Race, Hypocrisy and Dullness
An interview between Harwood and Maharg Dla'nor Doowrah
+ + +
Maharg Dla'nor Doowrah: A lot of people will be unfamiliar with your
work called National Heritage. Can you tell me what the work is about?
Harwood: National Heritage is more a campaign then a single work. For
the past couple of years, Mongrel, of which I'm a part, has been
organising activity against the racially exclusive, US West Coast
utopianism that suggests information technology is inherently capable of
producing a better world of a certain type; and at the same time against
the euro-authoritarian here-and-now social usage of technology. National
Heritage is our attempt to trace and attack racisms and racialisations
that are attempting to migrate into the future. The installation part of
the National Heritage campaign has been temporarily forced out off the
UK's art circus and ISEA98 in particular, due to the ringmasters'
inability to deal with the cultural politics of a techno-mongrel world.
MDD: Could you speak more about the National Heritage installation.
H: During primary research for National Heritage, Mongrel uncovered a
common theme in the process of racialisation. Feeling shit about
yourself is encouraged through the constant removal of control over your
own self-image. Like I mean… Skint people rarely get control over the
processes of cultural reproduction which means that when you have to get
up on a stage any stage… be it going for an interview or whatever. It
has been set by some one else. The stage is the social context
constructed in large part through the means of cultural reproduction.
Mongrel will reproduce its own version of this process as an *entrance
fee* to the installation. Users will be confronted by an electronic gate
that demands a portrait image in order to enter the space. In agreeing
to this, the user hands over control of their self-image and
contractually commits to their skin being used by us in whatever manner
we see fit.
The user's skin will then be analysed to distinguish which of our eight
anonymous racial types they most match. The user will be asked to
confirm this finding, ranking their own image against ours. This, in
turn, will determine how the user's experience of the work is
structured. The user then picks up a torch and enters the space along
with a number of other users. As they move the light around the room
they notice objects of racialisation on the floor clothes, media,
weapons etc. When the light hits the objects, animated heads tell
stories of local people, peoples not usually associated with the art
arena or of national abuse. Depending on the collective skin colour of
the audience, the heads abuse that audience. Basically if the city is
50% white and 50% black and too many white folks go in the installation
at once then it gets more abusive to that audience. And if the users
trigger certain points they may trigger frenzied spitting at the images.
What I've outlined is a simple version of what we are up to. The work is
intricately connected to the Internet Directory "Natural Selection" and
street poster/newspaper campaigns that we are organising.
MDD: What or who is Mongrel?
H: Mongrel is a mixed bunch of people working to celebrate the methods
of London street culture. It was set up with the people who helped make
Rehearsal of Memory which is a CD-ROM made with patients/prisoners of
Ashworth, a top Security Mental Hospital. Mongrel is centred around
Matsuko Yokokoji, Richard Pierre Davis and me. We set up projects and
invite others to join in on specific projects. We are dedicated to
defeating the self-image of societies in which it is usual to presume
those involved in "intellectual pursuits," and those attending
"culturally prestigious events" are far above the mundanity of political
conflict. In other words, societies of people who positively cultivate a
view of themselves of being "liberal, arty post-racists."
MDD: What does Mongrel do?
H: We make socially engaged cultural product employing any and all
technological advantage that we can lay our hands on. We have dedicated
ourselves to learning technological methods of social engagement, which
means we pride ourselves on our ability to programme, engineer and build
our own software and custom hardware.
At the moment one of the ideas high on our agenda is to address is the
computer's ability to infinitely reproduce its masters' image. We
repeatedly nag-and-stab at the bloody miscarriage of cyber-civilisation,
in an attempt to force into view the images of those being reproduced so
purely and "cleanly." We also check the wallet of those who benefit. As
Richard says, NH is looking these questions straight in the face to
discover if that face has a colour.
+ + +
MDD: What do you think is the most useful thing a new media artist has
to offer?
H: Nothing: There is nothing clever or inherently useful about wanting
to make or put on a show of interactive art. It's simply not enough to
show technical virtuosity with technology. For that I look to Sony or
BMW and other skilled and creative engineers. In fact to put on a
computer art show in itself is dull and uninteresting.
MDD: So what do you think the purpose of the new technologies is?
H: I don't know. But any one with more then half a brain will realise
that these technologies are used to oppress 90% of the time. They have
not been invented to make life more fun and easier. A company does not
buy computers to make its employees happy. Computers can be fun, can be
a political weapon and can offer some pleasure. But this happens in the
margins of confusion. That is, in the technology's newness or in the
boredom of youthful soft engineers and in other odd corners.
MDD: We have an opportunity with this technology to leave behind a world
which privileges the creativity of a few in order to suppress the
creativity of the many. What do you think is holding this back?
H: New media art is being systematically privileged at international
festivals in order to export the oppressive social structures of
tastefulness from this century onto the next. Every self-respecting
artist will deny this activity at every turn. It's about time we exposed
the hypocrisy and inherent dullness of media art. Before it's taken
serious.
MDD: If this is the scenario, then what role should the new media artist
occupy? What tactics work?
H: Re-purposing corporate soft. Mimic other's sites. Email as your
enemy. Form your own networks. Burrow into the decaying matter of the
20th Century. There's loads of stuff going on. Drive the population
crazy. We need to migrate as many radical and speculative threads as
possible at this time.
+ + +
Maharg Dla'nor Doowrah is an environmentalist and homemaker and regular
contributor to Ninth Fold, a journal of post-colonial gardening.
