Race In Digital Space

Ever get onto a flight, sit between a snoring Grandma and an uptight executive, and have nothing to read?

Happens all the time. So you pull out the brightly-colored in-flight magazine from the seat pouch in front of you, and begin reading. But all you can find are articles about planes being hijacked. And photographs of planes being hijacked. And interviews of people who were on a plane that was hijacked.

Wait. This isn’t United anymore.

“Inflight,” Grimonprez’s startling video lounge installation about airplane hijacking, is one of four main exhibitions at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center. Released in conjunction with the 2001 Boston Cyberarts Festival, these expressive digital presentations again pose the controversial question, “What is art?”

Grimonprez’s art is more atmospheric than digital. The exhibition’s aims scream high-tech, cool, innovative—but aesthetically, all the gallery offers is three white walls, a yellow lounge seat, a bunch of airline flight magazines and two televisions with a video stand. But then you pop a video into the VCR, take a seat on the lounge cushion, and while waiting for the video to load, grab a magazine. There the art begins.

The airline flight magazine compiled by Grimonprez is (conveniently) titled “Inflight.” However, the picture on the cover makes it clear that whatever is inflight will not remain so; the symbolic airplane is inverted and its nose is pointing to the floor. Also on the cover is a picture of an airplane exploding. This picture, with its bright cartoon-like colors and grainy television texture, is representative of the rather graphic pictures in the entire magazine.

An emphasis on facial expressions—particularly anger, fear and insanity—seem to foreshadow death throughout the magazine. The articles and interviews, which are all exaggeratingly concise and dramatic, seem to have a similar effect. What is most startling about the exhibition, however, is not the grotesque pictures or the descriptive stories; but the cartoon-like symbols Gimonprez employs. A disturbing logo that looks like a hybrid between Mickey Mouse, an alien and the infamous Napster logo is dispersed throughout the exhibition.

The video on display is “dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y,” Grimonprez’s previous work that also deals with airplane hijacking. In this video, like in the magazine, he describes various airplane hijacking incidents. However, this presentation is more effective than the written version because of his sarcastically patronizing voice-over, reminiscent of an airline safety video. The sound effects and background music on this video are so maudlin that they drown out the screams and explosions of horrifying events. Just imagine Air Force One, minus the heroics, plus a lot of gore and the fact that it really happened.

The next two exhibitions are video pieces composed by Isaac Julien, a London-based filmmaker who has spent most of the 90s working on film-based installations. His newest piece, “Vagabondia,” is similar to “Inflight” because the artwork in itself has a lot to do with its atmosphere. While walking to the viewing site, you pass through a small hallway that is lined with black egg-crate padding. In front, a subdued red light and mellow chimes entice you to enter. And once inside, the double screen film installation seduces you to stay.

While the atmosphere is powerful, the video keeps you hooked. The amazing video work takes advantage of the double-screen, converging and diverging on specific images to show a dazzling array of hypnotic designs. Colors like bronze, gold, silver and marble create an almost surreal on-screen ambiance. The museum from which the film was recorded was built to resemble a ruin, which distorts the perception of time and space. Add to all this that the subtle time-lapse video recording, in which an image on one screen lags behind the same one on the other, and you feel like you are in a daze.

In “The Long Road to Maztlan,” Julien uses similar elements—such as color, space and time—to tell a modern cowboy tale. Using a three-screen projection rather than two, Julien explores the contradictory elements of cowboys; their masculinity and eroticism, their freedom to roam yet restrained emotions and their frontier mentality. Cowboys dance randomly from screen to screen, then simply stare, then start swimming nude, then dance again—this cycle continues. The cyclical features of both the cowboys and their backdrop distort the perceptions of freedom and wild exploration that are naturally attached to these “frontiersmen.”

Similar to that of “Vagabondia” (2001), this earlier “The Long Road to Maztlan” (1999) uses vivid colors and distinctive hues in the face and skin to emphasize human vulnerability. Each screen, while seamlessly in contact with each other, emphasizes different shades of the same face. This makes for a powerful perspective change, as characters dancing from screen to screen are seen from a different light whenever they change screens.

Elements of homoeroticism, sexuality and manliness are intensely incorporated in the characters. Venezuelan-born Javier De Frutos choreographed their strange, almost spasmodic dancing. The final piece in the exhibit, Paul Pfeiffer’s “The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle),” is the second work of a trilogy based on Muhammad Ali’s most famous bouts. In “The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle),” Pfeiffer presents Ali’s eighth round knockout of George Foreman in a 1974 Zaire fight. This piece is innovative because the boxers’ muscled figures are digitally removed, leaving only the shadows and faint clear spectres of the boxers left in the ring. This leaves the viewer with a tantalizing view of the audience’s reaction, and the influence this boxing match had on the world.

Pfieffer’s sculpture excavates implications of this fight that younger viewers probably do not understand. Ali, the handsome, smug boxer who epitomized the multimillionaire sports figure, opposed America’s colonial involvement in Vietnam. This fight took place in Zaire, where opposition to the country’s own colonialism was overwhelming. Traces of Vietnam, racism, Black Power and colonialism are all evident in this short, repeating one round video. The display, a no larger than eight-inch screen perched away from a wall, does not even have sound. Without anything to listen to, this miniscule view of boxing allows you to step back and see everything in perspective.

The genius of these exhibits is not the fact that they are digital art, it’s the fact that this art cannot easily be categorized. Audio, visual and tactile elements are intentionally used or not used to capture a certain ambiance in each atmosphere—this isn’t your traditional art studio.

For those who say that digital art is too easily manipulated to be true art, then maybe you should check out this exhibit for yourself. And for those of you who can’t stand this type of art at all, go back to the salon where you belong.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Isaac Julien, Paul Pfeiffer, and Johan Grimonprez’s works are on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center from April 27 through July 1, 2001 in conjunction with the Boston Cyberarts Festival. For more information, please call (617) 253-4680 or visit web.mit.edu/lvac/www/.