Electric African and the Techno HUT

I have an on going story developing in my head. If you are a Black person with art and technology in your DNA, it is probably in your head also. I call it the "Electric African". He is a diaspora person, can't tell his exact origins besides the obvious. His history and his genetic path is twisted and convoluted, but in any case, he is the sum total, here in the present. His education is varied, with holes and gaps. Lucky are ones like him who master a narrow track in the schools of credentials. The broad education is promoted but not honored here.

Life has tugged at him from all directions, he meets the call yet watches his back as he sorts through mis-information and mis-direction and the hidden agenda of others. They strive to keep him ignorant, not by keeping education from him but holding him off balance by uncertainty. A broad education is useless when specific skills are required and demanded (or is it?).

He battles the world out in the open, a hopeless war. He secludes himself and while resting commits to fixing the world with the info he is sure of. The world ridicules and mocks this kind of people. Nerds and geeks and such they call them. They are not outsiders like criminals, no, they are insiders. Too far inside. Too serious they say, lighten up, party, have fun! Under their breath, that nerd was Black, is there such a thing? How did that happen? They almost say out loud, "this one is an anomaly, but not important enough to be bothered with." I would have been happy if they just said it among themselves, but they said it to my folks, my neighbors, my teachers.

No one understands how or why I do what I do. I am compelled to do it. It's not a profession because that goes in a different direction, a different end. I must stay the course, despite my wobbly footing and the uncertainty that troubles me. And why can't I just accept what others have done with their reasoning and projected outcomes, I just don't know, but I see it differently. Few will listen, few invite my view. Are there others like me? In a world of communication we are kept apart by thought.

So he keeps to himself, buys a property and collects cast-off building materials. A silo because Africans have built graineries for centuries. A quonset hut because Blacks and quick shelter became indispensable in WW2. Cargo Shipping containers because today we import everything and Blacks were imported in the past. He fashions a dwelling by blending the forms together, calls it his HUT (Habitat for the Urban Terrain). He laughs because this Techno HUT is designed by a non-architect Black diaspora man at a spot where all his understanding converges.

It was a solitary pursuit in his mind, unbeknown to him these Techno HUTs began to appear globally in every place Black diaspora have been scattered.

I chose architecture because that is the info in me, what is in you? Perhaps you have passions and skills not required by your jobs and rather than let them languish and be forgotten, you covertly dabble and what if and say one day.............

........the Techno HUT will touch down.

rno the artist unplugged

As an artist I find myself in continual development from many sources. This was not fully possible when I started on this trek. I used to go from library to library to find the book other libraries didn't have. I read magazine after magazine. And I did this because in college, the art history course I was in was stuck on the virtues of Roman and Greek art and architecture. I kept saying in my mind, this is not relevant. For perpetuating the flavor of those cultures in todays world maybe it was, but my heart kept saying "not relevant." Our present culture owes a lot to those early Euro civs, but after becoming aware of Africa, my origins, I could not have rest.

The media always has a shaded view of Africa. It is not that they are hiding stuff from us but more of a not mentioning because of no interest on their part. So when our national interest is disturbed, there is coverage. If the human atrocity meter rises too high, there is coverage. Any achievement or advancement or development on the African continent, it is not news. Over the years my view of Africa was uneducated, primitive natives. I had the same view of American Indians here, only they were uneducated savages. Tourist all want to go to Africa to see natives. It was the same for American Indians here.

I won't go deeper into the bias that has flavored life in the US since the get, we all know. And once this kind of flavor is institutionalized (it is deep in the dominate culture), it takes generations to ferret out and dilute.

The internet came to my rescue. The net allowed me to see history (art, social, national) from many different points of view. The most important questions for me was untwisting history. How stories, even histories, are told eventually becomes the guiding force for human worth, development and progress. If you are told your ancestors were slaves and you are the son of slaves and add to it a kind of loathing weightiness as if slavery was for lower lifeforms, guess what happens to the people who must receive this story, this history? I have lived with the weight of this, even though Civil rights events were going on during my youth.

Young kids should hear untarnished history. My realization is that history is unappreciated until you have lived some. Older folks all appreciate history. But kids should hear history because it is the shaping force. American history has a lot of lies, if we can expose them and fill in the blank spots, we will raise up an intelligent and thoughtful generation. It is our history "story" that has damaged America. We have a saying about history repeating itself. Actually we perpetuate the lies and tell kids it is their right of passage to repeat. I am so amused at how as adults we know the truth yet resist. We lie with boldness and tell the truth with uncertainty. We know what kind of kids the lie will produce, we are not sure what the truth will produce. Yet in our hearts we want kids to be more enlightened, not just smarter. And we also are afraid of that. I have heard parents say, "he didn't learn that from me!" I am talking about the good stuff.

But we are talking about art and design here. The internet has allowed me to see the art and design of other cultures, especially African. From the top to the bottom of Africa, with and without the Euro influence, African art is pretty impressive. And although I can not directly have a cultural tie (been in America too many generations), I can feel some empathy. Not because of the events of history but because there is a sensibility in the way I think about art that is akin to the ways of Africa. This is expressed in a simple statement I heard in an interview of an African craftsperson. He said, "I just want to make beautiful things." This artist was not in the Euro art tradition of schools and galleries and expositions and art as a part of human accomplishment or art for fame or art as an investment or art for historical reference and documentation. He just wanted to make beautiful things.

I myself do abstract, non-object art, decorative. Many black artist do faces, the human form, black faces, black persons in life. While I think drawing and painting black people is wonderful, I am not that kind of artist. Perhaps with abstracts, you can not tell what color the artist is, that is OK with me, why should you care? That's rhetorical! Many of the stories we tell as artist have nothing to do with color as a race marker and sometimes that kind of art perpetuates the lie. Even in my abstract, I should have references to my past, my origins, my struggle to overcome, or to protest, pay homage to or to praise, or to hope. Well, if those things happen in my art, I will not force them to exist, they will just be there. If you recognize them in my work, that is the message it speaks to you.

Abstract art is like jazz, many black abstract artist have said this. I first heard John Coltrane and the critics said he was angry, expressing anger, Archie Shepp and others. The times were angry with civil rights and such. They thought for sure these musicians were the voice of the times. No, the anthems for that time was "We shall overcome" and "Lift every voice and sing". Jazz was not angry voices, it was pent up creative energy being "freely" released. Motown on the other hand was about a finely cultivated art form moving toward wide acceptance. It was saying we ain't no gull dang minstrel show, we don't shuck and jive, we are respectable high quality entertainment. We raise the bar using our own faces (not in whiteface). Motown was my right of passage, jazz was my liberation. Jazz was about how we black folks do things, camaraderie and one-up-man-ship at the same time. Even today when I walk through a store, I nod in appreciation to every black face who acknowledges hello. It is within even if that other person has other thoughts, or a challenge or a delusion. That "jazz" is inside and I can see it. I only see that in a few Euro folks, here and there. I don't understand that and perhaps it's just my bias, yeah, I got some too.

Today jazz is so watered down in the media. Coltrane on the radio turned into nightclub jazz into smooth jazz into elevator music into popular vocal music. Now I hear jazz radio late at night and mostly it is mainstream, the heady avant-gard stuff is so rare it is practically gone. It is the same for abstract art. There is this dime a dozen attitude and a we can tell which Euro artist influenced you. So blacks drawing black faces is original and blacks drawing abstractly is copying white guys (who studied black guys).

Then you got to fit into some style, school of art, some movement or historical reference or.......... I'm telling you, if an artist is burdened with this kind of stuff on the front end, there is no art on the back end. I will reveal the art process one more time. There is this person who discovers by whatever means the ability to create and goes about doing that. He or she acquires skills and gathers whatever views that form their world view and reference information that flows through their senses. It all converges in the mind and flows out into what ever media is being used, wither a dream or paper or canvas or camera or computer, a building, clothes, etc, etc, etc. You see it, hear it, and go, "oh, wow, that's art." Simplistic.

Why I do art the way that I do? "I just want to make beautiful things."

Yeah but do we design, Yeah we design

Have you ever had an unsolvable problem or a nagging complaint about a situation in the world? I guess when I was a young man trying to find role models among African-American men that pertained to my artist interest, there were few if any. It really hasn't changed. One name stood out, Sam Gilliam. He is an abstract artist. I still don't know or appreciate his vast body of work, but just to know a black guy has the guts to be who he is, is enough. Like John Coltrane, his work is an acquired taste I check out from time to time to calibrate myself.

Against this abstract expression is a menagerie of black artist who play to the supposedly popular demand. Mostly pictures of p-e-o-p-l-e in African subjects, religious subjects, jazz musicians, etc, all with the stereo-typical air of this is what we are about. I wondered in the face of our unique art history, is there an African-American style that we could put into architecture, art, home furnishing and decor. We put our influence into music and dance but not into home decor other than old stuff. There is so much appreciation of our slave past in our practical living, that it keeps us slaves. There are exceptions, but if you look over the mainstream offerings, the influences are not there. I want to tell all black artist to look forward more, look back less, I think we need to look at ourselves less, need to explore outside. We could keep our tether to our history, I don't think it is going away. Maybe the world is ready to see what we see when we are not explaining ourselves.

Let me illustrate further. You want to decorate your home with some African-American themes. You buy pictures of black people in various poses and guises and a starving artist canned abstract or two. If you go more African, you buy African subject matter, carvings, masks etc. Your home resembles the museum of collected African stuff. You are surrounded with reminders of oldness, but you force yourself to think revolution, overcoming adversity and embracing the black aesthetic. Oh, Africans are really colourful, so you layer fabric prints into a nauseating display and try to convince us saying poly-rhythms, syncopated patterns and complex cross-cultural influences. You know, ugly is ugly, no matter where it is from.

This is why style is carefully crafted over time, not haphazardly thrown together (fad or trend). Black artist need to spend the time to access the symbols, patterns, colours and influences and use the normal tools of art; line, colour, proportion, composition. With me, I looked at lots of African things, allowed the images to settle into the back of my mind. I wrestle with those images until something must come out, I see something new heavily influenced by the images I've been taking in. Now I add my art into the mix of other artist and a style emerges. In the past there have been design movements where cultural interest produced a style. However the artist were gathered, college, international consortium, world's fair collaboration, the thrust produced a outcome celebrated in the market place. It was not just material culture that produced the various styles of home furnishings we have today. We black folk still don't admit we even have a material culture. Much of what we display is about the person, clothes, make-up and bling. We rap, sing, dance and shoot hoops, but do we design?? Ah!! Do we design??

Yeah, we design, but there's not enough of it in one place to make an impression beyond fashion, fad and trend. Time will tell and I am endeavouring to put in my two cents.