of "golden times".
Thus to use the term 'victimology' in response to the many voices raised at the ISEA plenary( not all of them members of Displaced Data (not Dispersed Data as Sean Cubitt states), one of the key critics and questioners of the ISEA's committee's position was himself a member of ISEA's international committee), seems highly derogatory. This 'victimology' terminology suggests that Displaced Data and others who spoke at the Plenary calling for the greater participation of artists and writers of colour, and who have subsequently set-up this list, are claiming:
a) Some special status on the basis through the articulation of a 'victim' discourse. A discourse which allows them to create a situation, which is based on making people feel pity or guilty, where no situation of exclusion exists, in order to call attention to themselves.
b) Thus to be critical of ISEA is to articulate a discourse based emotion speaking only of pain, rather than articulating a informed theoretical and discursive position.
Sean Cubitt writes of London in the 1980s.
" I don't mean to be naive: I recognise that racism is an institutional and psychological structure deeply built into the British, especially perhaps the English psyche. But the extraordinary work performed by groups like the Association of Black Workshops and Third Text in the 80s seemed to have moved us on from the victimology which seemed to be being voiced in Rotterdam."
But Displaced Data seeks to question the basis of this nostalgia.
The Association of Black (Film) Workshops have been defunct of almost a decade, Third Text, like other organisations set-up in the 80s seeking to foster greater cultural diveristy, is ubject to the "chilly winds" of an economic and cultural climate which does not place cultural diversity high on its list of priorities.
Any gains that where made in the 80s, were the result of hard, fought and argued battles.
Perhaps it would be more useful for Sean Cubitt, to talk to the people, or allow these people to speak for themselves, who were engaged in those battles to see how they view these battles, and the situation they now find themselves in 1990s, and how they view the spaces that were briefly opened up in the 80s as a result of these struggles.
For most Black artists, writers and intellectuals in 90s Britain are finding that its 'chilly out there' and to paraphrase Michelle Wallace in ' Invisibility Blues' , those engaged in the struggle for greater cultural diversity must make a distinction between Black visibility in terms of works ( and what types of work have been taken up, for Sean Cubitt's citing of Black British intellectuals is exclusively male), but the almost total lack 'social, political and economic voice' that Black artists and intellectuals have in mainstream institutions, galleries and universities.
Rather than simply look at the products of a small group of individual Black British male intellectuals and state that their work "all seemed to point towards a far more open and diverse culture". We should be seeing that their work does not exist in isolation and to assess its impact and meaning we must look at the wider cultural context within which their work is being received, and how and who is teaching, writing and talking about this work, and how these works have been institutionalised.
For to talk to younger Black students, artists and intellectuals and to those who have able to be find work in mainstream institutions is find out how depressingly little has changed, and the need for cultural debates and formalised policies/strategies which encourage greater cultural open-ness access and equality of opportunity is still needed.
Sean Cubitt writes about North London, but yet London is a city he has not lived or worked in for nearly a decade.
"Though London is in the stranglehold of the tourist trade of a world city, and addicted to the blockbuster art show and big names in the commercial galleries, the regional arts scene felt far more international, multicultural and generally alive."
Again in his analysis of the regional arts scene, is Sean Cubitt talking as someone who is regularly given the opportunity to write about the arts, and establish his expertise. However, it may be more accurate to state that the experience of many Black artists, and curators in the 90s has not been so celebratory. During the 90s many Black artists and curators have found (and are finding) it increasingly difficult to find venues sympathetic to their work. It is for this reason that Black artists are seeking to explore the possibility of the Internet as an arena for the production, exhibition exchange and dialogue for their work.
Interestingly, enough Sean Cubitt writing from Liverpool, failed to mention the pioneering work of Bryan Biggs, former Director of the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool. Perhaps the reason that Sean Cubitt does not discuss his current geographical location, is that to be in Liverpool for many Black people who have lived, worked or studied there is to experience what can easily be described as one of England's most racially segregated cities.
Though Sean Cubitt states that he is writing as an individual, he chooses to use his posting to the isea multi cultural list to canvass, as an editorial member of Third Text, for writers. A position which is highly contradictory. Further compounded in that he is also attacking some of the very Black artists who have been key participants of the Black Arts scene he seems so keen to celebrate.
While Displaced Data thanks Sean Cubitt for recognising that some of the criticisms of the plenary at ISEA that Displaced Data and others made were valid, we suggest he can make some constructive/informed interventions into what we believe to be crucial issues for Liverpool ISEA98.
DISPLACED DATA PROJECT
cheddie@rizomorf.demon.co.uk( J. M.Cheddie)
100737.2121@compuserve.com (Roshini Kempadoo)
piper@gn.apc.org (Keith Piper)
pmcol@gn.apc.org (Derek Richards)
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J. M. CHEDDIE
DISPLACED DATA PROJECT
6, TRAFALGAR AVE
LONDON SE15 6NR
ENGLAND
Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 171 701 3955
email: cheddie@rizomorf.demon.co.uk
URL: http:// www.artec.org.uk/displacedata
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*********Artists & Writers Of Colour Working with Digital Technology
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