Lauren Halsey's Maximalist art: Freedom, Identity, Revolution, Care

EXHIBITIONISTAS CELEBRATES ONE YEAR OF PODCASTING! 🍌🍌🍌If you want to give us a birthday present, we have ideas>>>>>For a one-off donation: paypal.me/exhibitionistas [https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/my/profile]For a membership: https://www.patreon.com/c/exhibitionistaspodcast/membership And now the episode. We talk about Lauren Halsey's exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Chris Bayley. It's a maximalist environment that led us to a discussion about art, freedom, identity, revolution and care. It also allowed us to find out more about the myths and origins of the term Afro-Futurism, which surprised us a great deal.To know more about the exhibition: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/lauren-halsey-emajendat/We also mention Emily's friend, an artist using street signs in her work. Go to Instagram and check her out! @janeroerevolutionMusic by Sarturn.

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Hello. Hello, Joanna here.
Welcome to Exhibitionistas. Today we talk about Lauren
Halsey's exhibition Imagine Thatat the Serpentine Gallery,
curated by Lizzie Kerry Thomas and Chris Bailey.
It's a maximalist environment that led us to a discussion
about art, freedom, identity, revolution, care.

(00:31):
It also allowed us to find out more about the myths and origins
of the term Afrofuturism, which I have to say, surprised us a
great deal. This episode unexpectedly
located us as spectators in our freedoms and in our edges, as
you will see. It also reminded us that one of

(00:51):
the things that connects us is probably the ability to dream
without systematically placing our own desires at the centre of
dreamscapes. You know, dreamscapes are not
always about us, and world making is a joint effort,
specific at times to groups thatnot always have the possibility

(01:12):
of even having one. Dreams are actually realities in
the making. But this is really what we've
learned by visiting and talking and researching this incredible
exhibition. And we also kind of got to the
conclusion that all of this may very well be one of the facets

(01:33):
of joy. So without further ado, come
with me. Let's push the doors of the
Serpentine and discover this incredible world of Lauren
Halsey. Hello and welcome to

(01:58):
exhibitionistas. If you're new here, this is the
only conversational podcast where we visit solo exhibitions
in London to discuss them here in this recorded space from an
art specialist perspective. Me, Joanna Pierre Nevers,
contemporary outwriter and curator and from an outsider's,
albeit passionate and many timeserudite point of view.

(02:19):
I'm talking about my lovely Co host who I will let introduce
herself. So kind.
And yes, I'm Emily Harding, an art lover and an exhibition
goer. I don't know how erudite, but
it's it's a great pleasure to view exhibitions and discuss
them with you Joanna, and with the dear listeners.

(02:41):
A phrase that I am picking up from you very much though.
So this exhibition is, is LaurenHalsey.
Imagine that at the Serpentine and it gives a lot to consider,
emphasis on a lot because there is a maximalist theme going on
throughout it. So it's at the Serpentine until

(03:03):
the 23rd of February in London. It's a site specific
installation, which makes it I think kind of additionally
interesting. It's also really inspired by
funk, the group Parliament in particular, which I loved
because you know, you can kind of go down a rabbit hole of funk
on title or Spotify or wherever you stream your music.

(03:24):
Does that did that ring a bell for you?
Oh God yeah. Oh wow, 100%.
I was wondering, I was wondering.
Yeah, definitely. And yeah, no, it was, it was
really fun and Funkadelic, you know, all those bands.
But for me personally, it was a this kind of whole, this
exhibition was a real roller coaster.

(03:45):
So I was super excited to see itwhen I kind of saw it online.
And then I had a bit of a disorienting experience within
the exhibition and I, and I was like trying to land on where I
felt about it. It was, you know, I left with it
still pretty up in the air. And then, you know, I did
research for the podcast and I, I feel now like I, I'd like to

(04:10):
return to Palsy's perspective with more knowledge than I had
before. Like that could be an
interesting world to go back to because as we said, there's a
lot. So there's certainly would have
been a lot that I would have missed and a lot that deserves
more attention. Totally agree.
Totally agree. I also want to go back and

(04:31):
experience it again for sure. It's one of those where this
episode makes so much sense for it because there is so much to
find out about Lauren Halsey, about the exhibition, about the
choices that were made, project itself, what it links to.
I mean, there's a lot to talk about and I'm really can't wait

(04:54):
to dig in. But before we go into it, I just
want to inform our listeners, our dear listeners, that we are
now officially one year old babies.
Oh. Exhibition.
Mr. wandering around, holding under the coffee table.

(05:15):
Exhibitions are toddlers. So on the 25th of January of
2024, we dropped our first episode and I think you should
check this episode. If you discovered us midway, I'm
just going to tell you that Emily was manhandled by a
security guard while trying to get some nudes, so if this

(05:38):
doesn't pique your interests, I don't know what will.
Gosh, can you remember one year ago?
Innocent, sweet innocence, yeah.The innocence.
Marina Abramovic exhibition Yeah, will live in my memory
forever. But more importantly, I would

(06:00):
like to thank you, our listeners, followers,
subscribers. Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for listening. And please, if you want us to
continue to grow and to develop,you can do lots of things to
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subscribe to the podcast. You know what?

(06:20):
I know it sounds very abstract, but it does count.
Yeah, totally. It's really important.
You can leave comments and there's platforms that allow you
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So far, we only have one. It's in the Mike Kelly episode
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(06:42):
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We cherish it. It's the first one, but I didn't
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So that's why I'm talking about it because we are not all aware
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(07:03):
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You know, yeah, I think it feelslonely, you know?

(07:26):
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(07:47):
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(08:11):
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(08:34):
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So we will have that in our newsletter, in our Instagram
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So please think of us. I know Christmas is behind us

(08:56):
and January is a tough month, but you know, we don't need big
donations. Lots of ways to support us.
Independent journalism is what we do and therefore we really,
really need your support. So tell me, Joanna, what was
your week in culture like? Well, I just got back from
France from a small town called Amyang, where the Frac Picardie

(09:20):
is located. So at Drawing Now.
So I'm artistic director of Drawing Now Paris, which is a
not fair dedicated to drawing that takes place every year in
March, last week of March. So we have a partnership with
the Frac, and we do that becauseit's a collection and a space

(09:40):
that is exclusively dedicated tocontemporary drawing.
So I curate 2 shows there every year, more or less around the
time of the art fair in March. And that's what I did last week.
And this year I focused on the notion of codes and notations
for the exhibition. You know, when written words are

(10:03):
no longer enough to convey what you want to convey.
Think music and dance notations,but also mathematical signs,
etcetera. And I took inspiration from
Emily, a really important artistin France called Jacques
Filigley, who passed away in 2018, I think at 90.
He was a really, really interesting artist.

(10:25):
He was an aficist as well, whichmeans that he would retrieve
posters from the street and makecolleges with them.
He's quite an established artistby now in France and a
historical one. And he also had a project that
he started in 1969 called the Sociopolitical Alphabet, which

(10:48):
was composed of signs that were socially and politically
motivated and that he would findin the streets and that he would
collect. Cool, I love that.
It's so compelling. I mean, I, you know, I, I, yeah,
that's, that's really cool because it's like you can think
of like the peace sign and, you know, people putting that around
everywhere in the 60s, but there's so much more and so much

(11:11):
more depth to them now. I mean, a friend of mine is a,
is a street artist and she does a lot of the, she does a lot of
stickers, Yeah. With various kind of different
signs on them. And you know, through her
Instagram account, you see so many, you see the variety of, of

(11:33):
different signs that that there are and wow, what a great idea
to kind of really capture and distill those.
Wow, Maybe we can put her Instagram account in the show's
notes. Yeah, what's her?
Name, her name is Paula Finbo, but the Instagram account, I
think it's a Jane Roe revolution.

(11:54):
But we'll, we'll, we'll leave itin the show's notes.
And that's exactly what he took inspiration from, but obviously
also from slogans. And, you know, 69 was that
period was quite a revolutionaryperiod and a period of protest.
So of course, he kind of drew inspiration from that.
And the cultural highlight for me, I'm getting there, is when I

(12:19):
was shown at the FRAC, a book ofBenjamin Perry.
He was a French poet with Villeglis alphabet.
Oh, there's a fox peeing in a Bush right outside my window.
Excuse me for being very distracted by it.
Okay, picking up again. So Benjamin Perry, French poet.

(12:44):
So the text that was published in this little booklet, it was
called The Poet's Dishonor. It was written in 1945 against
the use of poetry by politicallymotivated agendas, namely the
communists. So Benjamin Perry was a
Trotskist. He was part of the surrealist

(13:04):
movement as well at some point, but it was also against
criticism that about of poetry as being escapism.
Because, and I love this sentence of the text quote, they
scorn dreams in favour of reality, as if reality were not
one and the most overwhelming ofits aspects unquotes.

(13:25):
The text is quite something. I really urge you to read it.
You can find it in English online.
But more importantly, Pirae has a stance against poetry as a
liberating tool and equates fascist and democratic poetry or
communist. Obviously that was kind of the
aim of his text. So he equates both.

(13:46):
Both are chained to the ideas ofGod or nation or both.
So of course this is very contained by the period that he
was writing about. He was living in Mexico at the
time. He had such a look him up, he
had such an incredible life. So he was against the poetry
being attached to ideas of belonging rather than total and

(14:10):
unconditional revolutionary irreverence.
And we go back to so many thingsdiscussed in past episodes,
right? Such as, you know, when we
talked about American curator Helen Molesworth's comment about
how we went from ideas of revolution and anarchy even in
exhibitions and in art, to ideasof caring and community in art

(14:34):
spaces and exhibitions in particular, which falls right
into the subject today, right? Yeah, it really is.
It really is the subject. But to be honest, I was really
mostly taken by the book that I kind of had in my hands.
It was published in 2004. And The thing is, you managed to

(14:55):
read it despite the subverted graphics of the letters.
So, for example, A becomes the anarchist, AO is the swastika
inside a sort of multifaceted kind of roundish shape.
And you can read the text, but you read it in a sort of
syncopated manner. So it's as if you're reading

(15:16):
undid the words even more and created a whole of the meaning.
So I was just so taken by this book.
It was such a special moment in the week.
It feels like there could not besomething more up your street
person, you know, I mean. If you know me it.
Has, yeah, it has like, you know, your, your love of just

(15:38):
like words and letters and the written text.
And then to have that absolutelyinfused with all sorts of other
abstract meaning through these symbols.
I can imagine that was. I can imagine your joy and
pleasure in that. Yeah, it was fantastic.
I was. I was.
So yeah, it was a special moment.
Thank you, Kristoff at the FRAC who showed me the book.

(16:01):
They have an amazing person who takes care of all the books and
all the catalogues and they choose, they always have books
available that connect to the exhibition that they're showing,
curated by Kristoff, but also bythe artists and the curators who
are there. So it it is a really great
institution to work with and andI had a wonderful time.

(16:21):
So. But how about you?
Yeah, I mean, I mean, for me, pretty low key, but I finished a
book from one of my favorite authors, Louise Erdrich.
The Night Watchman is the name of the book.
She won appeal for it in 2021. And it's, you know, for those
who may have cracked the spine of an Erdrich novel before and

(16:43):
found them a challenge because she is really known for using
magical realism in her work and kind of she messes with a
narrative timelines quite a bit.She's one of those authors where
you really have to pay attention.
You know, it's hard to it's hardto be nodding off to sleep in in
her in her works. Usually this book uses a more

(17:05):
straight narrative structure. And there is some of the great
symbolism and sort of magical realism that she's known for in
there, but it's a little bit more in the background in this
one. But she's a Native American from
Minnesota, so from my home state.
And she is totally a local luminary.

(17:26):
And the book follows the story of a night watchman, which is
roughly based on her grandfather, I think it was, who
worked at this jewelry settings plant that had been put on the
reservation. His real kind of purpose was
working with the Native Council to resist the federal

(17:47):
government's push to erase Native heritage and rights.
I mean, there was, you know, I mean, obviously the story of
Native Americans is a long and rich, but with the US
government, you know, they've been pushed and pushed and
squeezed into these reservations.
And then at a certain point theywere like, oh, no, no, we're
just going to say that you're Americans now, so anybody can

(18:08):
come into your lands and and buythem.
And you know, you've been horribly treated and you know,
you've had genocide and you know, massive, massive
disenfranchisement economically,educationally, etcetera.
And culturally. And culturally, but now this,

(18:29):
this particular move was to justsay we're not going to have any
protected lands because we're just going to see you as regular
Americans. And so obviously, there was a
big push against this. You know, it's a real thing that
happened in history. And she's building up this novel
around that historical thread. It takes place in North Dakota

(18:50):
and a bit in Minnesota. And it's just another great
offering of a Native writer telling the story of what has
happened to Native Americans throughout time and in very
recent history, too. Wow.
I'm so glad that, you know, Native American voices recently

(19:11):
have reached some of the mainstream platforms.
And that's absolutely amazing. And it's great because, you
know, the story has been very hushed.
And it's good to know, you know,a bit more about it, but also a
bit more about the present and the future of these communities

(19:31):
and not just kind of like stick them to an, an idea of the past
that is very tokenizing and and romanticized.
And yeah, that's amazing. I, I think I'm going to have a
look. I hope I have time to pick up a
a novel at some point this year.Yeah, I would.
I would super super recommend it.
Yeah, amazing. She's brilliant.

(19:52):
OK, so we are about to push the Serpentine's S gallery doors and
enter the topical world of Lauren Halsey.
If not for the fact that she is LA based and wildfires have
literally consumed the part of the city and killed many people

(20:13):
there. Which is a terrible, terrible
thing that has happened in this turn of the year, but.
Anyway, moving on to Lauren Halsey, do you want to introduce
us to her Emily? Yeah, it's my great pleasure and
and I'm I really am so happy that we're doing an episode that

(20:34):
is so LA based considering the the heartbreak that's happening
there now. I mean, obviously, as you say,
people have died, but people have lost everything.
And there's something very specific about the loss with
fires as well. It's like a flood comes.
The things are kind of mostly still there only in a, you know,
in a different form. And you you choose to then get

(20:58):
rid of them. But it's like with you just see
ash heaps everywhere of people'slives.
And yeah, it's just been so heartbreaking.
So I'm going to start by citing a great write up in there in the
Guardian about the exhibition byKaddish Morris.
But there are so many other reviews of the exhibition and

(21:18):
info, and there's info on LaurenHalsey out there.
I saw this super charming short on YouTube of an interview with
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Halsey. And at a certain moment in the
short, you see the both of them on stationary bikes, which was
really cute. So yeah, so I really enjoyed a

(21:40):
podcast episode as well with Halsey and George Clinton, who
is the founder of Parliament, super famous funk band from the
late 60s. They're still going to be
honest, but that was kind of when their heyday was sort of
late 60s, early 70s. He's in his 80s now.
Yeah, yeah. And it's this sort.

(22:00):
Of incredible. This interview between the two
of them, honestly, look it up. It's on the David's Werner
podcast. I think it's called dialogues.
Through this episode that we're having now, it will become clear
why that connection is so important.
But the the interview between Clinton and Halsey is just

(22:21):
beautiful. It's like people across
generations, you know, differentsort of artistic mediums, but
but have this lively sense of connection.
And yeah, it was really, really nice.
And he is, he's just like a super sweet, yeah, super sweet
old, you know, artistic elder. Really.

(22:41):
Yeah. And not to jump the gun, I think
that's one of the strengths of Lauren Halsey, isn't it?
Because she really is looking into a past and different
generations before her and also ahead of her.
But that that's, that's kind of one of the moving things about
her, I find. Yeah, totally, Totally.

(23:02):
So Lauren Halsey was born in LA in 1987, more specifically South
Central LA, which is where much of her work is physically and
conceptually centered. As she grew up, her dad was an
accountant, her mom was a schoolteacher who apparently brought
home lots of craft supplies homefor Halsey to play with, which

(23:24):
again, is something a feature ofof this exhibition in
particular. You can kind of draw a line
there. Her first love was basketball,
which is also reflected in the exhibition, but her parents
really pushed a more academic route.
She eventually graduated with ABFA from the California
Institute of Arts, AKA Cal Arts,as did Mike Kelly and Judy

(23:48):
Chicago from other recent episodes.
And it for me personally, it waskind of fun to be like, oh, I
think I'm seeing the vibe, you know.
I mean, you know, there is thereis a thing that was going on
there that feels very specific. Would you agree?
Or I was expecting that comment because when we started with LA

(24:10):
was through Judy Chicago and I remember expecting you to be
super knowledgeable about LA, California, the scene.
And I forget that the United States is bigger than Europe.
I mean, you're from Minnesota for Christ's sakes.
So yeah, are discovering with a whole lot of insight compared to

(24:33):
me obviously, and probably beingeven more extra careful to not
contain things and characteristics too quickly.
But I was wondering, you know, how you would feel about having
done like this Is the third episode about that scene?
The West in the American West has a fascination and a

(24:58):
connection to land in space thatthat is different than the rest
of the country. I mean, if you think of like the
great novelists, you know, Steinbeck or Wallace Stegner, I
mean, these people who, you know, were California writers to

(25:19):
their bones or or, or American West writers to their bones,
really. And, you know, you certainly see
that in Judy Chicago with like the, you know, the colorful
explosions of, you know, the land projects and things like
that. And I mean, Lauren Halsey is
really different. She is not, you know, she's not

(25:42):
reflecting the natural environment as much, but
environment is, is really at theheart of of the work that she's
doing and representing that environment rather than an
internal idea or something necessarily political.
I mean, there are internal ideasand it is political in a way,

(26:03):
but. They're Mike Kelly too.
The expansion of the projects intime and space of Mike Kelly.
Although he's not originally from California or from the West
Coast, he comes from Detroit. And there's something like, I
mean, I think maybe with Mike Kelly and Lauren Halsey is

(26:23):
there's sort of this cacophonousthing that they both have.
I mean, I'm thinking of like that second to last room of the
of the Mike Kelly show, which was just like Everything
Everywhere All at Once. And Lauren Halsey definitely has
that same thing going on where you're almost like, what is my

(26:45):
focal point? Like where, where am I supposed
to land in this room? I'm not sure.
But I think it's interesting because she she then went to the
East Coast. She went to Connecticut and
finished an MFA at Yale in 2014.So yeah, it was a really
prestigious. It's one of those Ivy League
schools, right? Yeah, but I, I, when I think of

(27:06):
Yale and the arts, I think of drama.
Oh, I didn't know that. OK.
There were a couple of encounters, though, that put her
on the path of art. And the first was her exposure
to funk music, which we talked about.
This was, you know, she's on herparents computer in the early
arts, and she comes across the funk band Parliament on

(27:28):
Limewire. Remember that, folks, for those
who aren't familiar with funk music, you have a glorious
exploration ahead of you. It's a style that emerged in the
late 60s, has its roots in blackempowerment and expression.
Parliament is a biggie, but there were lots of bands in sort
of the late 60s that were kicking off with Funkadelic, Sly

(27:51):
and the Family, Stone, Earth Wind and Fire.
I mean, these were enormous bands.
Funk is maximalist. So, you know, lots of band
members, lots of wild outfits, makeup, different characters.
None of them had to relate to one another.
You know, it was it was a, it was a very slippery gender

(28:14):
spectrum that was on clear display.
I mean, George Clinton used to wear these long blonde wigs and
dresses and, you know, but therewas never like, you know, a
question about his sexuality is just this was his expression in
the band. And and that's, you know, that
sort of community open aspect really, really seemed to speak

(28:38):
to Halsey and, you know, and. Inform her work, but that
openness as well. So I, I read a review that was
about that was, you know, kind of fixated on this idea of Funko
funkicizing the space, which is what she proposes to do in her
artwork and her installations. And she was expecting music and

(29:03):
the idea of funk. And it took me a while to
understand this in Lauren Halseyis that funk is a philosophy of
life? Is this idea of not having a
fixed structure that then you have to hold on to?
There's an interview in the catalogue with the two curators,
Obrists and Lizzie Carey Thomas,and they are trying to

(29:27):
understand what is the project because the basis of this
exhibition is that she wants to develop a sculpture park in
South Central LA. And the last answer is her
saying, I don't know. I don't want to behold to any
plan. I want to see what people are
doing. This is a live thing in the

(29:47):
present, in the now. And so I need to remain open to
that. And that was fascinating.
Yeah, I know, I know. I think it's really special.
The second kind of point that helped her put her on a path of
being an artist where she met a fellow LA artist called
Dominique Moody and this inspired an interest in

(30:10):
architecture and inspired me to look up Dominique Moody and was
a very satisfying trip down an Internet rabbit hole.
So go and check her out as well.Really interesting artist,
Halsey said. I knew I didn't want to become
an architect with a capital A, but I thought I could navigate
the language of architecture through art.

(30:31):
So she was drawn to ancient Egyptian expressions of, of, of
heritage through architecture. So of course, there's obelisks
and, you know, you think of Cleopatra's needles, sphinx as
examples that can help tell the story of the people for their,
you know, their history and their hopes for the future.

(30:53):
And Halsey was inspired to do this for her community in South
Central LA, primarily by building community gardens in
vacant lots. There was also because there was
so many rabbit holes in this investigation.
Was there I don't know more thanmost right, I just.
More than most. There was just so much

(31:14):
exploration, unique amalgamationof what sort of puts an artist
together or you know, their world.
The other influences she talks about is a dad and the
connection between her dad's headspace, the way he thinks,
the way he connects things, and Sunra.
There's there's a great video ofher working on a piece one of

(31:37):
these community gardens in a vacant lot.
And this, this lot is on a corner in a massive, you know,
kind of LA intersection, it looks like where a big box store
might have been. At one point across the way, you
can see a Macy's and a giant parking lot.
And, you know, you can you can imagine what she built within

(32:00):
that with celebration of South Central culture and how that is
juxtaposed in those, you know, super commercial, super LA
consumerist kind of spaces. And, you know, it's actually
injecting a bit of like, what isthe history that is behind that
place? I mean, you know, she, as she

(32:21):
says, her family's lived there for generations.
You know, it was part of the Great Migration that.
Since in the 20s, a century, a whole century of a progression
in that history for the black community where they arrived
from the eastern S, let's say, and they migrated there in, you

(32:42):
know, obviously from a very segregated space in the hopes of
getting more freedom, more work.And that's when her family
arrived there. And then progressively, South
Centre LA became a place where the black community thrived,
grew. Now there's also a Latino

(33:03):
community. So there really is a community
that started in the 20s, lived segregation, built their own
community in that space that is now really thriving.
As Lauren Halsey shows us, that stimulates her to imagine her
family coming in, her parents aswell.

(33:26):
You know, the the Central Ave. which was also historically
connected to music, How what what would have happened there
in the 60s. And and that's very much
something that really, really feeds her imagination, but also
makes her work. So she talks about the fact that
everyone has a garden over thereand that the first sculptures

(33:49):
she did and she she made for theHammer Museum and the first
exhibition she had were made in that garden by the family and
the friends with her. Because she was thinking about
that garden and what that space could be and how it could be a
communitarian space. So.
I mean, LA used to be a Mexican city like it started off.

(34:11):
Los Angeles. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So the Latino community has been
there literally forever. But yeah, so we have funk, we
have architecture and community,specifically South Central LA,
all oozing out of Lauren Halsey's art.
And in the podcast interview, she talked about how when she

(34:31):
made art in the beginning especially, she required so much
help from her family. You know, parents, cousins.
Her brother established this principle of community and art.
I should mention as as the art specialist here, her career was
born in 87, so she has had quitethe career in terms of

(34:52):
institutional projects. Obrist mentions the fact that
him and Lizzie Carey Thomas discovered her work at the Mocha
in Los Angeles, so the Museum ofContemporary, where in 2018 she
was invited to do a show that she called.
We still here there. And it's very close to what we

(35:14):
have at the Serpentine with a very big environment with these
kind of fake rocks and mounds and corners with a lot of
archival stuff that she collectsand then places and colleges
into the space. Another highlight I think that
is quite connected to her project here is the Roof Garden

(35:35):
Commission at the Met in New York in 2023.
That's a great one. And just to say, there's some
great videos about that on YouTube that I really encourage
people to check out. It's called the East Side of
South Central Los Angeles Hieroglyph Prototype
Architecture 1. And it is again, this idea that

(35:57):
what she's doing are prototypes for this dream she has of
building a sculpture park in South Central Los Angeles for
the community, with the community in the community.
And finally, I have to mention, so in 2024, last year, she was
part of the Venice Pianale, the 60th Venice Pianale in the

(36:21):
Arsenale, which was actually thefirst place where you had mass
production. So the Arsenale was a very long
building where you built ships. And it was kind of, you know,
like we have now in, in, you know, like in a factory when you
have things that are in the lineof production.

(36:42):
And apparently in, I think in the 17th century, 16th century,
you could build a boat in a day at the end of that line.
So that was kind of, it's interesting to know that we talk
about mass production related tothe industrial Revolution, but
actually, but the ships are so connected with colonization
capitalism. Interesting.

(37:03):
And so she in that context, has this project called Keepers of
the the the Crown. And these are a couple of
pillars that are these columns that she takes from and she
borrows from Egyptian ancient architecture where they're very
monolithical. And at the top, they have these

(37:25):
faces exactly in the style of Egyptian sculpture.
And they all bear faces of her family and friends.
And they are engraved as well, like Egyptian monuments.
So kind of relief, but they havewords that come from her

(37:47):
culture, her community, Like I'm, I'm looking at the picture
now, like Black Fang, pride, expressions of community that
you also find in the exhibition.So she's had these really
beautiful landmarks in her career and that took her to the
Sopentine Gallery where we discovered her in the UK for the

(38:09):
first time. Yeah.
And I mean, I think just to add to that, she has the Summer
Everything project in LA, which she started in 2019, which is a
community centre. That said, I think we're ready
for a break. We've introduced Lauren Halsey,
so we'll be with you in a littlewhile.

(38:42):
Welcome back from the break. I think you're going to bring us
into this exhibition, right? Yes, yes, I will.
You push the doors and it's an explosion.
It is. Yeah.
Explosion is exactly the right word, Yeah.
So it's an explosion of decorative objects and obsessive

(39:02):
making, gluing, stacking, cutting, collaging.
You're immersed in a universe that hits you as being super
specific, and as specific, I imagine, as it is foreign to you

(39:23):
if you're not familiar with the community Laura Halsey
represents here. So chances are for most of us,
this will be a new experience. You move across it clockwise,
which is an unusual direction inthe South gallery.
So you perform a sort of circular walk through three
rooms, right, Including the entrance.

(39:45):
Yeah. And and just to say like that
entrance, the spectrum of the types of objects that are in
there. I mean, you go in and there's
like the the on the floor, thereare rugs that you would find in
a home. You know, I mean, one of them is
depicting children. It looks like they're praying.
And then there's lots of kind ofanimal skin kind of rugs around.

(40:10):
And so you go from like this domestic sphere to things that
should be outside, like Sphinx and, you know, big animals and
sculptures that you could imagine in very large scale, but
you see them in miniature scale here.
And then the wallpaper is outer space, you know, so it's like
you are going from like, you know, sitting around someone's

(40:32):
coffee table almost, you know, that you could imagine sitting
on one of these rugs to outer space.
I mean, it is just such a big spectrum of of time and space
that she's representing. Totally.
And the entrance is very dark, so as if like really giving that
impression of interior And the reason why you go clockwise,

(40:53):
it's because that last room, which I always find a very
difficult room, it kind of creates a lull in the
exhibition. That first room has a long, long
wall. It's kind of a corridor like,
and it has a long wall to the left with windows.
So it has a very specific connection to the garden.

(41:14):
And the idea for Lauren Halsey was ready to think of Kensington
Gardens has something that you don't have over where she comes
from that much. And it's such a feature in the
city and it really makes a connection between the way you

(41:34):
are in a garden and the way you are supposed to experience the
exhibition. The exhibition becomes a place
where you spend time, you observe, but you're also
immersed in an atmosphere as if you were, you know, doing a
stroll and spending some time inin a garden.

(41:57):
Yeah, yeah, totally. And so there's that kind of
conversation going on there, which also took place in the Met
rooftop garden that she created that was very much in
conversation with Central Park, which was right there.
And, you know, she was thinking about what people, what parts of
the structures people would actually be able to see from the

(42:19):
park. And, you know, there's
Cleopatra's Needle and she's doing, you know, kind of
something in response to that, alittle bit of call and answer.
And so, yeah, so that's definitely something she's
played with before. Definitely.
So suddenly the exhibition spacehas become a very involving

(42:41):
urban area where you can relax, you know, you can chat, you can
look around you. There's even a little fountain
in the central space or the central room of the Serpentine S
gallery, which is also the most gregarious.
There's it's really where peoplespend time.
There are at least two places tosit.

(43:03):
But I read in one of the reviewsthat you weren't allowed to, but
then I saw someone do it. Me too.
And I, I did scratch my head. I was like, I don't know if
that's legal. Waiting for the police to come
in and cuff them, you know? After our experiences and my

(43:24):
recent Hayward Gallery experiment, I'm here to fall.
I'm interested in physical contacts with the artworks.
That's over for me. Yeah, yeah.
So this relation with the gardenis great to know because so
that's also in the text at the entrance, you learn that that

(43:45):
was one of the inspirations as well as the funkicizing of the
space. Because I mean, if you are
confused by maximalist decorations, you may not get
that. So when I talked about
explosion, it is a maximalist environment in the strictest

(44:07):
sense of the word. Even the window panes have
colour and so there's pink, I think there's a blue as well.
So to be very honest with you, if I hadn't read that there was
a relationship with the garden, I don't think I would have even
looked outside because there's so much stuff.
I mean, even the floor is elevated by a structure that is

(44:31):
a sort of mosaic like structure with transparent glass, which
I'm presuming is perspex. And you can see through and
underneath your feet. You're basically walking over
lots of a paraphernalia of objects.
Palm trees, toy cars, images of people, signage, stickers.

(44:55):
Yeah, absolutely. And that's all underneath your
feet as well as the, yeah, the the huge amounts that are sort
of on the walls and around you. Yeah, I mean, there's so much to
look at. There's a CD covered room
forming a sort of fish scale pattern.
There are shop signs. Yeah, there's colleges of

(45:16):
children, people. So from cuttings, photos or
newspapers or magazines, there are statues, there are green
plants, sculptures made of resin, a bit like you would find
in fun fairs. One of them is a black child
sporting basketball clothes. So I knew that Halsey wanted to

(45:37):
be a basketball player in her teens.
There's a video of a Street Viewwith people playing and passing
that's quite blurry. At the end of that corridor,
like first room, there are lots of pyramidal fixtures, often
covered in mirrors with words written across them, but also

(45:57):
other objects such as free person or my hood.
There are lots and lots of symbols of blackness, from the
hair to the long manicured nailsin sculpture form as a fountain.
And so you know that all of thisrepresents a specific place and
a specific community. Yeah, absolutely.

(46:17):
I got to say two things. So I went there after.
It was after the sun had set. So it was, you know, it was
after 4:30. It's a 4:30 at the moment in.
The UK, so it was really dark, so I didn't get that sense of
the light coming through those windows, so I didn't notice the
color on the windows at all. I didn't even really notice the

(46:38):
windows to be honest because it was so dark outside and that
fountain was not working when I was there.
Same. I OK, yeah.
So I, yeah, I didn't even kind of clock that it was a fountain.
I it was, it was one of the mostcaptivating kind of sculptures

(46:58):
in the whole exhibition, I wouldsay.
I I was really kind of found myself, you know, settling in on
that for a long time. But but yeah, it wasn't until I
read some of the reviews and sawsome pictures of it actually
acting like a fountain that I was like, oh, I didn't see that.
Yeah, and there isn't that soundelement that is talked about in

(47:20):
the reviews. Yeah, for sure.
This is where I was confronted with my complete ignorance of
this context and also I think with my own identity as a person
who will not relate from the inside to this environments

(47:43):
created. Because Lauren Halsey is very
specific. She's a queer woman and she's
very specific about her projectsbeing about blackness, about her
own community, but also the factthat in many of the spaces, of
course, brown and Black people will have, will see themselves
in this space. So that was really apparent.

(48:05):
And also my ignorance of LA. So I've never been there and my
relation with this side of LA, perhaps a bit further South, is
with Inglewood, which is at times mentioned in Halsey's
Colleges and installations. I noticed through ESA Ray's
series Insecure. I don't know if you've watched.
That no Huh. So this aesthetic is really

(48:27):
unfamiliar to me. And so I I was, as I was in the
space, I was trying to place it and I kept being reminded of my
kids Guinness record books because they have lots of
metallic glitter E shiny surfaces, neon greens and
yellows. And the catalogue is exactly
that. It has this kind of shiny
lettering and font that is very round and curved.

(48:51):
Yeah, and I, I got to say, just like that room with the CDs all
over, I just loved. It was just, you're bathed in
iridescent light, you know? And I loved that about it, the
shininess. Yeah.
And there's this aspect of, of the, the, the iridescence of
the, the, these materials that also kind of points to the idea

(49:14):
of layering and of kind of the reality being made of folds and
of different aspects. The same space has different
aspects to it and has different readings and different relations
and different connections to it,which is really beautiful
because you know that it comes from recuperated materials and

(49:35):
and makeshift constructions and handcrafted things.
Because, I mean, Lauren Halsey is a maker.
She is an archivist, as she saysso herself.
She goes around the neighborhood, she collects
things, she buys these. For example, there's these
animal toys or animal miniaturesthat she buys from people in the
street that are made by people there.

(49:57):
And she was kind of thinking, OK, these will be the animals of
the park. And so she collected them.
She really sees herself as a visual material culture
archivist, and I think that's really important.
So for me, it immediately connoted as American, which I
know is such a horrible reduction because America is
made of so many things. But just to say that it felt

(50:19):
like something very far. And also you could see that
there was these kind of icons. So you have Lionel Richie, which
made me. Crack up.
Yeah. It's kind of a in kind of a
lengthy sort of side laying posewith one knee up.
It was very 80s sweater going on.
Yeah. Atop one of those rock seats

(50:42):
kind of structures, but very small.
And then you have lots of imagesof people from the
neighbourhood. You learn that some of them have
passed away as well. There's some hardship as well.
And they're they're a bit like angels in Christian iconography
where you don't know where they come from as a spectator.

(51:03):
Obviously, like us, other peoplewill know very well who they
are. And that's the richness of this
proposal. And for you, there are kind of
these beautiful, joyful, smilingcreatures hovering around those
Saints, which are the known icons that are there as well.

(51:25):
You know, there there's kind of all that community and they're
placed in a way that is very joyful and very playful and at
the same time connected to making, obsessive collecting and
making. I can imagine what her basement
looks like just full of stuff and just absolutely chock full

(51:46):
of objects that have inspired her at one time or another and
will play a role in a, in a, in something that she makes, you
know, at some point. There's another aspect to it
that I realized later. She's concerned with an
experience she had when she was a kid where she would move out
of South Central LA to school and she would see the the

(52:11):
difference in neighbourhoods where there were streets with no
protections. And then there was a part where
shops seem to be protected from violence and seem to expect
violence and economic differencebetween those neighbourhoods.
And therefore, when you went to this space, there's also

(52:33):
something that isn't an important aspect to everything
she collects, which is that nothing is precious.
The only precious thing that youmight think would be an
expensive thing or something unattainable is, but it's
written, it's not. The object itself is Gucci,
which obviously is kind of also promoted with a certain

(52:54):
blackness, with a certain style,with a certain St. style, but
it's written as a sort of a slogan rather than being
represented by stuff. So the stuff that is there is
cheap stuff. It's stuff that is made of
plastic. And even the the kind of rocky
mounds that she produces, they're white and they're and

(53:16):
they bear lots of iridescent colors that very neon bright
colors and they look plastic. As you know, I am quite baffled
by maximalism, not in terms, notintellectually, but like
sensorially really. And we talked about this during
the Dido Moriyama episode. I get really overwhelmed.

(53:39):
I don't know what to look at, how I feel.
I think my brain just stops. And I was feeling a bit, you
know, discombobulated in the space.
And I was there with my friend Liberte, with whom we did the
episode about art advising Liberte Nuti.
And she said the word utopia. And suddenly it kind of

(54:04):
constellated the utopia, the dream, the megalomaniac,
nonsensical idea of bringing a whole culture, a whole
neighbourhood, a whole group of people, a whole self
determining, self affirming ethos into a context that is
completely disconnected from it.And of course, geographically.

(54:28):
But when you say geographically,the everything else gets dragged
into it in Kensington. Old school, old values,
tradition, knowledge, museums. And then there's a Serpentine
sponsored by Dior and the Luma Foundation.
You know, it's a whole context and it is it feels like a

(54:51):
utopia. And the title of the show, which
is written in this kind of slangy kind of way of of writing
in English in many communities. So imagine that is imagine that.
So it's dream, dream this. And so there's suddenly this

(55:13):
idea of this self-described archival impulse behind the
project, which actually makes methink of Vigli's collection of
revolutionary and protest signs amalgamated in his drawings.
But there's no sublimation here.So there's no, I'm going to take
this and put it into drawing form and appropriate it for

(55:36):
myself here. This is a sort of Madame
Tussauds of South Central LA. She talks about human sized
maquettes of these projects are maquettes that you can go into.
And so the question for me here was like, how do I, you know,
see this, connect with it? Is it culturally?

(55:58):
Is it an aesthetic? And I would also be intrigued,
you know, to see how English, black and brown, young,
middle-aged, older people from different backgrounds connected
to it. So, yeah, so that was kind of
the question for me there. And then, you know, in in the
exhibition. I'm curious to know how you
experienced it. So first of all, I want to thank

(56:20):
Liberte for utopia, because I think that is a word that
captures it. And it's funny because it is
described that way. I mean, Afrofuturism is also
something that runs through Halsey's work.
And she talks about, you know, having this sort of idealized
representation of where she's from, in part because of what

(56:42):
you mentioned in terms of, you know, going to other
neighborhoods and seeing how things are different.
And that gentrification that's happening in South Central LA.
She wants to resist that and make sure that there is, you
know, a Canon where this time and place of her upbringing is,
is captured and and and preserved.

(57:03):
But yeah, I so when I saw the exhibition online, I was really
excited. I was like, wow, I'm going to be
going into another place and I'mgoing to, you know, have this
very, you know, fully sensorial experience of, you know, South
Central LA as she offers it. And so I was really excited

(57:28):
about it. And I went there and those doors
opened and I was, I, you know, Ifelt overwhelmed as well.
I felt like there was so much tolook at.
There was so many suggestions that I, I was looking for a
focal point of like something tohelp me latch onto, to make

(57:50):
sense of, you know, of, you know, these animal skin rugs and
the outer space that was happening on the, on the
wallpaper, etcetera. And, and I had a hard time
locating that. And so it was like, OK, I'm just
going to take a breath and just be here.
And this is how I feel right now.

(58:10):
There's often that kind of chatter that goes on in my head
when I first enter an exhibition, which is like
deciding whether or not I want to like it or not right there
and then. And that's it, you know, and I
kind of get a ride that out anyway.
But walking through that second room, the long room where there
was the video of, you know, these people dancing in the

(58:32):
street at the at the end of the at the end of the room, that
felt like a focal point. And and that gave me a bit more.
That gave me something to kind of hold on to and to understand,
you know, where the signs were coming from, etcetera.

(58:52):
And the, the last room, you know, I really, really enjoyed.
I think that those, I think that, you know, look, this is
supposed to be a park, right? This is supposed to be a space
where people come and hang out. And I almost wish there were
just more benches because it, itfelt like the kind of thing that

(59:14):
needed that. And like you, I was afraid to
sit down. You know, there was there was a
young woman sitting there and there was this part of me that
was like, oh, they're going to get you, you know, like, but
they and they didn't. Obviously I wanted I wanted
somewhere to linger because there are there is so many
suggestions and so many things where you're like, I wonder what

(59:35):
that is about, you know, and where you kind of need to make
sense of it. That I think that those benches
would have been really, really helpful to sort of allow people
to relax and really become infused in the space.
So when I was there, I felt kindof, you know, yeah, as I say,

(59:56):
kind of uncertain about about itand and uncertain about what I
made about it. Going away and doing more
research on her, you know, givesa lot of context.
And I think that some exhibitions don't need a lot of
context. And I, I think this one would
have, would have helped me more,which which is why a repeat

(01:00:17):
visit I think is is absolutely necessary.
There are expectations that you have through the exhibition text
about the funk, about the park, about the way you'll be in that
exhibition that are confusing. Because the exhibition for me
was an experience of looking. It wasn't an experience of

(01:00:39):
spending time. It was an experience of
discovering more than an experience of spending time in
the place, observing, playing, talking like you would have in a
park. And I really thought long and
hard about it because I was definitely thinking of this idea

(01:01:01):
of bringing a community. So the difference between the
previous episode, Zanelli Mahali, who also brings their
own community as a non binary queer black artist in South
Africa, taking pictures of people from South Africa,
bringing them into the museum and then doing the self

(01:01:21):
portraiture of their own body and enacting some things in the
the photographs. For me, there's a storytelling
there. And in this situation, there's
again, a black queer artists whoidentifies as female, who brings

(01:01:42):
to the forefront of the iconography blackness and their
and, and the culture of that huge group in the world, very
located in a city within a big city.
So a very small part of that city.
But the the, the meaningful partfor her and for her community.

(01:02:03):
And it's brought as a maquette. So it's brought as real size
things. So it is an environment.
It's not storytelling. It is a sort of simulacrum of a
space that is not known to you as a spectator in the UK.
And there was voluntary. That was the goal.
The goal was not to tell stories.

(01:02:25):
One of the things that I was a bit surprised by is that if you
don't do the research around theexhibition, and that's why I've
talked about angels, you see people, you you know that
they're people from the community, you see them, you
don't know who they are, you don't know the stories behind

(01:02:45):
them. And and that's voluntary, you
know, there is no explanation ofthe context.
There's a real want to focus on the community and not to bring,
like Zanelli Mahali brings at a certain point an individual
perspective into it. And that's kind of what was

(01:03:05):
missing for me going back to Benjamin Perry's text, which is
poetry is unconnected at ultimately, which is a European
stance that he had against futurism, against communism.
Saying, you know, poetry and artin general is the space of

(01:03:27):
irreverence. And one of the things that I
found really interesting was that I was so baffled by the,
the, this ability to be, to adhere completely to anesthetic
and an identity. Whereas with Zanelle Mahali,
there was this diversity of the LGBTQIA plus community that was

(01:03:49):
showcased there. There was their experience then
as a subject of, of, of photography.
And here it is like this thing of adhering completely as a
person. So I misunderstood that because
it's not an identity thing. It's a community.
It's a group of people. It has nothing to do with the
identity of the artist. And when you hear the artist

(01:04:11):
speak, there's really this concern first and foremost,
ultimately across the whole work, with an iconography, with
but a life, a real life in the present.
And that's something that is interesting because I would say
that here the revolutionary, theirreverence is brought by the

(01:04:40):
space. It's not the artwork in itself,
but it's the fact of placing that community in that space
that automatically turns that work into something much freer,
especially in the place where you don't adhere as a spectator.
You know, I imagine in, in greatparts the people who go there.

(01:05:00):
I mean, in majority the, I mean,I can't tell you the exact
percentage, but museums and galleries have to study the
profiles of their visitors. Great majority, white.
There's a white spectatorship inthis space and that is really

(01:05:25):
interesting. And I think that's exactly for
me, the core of that project, which for me as a white woman, a
European white woman, became about thinking about that
gesture, not as much the experience in the space, but
really thinking about that. And I came across this really
interesting article in the Guardian yesterday while doing

(01:05:47):
my research by a social analystscalled.
I'm looking at the article rightnow.
So the title is, are we a racistsociety?
The majority of us say no, but science begs to differ.
And so his name's Keon W He's the author of Science of Racism,

(01:06:09):
and it is a truly beautiful article.
So he's a social psychologist. That's who he is.
And he talks about the fact thatif you ask people whether
they're racist or not, they willsay no, but how can you measure
racism? And he's claims that there is a

(01:06:31):
measuring that is quite, you know, objective studies made
with wood CVS go on top of the pile and and under the pile,
black people have to send 50 times more CVS to have the same
number of calls than a white person.
So he numbers like a very objective examples of that very

(01:06:51):
crude reality. And in museums it's the same
thing. The spectatorship is mainly
white. And he talks about unconscious
racism and how undermining that expression is.
So there's unconscious racism and there's on the other hand,
implicit race racism. Because when you talk about

(01:07:12):
unconscious racism, tests were done as well, scientific ones
that you forgive yourself because it is unconscious.
So you're not the master of it. You inherited it.
Whereas implicit means that it'sthere and you have to be
accountable for it. I situate myself immediately
there. And I think that's a wonderful,

(01:07:33):
you know, thing to experience and to dig into and to
understand exactly the gesture of doing that of of of bringing
this community there and also enjoying the joy of it.
There is a lot of joy in that space.
There is no victimization you. Know, yeah, that's beautiful.

(01:07:54):
Thank you. And I mean, I think so.
Well said too. Thank you for that.
That's that articulation of the difference between Mahole's
perspective and what she's bringing through storytelling
and what Halsey is bringing through atmosphere and, you
know, experience of being in a place.

(01:08:15):
That was really important because I did find myself
comparing the two, and I wasn't sure why, you know, I wasn't
sure why I felt like I wanted Maholis.
But I think you've nailed it. It is because she's telling me a
story and she's bringing me in in a way that is very different.

(01:08:36):
There's a there's a very, there's a side door that Lauren
Halsey is going through that is about here's the community and
all of its wonder and you can behere for a while.
It's a place rather than a story.
So thank you. Yeah, that's really, yeah,
that's really helpful. And yeah, that that whole thing
of, of racism and you know that it's, you know, that it's not a

(01:08:58):
choice that only abhorrent people make.
Oh yeah, yeah, it is. It is.
You have to include yourself in that narrative as a white
person. Absolutely.
It is just in the water we drink, unfortunately.
Yeah, it's it's a really important thing to remember.
Wow. Brilliant.
Great. So, I mean, I think there's
this, you know, this issue of Afrofuturism and Afro pessimism

(01:09:23):
that's alive in her work. And you, you did some digging
into that, didn't you? I did, yes, because so we had,
we've had an experience of Afro pessimism through the Ariadine
exhibition at the ICA last year and we had to look into that a
little bit. I also went to during the

(01:09:44):
pandemic when the museums reopened to the Toyin OG
Auditola exhibition at the curved space at the Barbican.
She's a Nigerian American artistwho was very much inspired by
Afrofuturism. So that's the first time I came
across that term. The exhibition was incredible.
It was these charcoal drawings based on a fiction of a a

(01:10:09):
mythical community in the African continent that was a
matriarchy. And the men did the labour and
the drawings were fantastic. There was music.
It was a really beautiful show. In the interview of the
catalogue, Lauren Halsey does mention that as something in the
beginning that inspired her because George Clinton, the funk

(01:10:30):
movement was very much sunrise as well connected to that
notion. So from the Tate website, the
term Afrofuturism is explained. So I'm going to quote straight
from that. The term Afrofuturism has its
origins in African American science fiction.
Today, it is generally used to refer to literature, music and

(01:10:52):
visual arts that explores the African American experience and
in particular the role of slavery in that experience.
Central to the concept of Afrofuturism are the science
fiction writers Octavia Butler, Samuel R Delaney, and the jazz
musician Son RA, who created a mythical persona that much
science fiction with Egyptian mysticism.

(01:11:15):
It is this otherness that is at the heart of Afrofuturism.
Those inspired by Afrofuturism include the musician George
Clinton, the artist Ellen Gallagher and the film director
Winery Caillou. So I thought that probably
Lauren Halsey's work could be linked to that.

(01:11:38):
And so just to counterbalance and bring a whole panorama of
these discourses and these terms, when we explored Afro
pessimism, we situated it in thepopularisation of that term by
Frank B Welderson, the third, who grew up in Minneapolis,

(01:12:01):
Emily from From is, he's a neighbour.
So this theory, Afro pessimism, explains that racism against
black peoples is so deeply rooted that it's almost
impossible to overcome. And so there is this kind of
chewing and throwing between oneand the other.

(01:12:23):
I found an article of Kadish Morris's about this American
poet called Dennis Smith, who goes from 1:00 to the other.
So from Afrofuturism to Afro pessimism in his two books, one
is called Don't Call Us Dead. It was very lauded, won the won

(01:12:49):
several prizes where the ideas imagining a world liberated from
anti blackness. And then in his recent book
called Bluff, there's an almost Afro pessimist take.
According to the Guardian journalist, you know, he's from
George Floyd's hometown and is the, the, the book is very much

(01:13:11):
traversed by that and, and what came about in in the aftermath
of that. So there's this kind of chewing
and throwing as if Afro pessimism and Afro futurism was
kind of like a sort of a 2 ends of a very complex spectrum of
the, the reality of blackness, particularly in America.

(01:13:35):
I would really urge you to read these books.
I was almost going to read 2 poems from one from each book
because it's so incredible writing.
It's also graphic poetry. There's one called Dinosaurs in
the Hood where he imagines so they imagine because they're
known binary as well. They imagine the Jurassic Park,

(01:14:00):
but only in blackness against the so they go over all the
tropes of the black character that dies all the time in
thrillers. The first is always the first
victim, etcetera. And they imagine a Jurassic Park
that is completely devoid of allthose all those kind of
containing and crushing tropes for blackness.

(01:14:21):
And then in the poem anti poetica in the the recent book
Bluff, a lot of the lines are a poem cannot feed you, a poem
cannot solve in the social injustice.
And he almost apologizes in the book for having been so utopian.
So and then in the catalogue, just to close this chapter up,
there is a text called Against Afrofuturism by it's a very

(01:14:48):
angry text by Harmony Holiday. And it's a really interesting
text where Harmony talks about the fact that thinking about the
future takes away the responsibility of the now and
takes away your agency. And also, by the way, the term.

(01:15:12):
And that's why, Tate, if you're listening, please change your
website. Harmony Holiday says something
really critical, which is that Afrofuturism was coined by a
white scholar in the 90s and wasdeveloped in a book where one of

(01:15:34):
the people interviewed is the Delaney, the writer mentioned in
the Robert Delaney in the Tate website.
It's a really difficult read. I read some bits of it.
And another thing that Harmony Holiday doesn't do is to name
the author. Just not to give that person a

(01:15:55):
platform. So I dug up and I kind of
checked the source. I was like, really?
So the person who coined this term is Mark Derry, who's an
American cultural critic, writerand lecturer.
And in 1993, he coined the term for a book of interviews.

(01:16:16):
And so he was the one who named that.
And so that really surprises me.I would have guessed that it
would have been much further back than the 90s.
Yes, me too. You know, I'm, I'm surprised
it's as recent as that. That's really interesting.
I was very confused by Harmony Holiday's text that starts The

(01:16:36):
West is resolutely doctrinaire, and the invention of a shiny new
doctrine often reinvigorates theindomitable colonial impulse,
subtly or otherwise. Under the dictatorship of the
most effective doctrine, the will of a group of discreet
individuals is often trained on one aesthetic genre, whether or
not its protagonists agree. Such is the case with

(01:16:59):
Afrofuturism, a term and doctrine coined by a white
academic in the 1990s to help make sense of black science
fiction, which has since been deployed to collapse the work of
disparate black artists and thinkers into one over
simplified silo. So the text is really
interesting and quite indomitable itself.

(01:17:22):
So just to finish and to close up this contextualization, I
guess, and also kind of this education, Harmony Holiday makes
a case for this idea of agency and being in the now, which we
also talked about regarding Zanelli Mahali, which is they're
doing the work now in the community and not just

(01:17:45):
documenting it, bearing witness.They are actively engaging with
change and trying to promote change, namely through activism
or community oriented projects. And that's something that the
term Afrofuturism cannot encapsulate and cannot destroy.
And so at the end, Harmony Holiday rights, Knowing this,

(01:18:07):
and from the vantage of the renewed paradigm, Lauren
Halsey's work, which belongs first to South Central Los
Angeles and then to the collective imagination of that
place as a myth, and then to theuse of myth to render the
reality there anew by inflectingit with tones it already carries

(01:18:28):
quietly and unceremoniously, canbe seen as a blueprint for a new
now. If we refuse to displace her
vision onto the future, what is her testimony about the current
of black desire and pleasure andfriendship today, right now, as
you read this? How does her friendship with

(01:18:49):
George Clinton guide her building a funk mounds and
stages for him that can fit intoher hometown today?
And why is this work exhibited in museums and galleries without
being brought directly to urban planners?
How can her fantastic become part of the black mundane and
reel? And will the circle be unbroken?

(01:19:12):
Will you seek entry in the into that reel at its most
unglamorous and functional? Risk vanity to be there or
attend only as it becomes art, object and simulation.
If you can only process the black everyday by pretending it
lives outside of time, then loveis absent and you as a spectator

(01:19:34):
become a grim Reaper and thief. How's his work resists that or
forces us to confront it, entering to the tune of America
Eats Its Young and leaving in the song's mouth.
Wow, that is yeah. Goodness.
Afrofuturism. Born in the 1990s from a white

(01:19:56):
scholar. That blows my mind.
I mean, so I just looked up the National Museum for African
American Heritage. That's in the.
It's in DC. Yes, yeah.
And, and there's a curator therewho's talking.
I mean, he talks about Afrofuturism.
He doesn't. He just says that it was

(01:20:18):
originally coined in scholarly circles to explore how black
writers and artists have utilized themes of technology,
science fiction, fantasy and heroism to envision stories and
futures. I don't know.
I mean, I'm wondering like is that is that is she 100% on that
identification of of it being born in 1993?

(01:20:38):
Yes, yes, I've, I've looked intoit and what I saw.
And again, admittedly, I didn't read the whole book, just saw
some excerpts. And there was this kind of thing
of like, how come black Americanauthors haven't explored
fiction, I mean, or science fiction.
I mean, it would seem to be the ideal place for black identity

(01:20:59):
to expand because it would be creating a new world from
scratch and therefore affirming themselves, which is a great
idea, but it's not your place tohave it and certainly not to
question a black author about that.
And it also speaks to a huge ignorance.
I mean, I only knew Octavia Butler or of Octavia Butler a

(01:21:21):
couple of years ago. I had never heard of her before.
And, you know, and even Ursula KLe Guin, I learned about her
very late, earlier than Octavia Butler.
So black, white science fiction authors emerge, and later black
female authors emerge. You know, there's always this

(01:21:43):
cadence of white feminists and then or whites female, whatever.
And then, you know, the, the thesame category but with a
different ethnicity comes later.So there's this pattern really
in the culture. So it was the author himself who

(01:22:04):
didn't know about the reality ofscience fiction, you know,
having been explored already before you had the crazy idea
that it would be appropriate to,you know.
So that's the criticism. I'm talking about what I read
partially on the winter webs. So again, take this with a grain
of salt. Do your own research, as I will

(01:22:25):
continue to do mine. Yeah.
So that was kind of like my hugerabbit hole.
And in the meantime, I discovered the new poet, Dennis
Smith. Go into it, read it.
It's beautiful. Wow, brilliant.
I mean, there's just so many questions and so much to explore
off the back of this exhibition of Lauren Halsey's work.

(01:22:47):
And I mean, gosh, she's young. There's so much more that's
going to be coming from her and more things that she can that
she can bring to us in the widerworld from her very unique and
really special point of view from her community.
So that's just fabulous. And thank you, Joanna.

(01:23:07):
I mean, this has been just a fantastic conversation.
I have really have enjoyed hearing your articulation of the
difference between the Holy's exhibition and Halsey's
exhibition, you know, resonance in a very, very different way.
So, yeah, So thank you for that.Well, it was my pleasure and it

(01:23:28):
was a pleasure chatting with you.
As ever, apologies if I misread,misquoted, misinterpreted any of
the things that I talked about that concern a community that is
certainly not mine. Lauren Halsey, thank you for
making me doing do this. Thank you, Serpentine, for
having this exhibition that really, really questioned a lot

(01:23:48):
of things. And I will certainly be going
back. And you still have time to do so
as well. If you're in London, it's open
until the 23rd of February. So that's it.
It's there for you. And if not, Lauren Halsey, I'm
sure is very young, has other things coming up in your
hometown, in your country for sure, but more specifically and

(01:24:10):
more importantly in South Central LA.
May she continue to build that community, support it, and
expand it. Yeah.
All right. Well, thanks everyone.
Take care. See you next time.
See you next time. Bye, bye, bye.