is a project of Whitfield CoLabs under the artistic direction of Tony Whitfield. Whitfield's Shotgun! collaborators are photographer /media artist Richard Stuart Perkins and rapper/ musician/composer Will Sheridan. Bring this artistic expertise and the histories and experiences as queer African American men, their collaboration will respond to the confluence of events that have brought together issues of race, gender, violence, policing and social justice together as facets of a revived and reconfigured civil rights movement at forefront of American consciousness. This project is built upon the ways in which they find responses in Junior Walker and the All-Star's 1965 R&B hit,Shotgun. Working together, this group of artist will create an installation and a series of public programs that have as their centerpiece a "music video" that references the area in North Philadelphia, where Whitfield spent much of his pre-adolescent years. That area has since been leveled and remains a site of urban poverty and abandonment spurred on by riots that took place in the summer that preceded the release of Shotgun. As a gay child, this is the area where Whitfield recognized his sexuality and came to understand it as factor that would increase his isolation and launch him into an ongoing struggle for full actualization. This project is, in essence, his discussion with a group artists with similar backgrounds about rage and self-actualization. Together, this group of artists will produce an environment borne out of their realities as queer black men, who have matured in the contexts of ongoing debates about race, gender, sexuality, civil rights and liberation movements, while benefitting from affirmative action, education, and degrees of privilege and social mobility --all in the shadow of AIDS and other circumstances that threaten their integrity and survival.
SHOTGUN! is a project of Whitfield CoLabs with fiscal sponsorship provided by Fractured Atlas. To be presented at LaMaMa Galleria, 46 Great Jones Street, Fall 2017 (specific date to be determined).
Shotgun Lyrics
"Shotgun" was written by Dewalt, Autry.
I said, "Shotgun, shoot 'em for he runs now"
Do the jerk, baby Do the jerk, now Hey
Put on your red dress And then you go Downtown I said buy yourself a shotgun now We're gonna break it down baby now We're gonna load it up baby now And then you shoot him for he runs now
I said, "Shotgun, shoot 'em for he runs now" Do the jerk, baby Do the jerk, now Hey
Shotgun shoot 'em for he runs now Do the jerk, baby Do the jerk, now Hey!
Put on your high heels shoes I said we're goin' down here listen to 'em play blues We're gonna dig potatoes We're gonna pick tomatoes
I said, "Shotgun, shoot 'em for he runs now" Do the jerk, baby Do the jerk, now Hey
I said, it's twine time I said, it's twine time I said, it's twine time Hey, what did I say him?
"Venus Rising: Seeing through Blackness, Laughing Through Whiteness"
by Tony Whitfield in collaboration with David Hamilton Thomson
digital prints on archival paper
2014-2015
Initiated as a somewhat traditional interaction between photographer and model, this work represents the unexpected intersection of distinctly different artistic practices and has become phase one in a collaboration between choreographer/performance artist David Hamilton Thomson and artist/designer Tony Whitfield exploring maturation in an idiosyncratic racialized body.
Tony Whitfield: My collaboration with David Thomson is an outgrowth of my ongoing exploration of the intersections of race and cultures, through a variety of media, in the context of queer relationships. Specifically the traditions of the superficially parallel devices of blackface and whiteface are expanded and sexualized in this work, revealing profoundly different coded interpretations. In this work with David, to date, I am fascinated by the ways in which these contexts facilitate the revelation of character.
David Thomson: These photographs have become an extension of my exploration of the performance persona Venus, created during the Parallels Festival in 2012, initially imagined as a transgressive gender fluid blackface hero/ine and catalyst within an installation/performance setting. Layered with references to black face, gender ambiguity, sexuality and coupled with the incongruities of dominance, vulnerability, erasure and visibility using the visual and cultural iconography of four objects: a latex mask, black high heels, a white flowing dress and my naked black body underneath.
Named after the Hottentot Venus, aka Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman, an enslaved black woman who was exhibited as an exotic in the early 19th Century London and Paris.
I see these portraits as containers of cultural markers and captured moments of a mutable black body. Of blue black complexions, white clay adornment and echoes of Bert Williams with a nod to Franz Fanon.
Considering Evidence; Considering Artifacts; Considering Heirlooms (a work-in-progress)
Never Records is a combination recording studio and record shop, all operating in one building. The sole proprietor, interior decorator, and engineer is New York-based artist Ted Riederer. Inspired by his own redemptive education at a young age inside the walls of a local record store in Rockville, Maryland as well as the field recording projects of Alan Lomax, Riederer devised his unique community art installation in the early part of this century and has been replicating it with regional variations throughout the world since 2010.
Performers from a locale sign up for recording sessions ahead of time, with no auditions necessary. Riederer usually offers three hour sessions, during which he mixes on the fly and cuts vinyl right in front of the artist’s eyes once both are satisfied with a particular take. The recordings are free to the artist, the sessions are open to the public, and you can’t buy anything you see. Ted hasn’t lowered prices by cutting out the middleman. He is the middleman. He is not a vertical operation; he is an elliptical one, a constant feedback loop supplying its own demand. Still, everyone takes something home, even if it’s the barest speck of record shop camaraderie inadvertently inhaled.
Within the walls of the Never Records shop, visitors can view a gallery of photographs and artwork from previous temporary establishments in the US and UK, as well as flip through stacks of vinyl representing the hundreds of solo folk artists, punk bands, storytellers, jazz groups, and noisicians who jumped at the chance for a free recording session. Black wooden bins hold a curated selection of records from the growing collection, but these aren’t for sale or even trade.
The artist or band is allowed to take their own copy home, and another is added to Riederer’s archives, as well as a digital copy. Riederer encourages bands to use the recording any way they want. There are no fees, royalties, or ownership issues.
“I walk them through the cutting process and show them their sound waves on a microscope. I consider this interaction the real performance of Never Records. The alchemy of cutting never fails to put a smile on participants’ faces. The machine is a new one made by these crazy but wonderful dudes in southern Germany. It is called a Vinyl Recorder and while it may not be able to compete with a $50,000 Neumann cabinet lathe, I can get pure, beautiful, hiss free recordings.”
Beyond the technical aspect of recording, his main job is to maintain the right conditions inside the shop for insecurity-free performances. The right conditions go beyond the gear and the Persian rugs covering the floors. The right conditions exist separately from the poster-covered walls or the fact that the distribution chain from studio to factory to anti-commercial outlet runs about twelve feet. The right conditions include Riederer’s ability to quickly ascertain a band’s influences and capabilities and the vast cross-genre knowledge that allows him to alter his recording methods for each artist. The right conditions have everything to do with musicians in eyesight of each other, no one isolated in a booth. Everyone experimenting without worry because the meter isn’t running on dead air, eating up the credit limit.
Never Records has a slogan. It is YOU ARE NOT LISTENING. Riederer explains, “A lot of people say that certain movements just need a voice. But it doesn’t matter if you have a voice if no one is fucking listening! You can have the most articulate voice, but if no one’s listening, it’s like the voice doesn’t matter. You gotta listen. Someone has to listen, and this process I take very seriously."
In a world where bands are judged on 30 second samples and MP3s are collected and traded like baseball cards with no thought to the hard work and personalities behind their creation, Never Records creates a physical reminder of what a virtual platform can never truly duplicate.
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