7 inches x 112 inchesScript, Wallet, Black Body
Score: Have a black body read this speech on the highest platform in the room. Have said body pass their wallet to the audience and each audience member take one thing. The audience must repeat this taking until the speech ends.
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"So I’ve been thinking about this discussion I had in my Race and Radicalism in Art class recently
And we were talking about prison abolition, which sounds idealistic to a certain extent kind of
And someone brought up the point
That some days, they feel extremely discouraged and question
How far they can actually use the tools of the system to dismantle it
(That day was one of those days)
They asked, how many people in this class had a smartphone.
Everyone did.
And by asking that, they were telling us
That no matter how hard we fight, and that even though
we shouldn’t stop learning
and advocating
that we’re still playing into a system that fucks us over, especially poor and colored people
but we CHOOSE to be here and try to take apart the system from the inside out
while simultaneously having our $600 iPhones
that don’t nearly compensate the people who assemble them.
(they barely compensate the verizon worker who sold me my shit)
Which is tricky
Because you can’t totally clock out of the system unless you’re willing to face social death
and I think about Frank Wilderson's text
calling out ideology being built for certain bodies
like if there’s no proper way to compensate the wage laborer
then how the fuck do you compensate someone who isn't even seen as a worker
is there any way to compensate someone who has been dehumanized and seen as solely utility
because marxism doesn’t address this body properly
and marxism isn't the only thought that does this-
i mean i’m standing here in a space that is allegedly worth $65,000
talking about marxism
when there are more bodies like mine
who don’t have the “official” academic access to the discourse around black marxism and the black body
but i think about the constant championing of certain ideologies
like @ bernie sanders bros
who think that participating and advocating for Sanders makes them a better person
when u.s. politics were formed and are based on shunning the colored and/or marginalized body
and then how long can you play the system with their tools
before it isn't enough
Thomas Hirschhorn, I have a question-
Hirschhorn, who thought that employing the residents of Forest Houses
to build a temporary, plywood monument to Antonio Gramsci,
that included resources
that were made to inform
not the bodies who built this temporary structure
but the bodies who similarly worked for a wage
but historically were seen as more valuable and NOT as a granted figure to be bought
and used as a product
They were victims of the system, slaves were just in the system.
what were you and the dia foundation really doing?
heavy-handedly entering that neighborhood and
employing black bodies to build these structures:
a library with Gramsci's prison notebooks
and a food stand that sold $2 hot dogs and popcorn
that is good enough because it fit the budget and it was food-
what were y'all really up to?
Frank Wilderson III
who actually showed up and gave remarks for the opening of this public/private space
pointed out
that there has to be some understanding that capitalism in the context of the united states
has been based off of labor by humans seen as subaltern to white supremacy-
including nonconsensual labor that had no sort of compensation.
not solely the abuse of the simply devalued worker.
like Dia… Bernie bros... were y’all thinking? or no?
unfortunately there are levels to this devalued worker shit.
it reminds me of that yoko ono plastic band song, or john lennon song: woman is the nigger of the world
not to play oppression olympics, but as Pearl Cleage asked, "If women are the Nigger of the world then what does that make black women?"
The nigger-nigger of the world?
and to bring it back around to prisons-
Our world, and ideology that dominates, views people as disposable
which I don't believe, but I contribute to.
Prisoners are used to produce our physical infrastructure
and are rarely offered rehabilitation
Which would be the base-level, starting screen offer in compensation
I'm not sure how to end this
because I feel useless in this
and I could log out, drop school, "ethically" rid myself of my phone, but that's extremely unlikely and I'll at least keep doing what I'm doing until I can do something else or something."