Associação Cultural Videobrasil

essay_Daniel Lima_ "Casting a flash of multiplex consciousness?" - by Ricardo Rosas

Casting a flash of multiplex consciousness?

One of the foremost authorities on Afro–Diasporic culture from the last century, North American W. E. Du Bois, saw in black culture and thinking what he called “double consciousness”, a strange sensation, “that of always looking at yourself through the eyes of others”1. This world, according to Du Bois, “yields him (a black person) no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world”, since, being American and black, he shares duplicity, two souls, two minds, two irreconcilable forces. Perhaps too schizophrenic in its anticipatory veracity, Du Bois’ idea of a “double consciousness” did not prosper in studies undertaken at the beginning of the twentieth century, his era, but came to acquire a more noteworthy receptivity in today’s post-colonial studies of virtual realities and post-structuring. Notions of double consciousness have something to say in times where identity movements start to be confused with the struggles for specific market niches where ideas such as post-identity can be heard.

Not unlike the queer theory in gay and lesbian studies, which question the heterosexual compared to homosexual binomial, the hypothesis of double consciousness also questions notions of single identities, proposing a versatility equal to the arduous and difficult adaptation of black citizens in a post-slavery world. In a way, it has also generated a theory that continues to attract more adepts in studies aimed at black ethnic groups. Based on several facets of more popular black culture, even pop, such as the practice of “signifying” (stating one thing and meaning just the opposite), or even the bizarre and subversive apparitions of science fiction in many contemporary black culture productions, be it in black music as a whole, ranging from jazz to hip-hop, to techno, and drum’n’bass, or in manifestations such as graffiti, this theory has been called “Afrofuturism”. Hardly conventional, in principle, Afrofuturism leans towards trans-disciplinarity and crosses fields as different as fiction, cybernetics, music and cinema. One of its most well-known theoreticians at the present time is Paul D. Miller, or DJ Spooky, who published the book “Rhythm Science” in 2004, where, among other things, he takes the concept of double consciousness to subsequent stages by defending the thesis that in reality blacks no longer experience a double consciousness but a multiple consciousness.

In the context that we are increasingly plunging into and being defined by the data that surrounds us, in this culture of information flows and identity dispersion, “to affirm a multiplex consciousness is not to negate the racial oppression that motivated Du Bois’ initial interest in duality”2. Rather, it addresses the recognition of patterns intrinsic to the very social, informational and cultural process, where the insertion of a segregated population took place, whose overlapping dualities create layers where social engineering environments, multiple narrative threads and identity as a social cipher are tropes within a culture where the city centrifuges cultural conflicts and exclusions, and where the “rhythmic science” of black music adds several layers of complexity, be it in DJ or hip-hop or in the practice of sampling.

But why deal with all these issues concerning Afro-diasporic, double or multiplex consciousness, when the objective here is to approach the work of artist Daniel Lima? Perhaps because this exhibition deals with Afro-diasporic themes, maybe even because Daniel, being a son of this Diaspora himself, is not tied to the identity precepts of a descendent of this Diaspora, either through the recuperation of allegedly African roots, nor even to some more abstract example of a double consciousness. Maybe it is because we can find in his work certain types of insertion, of semiotic interference that violate and subvert certain concepts in which identity, narrative, technology and information can be shuffled and confused.

We could accompany this in some of the artist’s previous work, such as “Scribe” and “Pichação Laser”, where he produces virtual graffiti with a portable laser, transferring street language, graffiti, to other spaces by using an uncommon technological support in lieu of its street equivalent.

Daniel has also taken part in a few collective initiatives. He is one of the founders of the group A Revolução Não Será Televisionada (The Revolution Will Not Be Broadcasted), whose video programs effected a collage of video-art experimentation with a certain political activist hue where the leading thread was a narrative in off given by an urban guerrilla fighter with existential doubts. The group’s programs subverted the seductive aesthetics of MTV, for example, with a political intentionality unthinkable for the aforementioned broadcaster. With its arsenal of images, the group also participated in the Mídia Táctica Brasil in March of 2003.

Still in 2003, Daniel presented his work in Rotterdam, in the Gear Inside exhibition, in which he hung from an extremity of a drawbridge, exactly when it was being raised to allow a ship to pass, “Everything up high is like that below, Everything which is below is like that up high” is the title of his work and the phrase repeated by the artist during his performance, in a reference to Hermes Trimegisto sung by Jorge Ben. Lima invades a space, without any apparent proposition, calling the attention of the local police.

At the end of 2003, at the 8th Havana Biennial , Daniel once again violated certain protocols by locking up a fenced public square at night by placing chains and padlocks at the entry and exit gates, to bring local controls into evidence. The “agents”, responsible for guarding the park were locked inside, they themselves left to find an “escape route”. The event was filmed by the artist and, as a climax, Daniel, along with his brother, the hip-hop DJ, Eugenio Lima and the musical producer Noizyman, gave a party/spectacle with a lot of hip-hop music and images of the violation-intervention on large screens. The event is part of a series called “Sem Saida” (No Way Out).

Another of his manifestations, apparently senseless, was a series of photos called “Blitz”, where he asks the police to photograph him smiling alongside other policemen, a series that would later be exhibited on the façade of the 7th Military Police Battalion in São Paulo. Given the often denounced truculence of São Paulo police officers when dealing with blacks, the work undoubtedly contains a certain ironic coloring which Daniel’s grin cannot hide.

But it was also this often denounced police truculence with the black population that motivated one of the last activities undertaken by Lima in 2004. On the occasion of the event “Zona de Ação” at SESC Paulista, he and his group “A Revolução...”, along with activists from the Frente 3 de Fevereiro movement came together in a series of activities and interventions questioning police racism. “Zona de Ação” ended in a true theatrical and hip-hop performance that staged, among other things, the assassination of the young black lawyer Flávio Sant´Ana by the São Paulo military police.

Daniel did not abandon his laser beam research either. After presenting the first version of his work with light “Coluna Infinita” at the National Art Exhibition Center of Belo Horizonte, it was at the Sonarsound Festival in São Paulo, in 2004, that he exhibited his “Coluna Infinita II – Opostos”, where he builds a bridge, even if a virtual one (or using only laser) between the “favela” (shantytown) and the São Paulo financial district. In the same manner, “Coluna Laser III Mar” intends to lose itself at sea headed for Africa, leaving Solar do Unhão towards the Baía de Todos os Santos.

A virtual bridge, crossing centuries of separation and Diaspora, the laser beam may, who knows, suffer a certain comparison here with those of the virtual towers which, at New York’s ground zero, are intended to substitute the Twin Towers. After all, weren’t the several “September 11’s” that victimized the black population throughout the history of the Americas? Although utopian, a laser bridge might just unite a fragmented history, kidnapped by invading aliens, in a forced Diaspora.

In our age of simulations and duplications, of samplings and revisions, Daniel Lima is not tied to fixed identities, he does not cultivate roots, but re-mixes techniques, in conceptual unstabilizing activities. We might be able to see in him, like in other contemporaries of his, a shattering of identities, and not the blind protection of same. According to Kodwo Eshun, one of the luminaries of the theory of Afrofuturism, Afrofuturism “unstabilizes what people thought black identity was, what pop identity and cultural identity were”3. Perhaps, we should, also in Daniel’s case, primarily see identity as an intermittent fluctuation, like the focusing point of diverse vectors which cross in a multi-polar and multiplex consciousness.

[1] DU BOIS, W. E. B. “As almas da gente negra”. RJ: Lacerda Editores, 1999, p. 54.

[“The souls of black folk”. NY: Norton, 1999.]

[2] MILLER, Paul D. (aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid). “Rhythm Science”. Cambridge:

The MIT Press, 2004, p. 61.

[3] LOVINK, Geert. “Interview with Kodwo Eshun” on Nettime July 25, 2005. Accessed on January 17, 2005 : http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/200007/msg00112.html

(Pan-African Exhibition of Contemporary Art catalogue) ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "Mostra Pan-Africana de Arte Contemporânea" [Pan-African Exhibition of Contemporary Art]: from March 8 to April 19, 2005, pp. 71-74, São Paulo, SP, 2005.

essay_ Contrafilé_ "The artist in the lion's den"

THE ARTIST IN THE LION’S DEN

by Cibele Lucena Jerusa Messina Joana Zatz — Contrafilé

DWELLING

"This is the battlefield. Wake up, and realize you’re the only one I can count on in this fight. All around, everywhere, in each and every corner, from all sides, they have spread my word: BEHOLD."*

Full of tension, the lion’s den in the artist’s dwelling.

Inside the den, a linear, stable motion characterizes it as a location that is homogeneous, and free from contradiction. The logic of this motion updates only predictable situations, reproducing meanings in order to maintain the control.

This motion is the target of the artist: it must be interrupted.

THE ARTIST

"Angels of light protect me, and my faith is certain. The target is right around the bend, underneath, standing still, waiting for the action that will bring redemption, bring back the integrity of all things, and join it all together."

In a permanent state of vigilance, the artist looks at the lion’s den, and there he sees the whole constellation of possibilities.

He catches a glimpse of an opening: a possibility of subverting the dominant motion. He identifies that which can possibly generate meaning and, by updating it, affirms his political attitude. He inscribes these meanings in order to satisfy radical needs, and to experience life as art.

When art is the starting point for updates that were not forecast by the prevailing movement – for this artist –, it is a political act. Thus, to make art is to produce meaning; to create and inscribe in your own fashion, inaugurating the reflux.

The artist in the lion’s den transforms history by accomplishing that which otherwise would not have been.

THE DISRUPTION OF MOVEMENT

"The heroic act of scrap collectors is the state of contemporaneity. Transitoriness, this invisible something I am able to expose. Luminous remainders are all that I have — as we exclude and displace... I try to bring those remainders back to life, which is the circulation of things. In doing so, I change my positioning."

Inside the lion’s den, replete with contradictions, the artist feels complete: the real experience of truth is in contradiction, as is the possibility of disruption. He looks at a situation and sees it as an image of his urgency to inscribe himself; as the point of divergence between that which he is, and that which, for him, would have been.

Therefore, the encoded critical command of the world allows for the realization of the artist: to interrupt the flow, suddenly allowing for another possibility to arise.

SYNTHESIS ARISES OUT OF CONTRADICTION

"As I undress myself for the divine encounter, I realize my body is unique, and a repetition. Synthesis arises out of contradiction. To re-produce, like a reflection behind the mirror, or to produce something through reflection, on this side of the mirror. The hope for reinvention is quiet and goes unnoticed."

The artist takes action. He brings up signs of contradiction by creating a fact which symbolizes resistance. A single future-bearing grain, one that opens up a new constellation of possibilities and enables its own spread.

THE CAPTURE

"I take the city to myself. Graffiti is an invention. It surpasses the body, extending into the emptiness; with an invisible action, it takes over the urban opening. Here lies the conquest of space. My anonymity is public, and image is mine forever."

For the artist in the lion’s den, the inscribed fact-turned-event is the fulfillment of the reflow, the duration of an unexpectedly updated possibility.

On the other hand, it is natural that the mainstream movement should transform the future-carrying event into another type of event: an image that does not convey an experience. Therefore, according to the logic of reproduction, maintaining a fact until it become event means eliminating it potential for proliferation, sentencing it to death as a symbol of resistance.

THE WEAPONS

"Image is circulation.

Image is capturing, editing and manipulating.

Image is a new construction.

Image is a possibility of meta-language.

Image reveals the perverse unilateral display.

Image seduces action.

Image seduces you and builds our world of actions.

Image is counter-image.

Image is just image.

Life is blur. Nothing more."

In order for the event not to be captured, it is crucial for the artist to create both sides of the mirror: the fact and its image. Whenever the artist conceives image as a weapon, he creates another event which, in its own way, proliferates the meaning that was produced in the first event.

Without readiness, the artist is in danger of inscribing the image of the fact, thus confirming the logic of reproduction, becoming his own predator. Therefore, in every situation, the artist in the lion’s den must make sure that a new future-bearing fact is generated.

THE INTERMITTENT LINE

"The column breaks the space that it contains. It subverts the isolation imposed by architecture. It creates a synthetic motion in which verticality and horizontality are exacerbated into an infinite straght line — the continuity of a dot. It is also a heroic, guerilla-like, and lyrical action, one in which the intervention makes use of the foreseeable dynamics of the present to generate its recognition, reproducing in the day-to-day scene the weird perception/understanding of something that goes back to itself."

The artist in the lion’s den inhabits the world of art exhibitions like an arena.

He must remain alert because, in this world, new ways of creating the same old things are usually recognized as legitimate art work. Therefore, he must bear in mind that the finality and the usage of the means determine the work’s inscription as resistant or tolerant regarding the dominant movement.

It is crucial for the artist in the lion’s den to have discernment when he uses the same means to a new end: he must confirm his own contradiction.

REDEMPTION

"It does not matter what happened, neither does how it happened. All that matters is what is here. My sight is what’s left. One needs to hear the music that reminds of the change that goes on at every moment. Fear not what is coming, because, at the time of our death, we will become that which we have always wanted to be. And, if still something slips away, let it be, for one day we shall all be one. One."

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* All passages in " " are quotes from the text “Daniel na cova dos leões” (Daniel in the lion’s den), by artist Daniel Lima.

Mostra Pan-Africana de Arte Contemporânea Web Site: .