Saisha Grayson This digital-first publication is published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., June 23, 2023, to January 29, 2024. It was produced by the offices of Publications and Excluding content credited to rightsholders and third Digital Strategies, Smithsonian American Art Museum, parties, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons with design support from Smithsonian Exhibits. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License. For permission to reproduce credited materials, users are responsible Smithsonian for contacting the rightsholder. Scholarly Press ISBN-13: 978-1-944466-68-8 (online) Published by ISBN-13: 978-1-944466-69-5 (print) SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION SCHOLARLY PRESS P.O. Box 37012, MRC 957 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023024254 Washington, D.C. 20013-7012 https://scholarlypress.si.edu Compilation copyright © 2023 Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian American Art Museum is home to The exhibition Musical Thinking: New Video Art and one of the largest collections of American art in the Sonic Strategies is organized by the Smithsonian world. Its holdings—more than 43,000 works—tell American Art Museum. Generous support has been the story of the United States through the visual provided by: arts and represent the most inclusive collection of American art of any museum today. Michael Abrams and Sandra Stewart Aida Alvarez It is the nation’s first federal art collection, predating Candy and Michael Barasch the 1846 founding of the Smithsonian Institution. The Carolyn and Mo Cunniffe Museum celebrates the exceptional creativity of the Roger S. Firestone Foundation nation’s artists, whose insights into history, society, Ed and Kathy Fries and the individual reveal the essence of the American Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation experience. Pamela and David Hornik Maureen and Gene Kim Tiffany Farrell, Head of Publications Nion McEvoy Publications Endowment Mary J. Cleary, Senior Editor Victoria McManus Aubrey Vinson, Permissions and Image Coordinator V. Joy Simmons, MD Anne Hyland, Curatorial Assistant Smithsonian Accessibility Innovation Fund Alex Tyson, Web and Digital Products Lead Lucille and Richard Spagnuolo Madeline Wan, Designer at Smithsonian Exhibits Helen and Peter Warwick SJ Weiler Fund This exhibition received federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, and the Asian Pacific American Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Contents Director’s Foreword 4 Arthur Jafa 46 Christine Sun Kim 52 Musical Thinking and Time-Based Media Art—A Long Duet 9 Simone Leigh and Liz Magic Laser 59 Cauleen Smith 64 Liner Notes: Works in the Exhibition 23 ADÁL 24 Postscript as Prelude: Histories of Musical Thinking in SAAM’s Raven Chacon (Diné) 29 Time-Based Media Art Collection 71 Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly 34 Martine Gutierrez 40 Notes 94 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition 105 Works Cited 111 Suggested Reading 116 Image Credits 118 Still from Cauleen Smith, Sojourner, 2018 (Cat. 26) 3 Director’s Foreword MUSICAL THINKING: NEW VIDEO ART AND SONIC Gutierrez, Arthur Jafa, Erin Ellen Kelly, STRATEGIES feels particularly celebratory Christine Sun Kim, Liz Magic Laser, Simone for the Smithsonian American Art Museum Leigh, and Cauleen Smith are defining creators (SAAM). With the exhibition’s opening in the of this contemporary moment. The addition summer of 2023 after years of social of their works to SAAM’s holdings helps us distancing and having our third-floor modern engage with the complex urgencies of today and contemporary art galleries closed for with both creativity and a plurality of renovation, we are excited to welcome all to perspectives resonant with our diverse this uniquely immersive exhibition. We audiences. Musical Thinking marks the SAAM encourage visitors to reconvene around art, debut of sixteen new collection works, and share space, and move—and be moved most of these artists’ first appearance in our —together. As a collection-based show galleries (save Leigh and ADÁL, whose works highlighting new acquisitions, Musical Thinking we have proudly featured in recent years). also celebrates the powerful visions—and As SAAM’s time-based media curator Saisha soundtracks—of a new generation of artists Grayson signals in her introductory essay, who bring musical strategies, insights, and music has been a sister art form and source of references to their video productions and inspiration for moving-image artists for over intermedia practices. Award-winning artists, a century. What this exhibition brings into focus filmmakers, choreographers, and composers is how artists working now are building on and ADÁL, Raven Chacon, Mariam Ghani, Martine 4 Director’s Foreword reorienting that tradition. They emphasize reveal of our transformed third-floor spaces how music can serve as a communal force, and collection displays as we prepare a revelatory entry to shared experiences and a more inclusive story of American art for 2026, fraught histories, and a model for collaborative the 250th anniversary of our United States. and iterative creativity. While the title phrase, In addition to the framing introduction and musical thinking, has been widely used and postscript case studies, this digital catalogue is necessarily redefined for each context—as includes a “Liner Notes” section, each entry Grayson does here—it is also intentionally offering a close reading of the artworks in the a play on another familiar phrase, magical exhibition and how they manifest that artist’s— thinking. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines or artistic duo’s—approach to musical thinking. magical thinking as “the belief that one’s ideas, This format is inspired by the detailed insights thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can that vinyl-album sleeves or booklets at one influence the course of events in the material time provided for those eager to know more world.” For the artists gathered here, musical about a favorite song. Because the media thinking, critical thinking, and magical thinking artworks are all part of SAAM’s permanent are connected. The creation of sonic and visual collection, the digital catalogue’s format symbols, the sharing of words, images, and allows these entries to link back to SAAM’s ideas are indeed intended to impact how we webpages, where moving-image excerpts and relate to and understand each other, and biographies can always be found. Likewise, by extension how we act on and within the “Postscript as Prelude” is formulated as a self- world beyond museum walls. A belief in contained text. It introduces learners of all this transformative potential—whether of ages to key historical moments in the materials, events, or society—subtly pervades development of time-based media, as the exhibition, which invites audiences to illustrated through SAAM’s collection and recognize they are the agents of change who can seen through the lens of musical thinking. turn potentiality into reality. This belief is Yet following the media links can set these also central to the permanent-collection historical examples into motion, inviting reinstallation that SAAM is undertaking website visitors to begin tracing their own across our building, making Musical Thinking journey through our holdings. a fitting exhibition to begin the rolling 5 Director’s Foreword As SAAM’s first open-access online catalogue, higher education institution in the world Musical Thinking helps the Museum realize exclusively devoted to Deaf and hard-of- both the integration of media art and digital hearing students. Grayson reached out to publishing, and its desire to be ever more Melissa Malzkuhn, founder and director of ML2, inclusive in our design thinking. Making the to discuss how this exhibition could address most of digital publishing’s potential, what Deaf audiences’ relation to music in ways that follows is formatted for screen readers with enhanced the experience for a wide spectrum robust visual descriptors for all catalogue of our visitors. Since then, SAAM and ML2 have illustrations and reference images, and links been collaborating on a suite of thoughtful, to video excerpts with closed captions. Paired tailored engagements for each artwork in with the inclusive exhibition design and Musical Thinking, from open captions with interpretation—which layers in multisensory detailed musical descriptions, to haptics that audio translations, American Sign Language amplify soundtrack vibrations, to videos that (ASL) videos, and verbal description stops for translate interpretive texts for those whose each gallery—the embedding of accessibility first language is ASL. This is part of a holistic thinking into Musical Thinking has sparked approach to accessibility that we are grateful new relationships, collaborations, and ways has been supported throughout with insights, of working that will contribute to SAAM’s goal funding, and networking provided by Access of being equally welcoming for all audiences Smithsonian. We extend further appreciation going forward. to the user experts with whom they connected us. We are grateful also to the feedback Foremost among those partnerships, I wish provided on the verbal description strategy for to acknowledge the contributions of Motion this exhibition. Light Lab (ML2), a design studio at our local Gallaudet University, the oldest and still only 6 Director’s Foreword Exhibitions like this—that leverage new Critical support from within the Smithsonian interpretive approaches for site-responsive was provided early on by the Smithsonian media artworks—are uniquely collaborative Accessibility Innovation Fund, which made ventures with living artists. We thank Musical our consultancy with ML2 and so much more Thinking’s illustrious roster of artists, not only possible. Funding from the Smithsonian for their visions and the work we are proud to American Women’s History Initiative Pool now steward, but for their joyful engagement allowed us to commission performances with our team from initial studio visits and by Martine Gutierrez and the duo Mariam acquisitions, to input on accessibility ideas, Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly. Our program with to final design review, to participating in Christine Sun Kim received federal support programs and creating new performances. from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Not to be overlooked in terms of our gratitude Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian are the artists’ dedicated representatives, Pacific American Center. studio managers, and gallerists, as well as the Our museum supporters from across the estate representatives for ADÁL, who passed country were essential to expanding the time- away in 2020 before exhibition planning was based media collection in ways that generated under way. the ground for this exhibition. Former SAAM We are also thankful for the conversations this Commission chair Nion McEvoy (2017–2018) exhibition and group of artists has sparked and his many co-commissioners funded our with institutions across D.C., including our acquisition of Jafa’s masterpiece, and a gift Smithsonian colleagues at Smithsonian from the SJ Weiler Fund underwrote the two Exhibits, who designed this catalogue; at Cauleen Smith films inspired by Alice Coltrane. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, for We are also grateful to the exhibition lenders, publishing it; and at the National Museum New Britain Museum of American Art; RYAN of the American Indian, with whom we will LEE Gallery, New York; and the Whitney copresent a performance by Raven Chacon. Museum of American Art. Our neighboring institution, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, a DC Public Library, cooperated on programs to coincide with the installation. 7 Director’s Foreword The SJ Weiler Fund stepped forward with Mejorado, design intern Mia Navarro, exhibition support as well. Special thanks to interpretation specialist Kelly Skeen, web Nion McEvoy for establishing the Nion McEvoy lead Alex Tyson, and so many more ensured Publications Endowment, which provided expansive, clear communications with our funds for this publication. We are grateful wide-ranging audiences. I thank Anne Hyland, for major support from SAAM Commissioners curatorial assistant, and Emma Jaromin, Carolyn and Mo Cunniffe and David and curatorial and accessibility intern, for helping Pamela Hornik. They are joined by generous bring this complex presentation to life. Finally, support from Commissioners Michael Abrams I salute Saisha for developing this idea and and Sandra Stewart, Ed and Kathy Fries, expanding the collection in thoughtful and Maureen and Gene Kim, V. Joy Simmons, compelling ways. I recall vividly our very MD, and Lucille and Richard Spagnuolo. first conversations when she was a candidate Additional support has come from new and for the time-based media curator position long-standing allies, including Candy and about both the strengths of our collections Michael Barasch, Helen and Peter Warwick, and the urgent need to build our holdings to the Roger S. Firestone Foundation, the be more inclusive and relevant. This project Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, marks an exciting next chapter for time- Victoria McManus, and Emerita Commissioner based media at SAAM, and an opportunity to Aida Alvarez. celebrate all within our institution and beyond who are making this moment—and what is Finally, it is an honor and privilege to thank ahead—possible. and work alongside the dedicated teams at SAAM who make each of our exhibitions Stephanie Stebich possible. On this project, exhibition designer The Margaret and Terry Stent Director Stefan Gibson and AV specialist Harvey Smithsonian American Art Museum Sandler truly outdid themselves in creating installations that will transport and delight. Senior editor Mary Cleary, development officer Christie Davis, graphic designer Grace Lopez, public affairs specialist Rebekah 8 MUSICAL THINKING AND TIME-BASED MEDIA ART— A Long Duet Saisha Grayson When visuals are set into motion, music is often digital imagery allowed visual artists to revious page: Stills from Arthur Jafa, what propels them along. During the silent- shape time, as well as color and form. Love is the Message, The Message is film era, in the early twentieth century, piano Whether apparent in the interactions of Death, 2016 (Cat. 18), a video that collages footage from silent-era films players added playful jingles and dramatic visual and sonic layers and musically related to viral YouTube videos, to reflect on climaxes to enhance the storyline (fig. 1). subjects, or more subtly shaping creative Black life in America through the Today, the meaning of our visual landscape process through written scores or thematic moving image. —everything from nightly news to cartoons, improvisation, musical thinking is at play in from video games to TikTok—is affected and so much of what we see.1 directed by its soundtrack. Even when there is no musical accompaniment, the language of music is regularly used to explain the power of what we see unfold in time. Art critics and audiences alike have often used terms like rhythm and counterpoint, composition and score, harmony and dynamics to discuss the creative goals and expressive effects of visuals in flux. This is not surprising, as many of the main innovators of such experimental practices were either musicians themselves or devoted music enthusiasts. This parallel knowledge—this musical thinking—helped them develop creative strategies as new technologies such as electrical lights, Fig. 1. Audience watches Keystone Cops celluloid film, videotape, and most recently movie in theater, 1920s. 10 Still from Cauleen Smith, Pilgrim, 2017 (Cat. 27), showing the ashram congregation room of spiritual leader and musician Alice Coltrane, the inspiration for Smith’s recent film projects. Perhaps because the history of music’s disciplines’ strategies and histories. How entanglements with moving-image art is does thinking as a musician, or thinking so long, or because today’s videos are so alongside and through musical forms and consistently paired with music, the special figures, change approaches to the visual? and specific relationship between these two What happens when videomakers follow fields is often taken for granted. We expect a score, when scored performances become a soundtrack for every viewing experience, drawings, or when we read movie soundtracks but we ask few questions about how audio instead of receiving them sonically? Can visual and visual interweave — not only in the final artists open layers of meaning held within product and its impact, but also in creative a given song or sound that revolutionize how processes that explicitly draw on both we experience them going forward? 11 Still from Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016 (Cat. 18), with magnetic close-up of singer Lauryn Hill. Detail from Christine Sun Kim, Close Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic and intentions for how the work will be Readings, 2015 (Cat. 21), a four-channel Strategies invites renewed attention to the received and experienced by music fans of all video featuring familiar films with intersections and influences of video and kinds. The media works presented in Musical interpretive captions provided by Kim’s d/Deaf collaborators, including actor sound, focusing on recently made works Thinking are all drawn from the collection Lauren Ridloff, whose text is seen here. by some of the most important voices in of the Smithsonian American Art Museum contemporary art today.2 As the title suggests, (SAAM). These transformative additions bring music is more than a formal element in these the Museum’s time-based art collection firmly works; it is a framework through which these into the twenty-first century, while extending artists understand the histories and traditions a core insight recognizable in SAAM’s earlier that inspire them. All privilege music as holdings—that music lent much to the a means to explore individual and collective development of media art. Thanks to these experiences of the United States and to new acquisitions, SAAM can now trace this connect with their audiences. Their use of relationship across nearly a hundred years of musical thinking encompasses subjects and American art history. concepts, processes and production modes, 12 MUSICAL THINKING TODAY: Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly, Martine Singing America Gutierrez, Arthur Jafa, Simone Leigh and Liz Magic Laser, Cauleen Smith, and Christine Sun Kim, with their related prints, drawings, To explore the powerful resonances between photographs, sculptures, and sound art. video art and music today, Musical Thinking As SAAM visitors make their way through brings together a diverse array of artists who the installation, they can see, hear, and employ the strategies of musical creation feel how musical thinking animates these —scores, improvisation, and interpretation artists’ interdisciplinary practices. —as well as musical styles, structures, and The development of Musical Thinking grew lyrics to amplify aspects of American life. out of two simultaneous realizations. First, Rich with cultural references, the works in Christine Sun Kim, America the Beautiful, that some of the strongest video artworks the exhibition use music to call up memories, 2020 (Cat. 23), a charcoal drawing that made in the last two decades engage musical translates this patriotic standard for ASL capture attention, provoke insight, and invite methods and histories in fundamental ways. performance. embodied engagement. Musical choices in the And second, that as SAAM’s media collection featured videos are integral to their meaning expanded to reflect the diversity of voices and impact, and their sonic dimensions help driving culture in the United States today, we transform individual viewers into convened could suddenly “hear” a chorus of complexity communities, moved together by rhythms that navigating harmony and dissonance. These connect across centuries and set the pace artists’ engagement with music is therefore for tomorrow. also an invitation to consider the relationship The exhibition also celebrates the entry of between America’s past, present, and future. these major figures in American art into Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes’s SAAM’s collection by debuting their work in declaration, “I, too, sing America,” now rings expansive, layered, cross-media installations. true within SAAM’s collection.3 In amplifying Musical Thinking pairs video works from previously sidelined perspectives, these SAAM’s collection by ADÁL, Raven Chacon, artists underscored that the song of America is incomplete without them—less beautiful, as Whistler or Marsden Hartley who aimed to Hughes notes, but also less challenging, as convey motion and musicality in still images, suggested by the work and words of exhibition abstract film animators like Dwinell Grant artist Arthur Jafa. (see p. 75) turned to classical musical theory to articulate how this new art form could Jafa’s often-quoted goal, to create a cinema communicate through visual themes unfolding that “replicates the power, beauty, and over time. Such “visual music” extended alienation of Black music,” sparked another a dream, traceable to the Renaissance, of insight that grounds this show.4 His statement color organs or instruments that could suggests that artists today are looking to translate a musical journey into an abstract, Still from Arthur Jafa, Love is the music in ways that build on, but also differ evolving visual evocation.6 The first generation Message, The Message is Death, 2016 from, earlier generations. Since the early of video artists in the 1960s and ‘70s was (Cat. 18), featuring Black music icon decades of the twentieth century, when time- James Brown. populated by composers like Nam June Paik based media was first created for an art and instrumentalists like Steina Vasulka who context, artists shaping durational works drew used their musical training to develop this on music as a preexisting art form that also new media. In these formative decades, organized experiences in time. They invoked musical analogies helped frame film and video the language and structure of music—scores, as high art that—like music—did not need to performances, improvisations. They built tell a story or have a specific subject or on decades of art theory that had elevated message to be appreciated or impactful.7 music as the purest creative form, with other They supported formal experimentation media “aspiring to the condition of music,” and encouraged improvising with these and celebrated the automatic association emergent technologies. between sound and color experienced by synesthetes like Wassily Kandinsky, who This urgency in early days to distinguish translated his response to music into some artistic video via its distance from video’s of the earliest abstract paintings.5 Early more common uses, such as television and twentieth-century musicians like Thomas home recordings, has largely fallen away Wilfred became visual artists, creating light- in recent decades. Video art of various kinds based, moving color compositions that is widely celebrated and shown in galleries took hours or days to unfold. Following the and museums around the world. Artists of aspirations of painters like James McNeill all stripes take up this medium, often with 14 Still from Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly, When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved, 2019 (Cat. 11), reimagining the nineteenth- century spiritual gatherings that took place in this preserved Shaker meetinghouse. a narrative in mind. For twenty-first-century The artworks in Musical Thinking reflect on the time-based artists like those featured in vast cultural influence that music has had on this exhibition, music is something that American life and global soundscapes. They amplifies and assists with storytelling as showcase how innovative forms and iconic one of the most emotionally connective, talents inflect key chapters of the American popular means of speaking directly to story. Beyond selecting songs for mood or audiences and acknowledging long-standing structure, these artists think deeply about the or spontaneously emergent communities. traditions and ideologies of various musical These artists do not shy away from charged forms; the methods of composition and subjects, including contested histories and remixing that translate between media; and long-forgotten traditions within music itself. the spiritual, communal, and political purposes Their work often has implicit or explicit that music has served. Early American hymns, messages that are intensified, rather than classical opera, avant-garde composition, replaced, by musical analogies. Broadway musicals, movie soundtracks, 15 THEMATIC MOVEMENTS ACROSS Music Thinking The exhibition’s opening features works that use music to engage three foundational constructs of America: as migrant melting pot, as Christian settler project, and as an empty frontier. In ADÁL’s cheeky West Side Story Upside Down, Backwards, Sideways and Out of Focus (La Maleta de Futriaco Martínez) (2002; cat. 4), the 1961 film musical is to become attuned to a lesser-known strand Still from ADÁL, West Side Story manipulated, as the title describes. Added of early American Christianity. Interpreting Upside Down, Backwards, Sideways to this distorted footage of scenes of white a choreographic score based on first-person and Out of Focus (La Maleta de actors playing stereotyped Puerto Rican accounts from the nineteenth century, dancers Futriaco Martínez), 2002 (Cat. 4). characters and white characters dancing surround the singer and then make their own the mambo is a new score: the Afro- rhythms as their movements become more Caribbean jazz of the famed Nuyorican ecstatic. By reanimating the spirit that drew percussionist Tito Puente and the disruptive Shakers together, the artists consider the static of a police radio. This sonic mix utopian potential of these early communities keeps in play the promise of cultural that believed in racial and gender equality. convergences and the real-life dangers of They invoke the logic of music—namely cultural misrepresentation. harmony—to do so. In Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly’s When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved (2019; cat. 11), a cappella hymns sung in a Shaker community house invite audiences 16 Within SAAM’s installation, across from the that gunfire is one of the most sustained Still from Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen fervent dancing and peaceful pauses of soundtracks of this land because it was Kelly, When the Spirits Moved Them, that three-channel video, a single screen in taken with violence. They Moved, 2019 (Cat. 11). a darkened room offers a counterpoint. Other works position music as a prime example Raven Chacon’s Report (2001/2015; cat. 5) of another essential American truth: that in the presents a lineup of mostly Native American face of centuries of anti-Black violence and and Latinx musicians in a Southwest racism, Black creative brilliance has flourished, landscape, each holding their assigned especially in cultural traditions like music that instrument: firearms of various calibers. “could be carried in [the] nervous system.”8 Following a detailed percussion score written by Chacon and visible on music stands before them, they shoot into the distance. The initial firing sound of these differently scaled guns and return echoes together constitute the composition. An experiment in finding sonic value in surprising materials, this performance also offers a musical retort to the repeated presentation of the Western “frontier” as Still from Raven Chacon, Report, uninhabited. Instead, it is a stark reminder 2001/2015 (Cat. 5). 17 Cauleen Smith’s paired videos, Sojourner (2018; cat. 26) and Pilgrim (2017; cat. 27), center on the transcendent sounds and teachings of composer, performer, and swamini Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda (1937–2007), whose experimental jazz stylings blended with Indian devotional kirtan after she founded a Hindu ashram in California in the 1970s (see p. 65). While Coltrane’s songs play, Smith’s Arthur Jafa’s monumental video, Love is the camera traces connections between sites Message, The Message is Death (2016; cat. 18), of historic resonances for Black liberation, illustrates this tension through a montage of including the Philadelphia homes of fellow clips, from silent films to cell-phone footage, musicians Sun Ra and Alice’s husband, John depicting African American triumphs and Coltrane, and centers of art and environmental tragedies across a century. Beyond the parade beauty across California. The power of utopic of musical icons featured on-screen, and the energies, seeded and still sprouting, is made compendium of Black music history invoked by explicit in Sojourner, as we see young women Kanye West (now Ye)’s accompanying gospel/ of color tune in to old radios to receive wisdom hip-hop track “Ultralight Beam” (2016), Jafa from Black women leaders across centuries. honors the genius of Black musical innovation In addition to works that take on vast swaths through the very fabric of his filmmaking. of history, the exhibition includes works where Jafa’s dense editing is polyrhythmic, and, music becomes a vehicle for introspection, within given clips, he plays with the frame rates and playback speeds.9 These almost Top left: Still from Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016 imperceptible alterations allow certain (Cat. 18). moments in the edit to strike with extra force, and others to be suspended between beats, Left: Still from Cauleen Smith, Sojourner, mirroring the virtuosic control that Jafa 2018 (Cat. 26). thought should be adapted from Black music to define a Black cinema. 18 personal connection, and individual and communal expression. How we relate to music is part of how we relate to ourselves and each other, and that is also part of contemporary American life. Joyfully embodying this, Martine Gutierrez’s Clubbing (2012; cat. 17) features the artist dancing in gauzy-gray dream space. With the help of a green screen, she appears and reappears, taking on six distinct personalities, each with their own gender performance, night-out looks, and go-to moves. Finding their own groove even when they dance in sync, the figures capture the expansive impossibility of what Black women are asked Still from Martine Gutierrez, Clubbing, freedom for self-definition that club culture 2012 (Cat. 17). has always supported. As shown at SAAM with to perform every day without breaking down— a light-up haptic dance floor, audiences are and how they are stereotyped or vilified when encouraged to join in Clubbing, and feel part they do. of this welcoming community and celebrate Through her art, Christine Sun Kim consistently their own many-sided selves. draws attention to the many ways she and In Breakdown (2011; cat. 24), a single-channel others in the Deaf community relate to music. video collaboration between artists Simone Still from Simone Leigh and Liz Magic Leigh and Liz Magic Laser, audiences Laser, Breakdown, 2011 (Cat. 24), witness a vocally and emotionally shattering featuring mezzo-soprano Alicia performance by the renowned mezzo-soprano Hall Moran, whose tour-de-force Alicia Hall Moran. Moran’s operatic aria is performance incorporates opera, jazz, gospel, and hymns. her interpretation of a score, assembled by Leigh and Laser, with lyrics entirely drawn from popular culture depictions of women having nervous breakdowns. Sung to empty seats in what looks like an abandoned theater, Moran’s technical bravado deserves a standing ovation, but it also reflects the near 19 Rather than presuming they are outside of or disinterested in this world, Kim asserts Deaf people are highly attuned to and seek their own ways of relating to the world of sound. For Kim, this includes making artworks that challenge bone-dry movie captions that often simply state that “[music]” is playing. Her Close Readings (2015; cat. 21), a four-channel video work, shows what happens when these captions are reconceived as expressive opportunities for individualized interpretation, poetic reverie, pointed critique, and more by her invited collaborators. By highlighting be instrumental, as in Chacon’s work; Installation image (above) and detail the instrumentalization of movie music and choreographic, as in Ghani and Kelly’s piece; (below) from Christine Sun Kim, the lyrical potential of language, her work lyrical, as for Leigh and Laser’s video; or Close Readings, 2015 (Cat. 21), with offers insights for all who watch films and textual instructions, as Kim uses to direct her caption by Ariel Baker-Gibbs. wonder how they work on us. Finding points collaborators. Scores invite interpretation and of connection across experiences not acknowledge the inherently fluid, cooperative, universally shared—but suddenly powerfully and responsive aspects of music-making, traits felt—is something that art and music both that for a long time were not valued in the promise, and these works make manifest. visual arts. The intricacies of these works bring us back to what we can appreciate as musical thinking beyond the appearance of musical references or sonic accompaniments. Within this show, musical thinking operates at three levels: process, content, and reception. As part of the creative process for many of the works discussed above, artists assembled scores that guided their video’s form as well as structured its soundtrack. These scores might 20 Musical thinking in content encompasses having iconic musicians as subjects and great songs as accompaniment, but it does not stop there. Jafa’s adaption of Black musical stylization to his editing process exemplifies the drive among so many artists to link musical content to forms of musicality that express specific cultural traditions and trace collective histories. This is apparent in Breakdown’s pointed deployment of opera—a musical form associated with exclusionary European culture—to imbue Black women’s daily challenges with the gravity of Greek tragedy. It is there in the way that Gutierrez composed her clubbing music with a specific 1970s song in mind, the feel of which is picked up in every bit of end of Sojourner, the swelling Coltrane music Still from Raven Chacon, Report, her art design and re-invokes the liberatory feels like it will carry all of us into the future 2001/2015 (Cat. 5). vibes of that era. she envisions. These are not simply accidental effects: the point of these pieces is to imagine Finally, there is something particularly other ways of being in common, of connecting communal about musical reception. Music and moving to a shared beat, even if that invites us to feel connected with those takes different forms. sharing the listening space, even if they are strangers, and many of these works Music is often a way of establishing common capitalize on this dimension of music. There ground; it is woven into our daily lives, our is a visceral sense of inclusion that emanates everyday spaces, and our stories of ourselves from Ghani and Kelly’s life-size projections of and our communities. This is also one of the Shaker singers and dancers, as if everyone reasons SAAM is organizing its first time- in the gallery were also a potential member based media exhibition since 2015 around of this utopian project. When Smith’s next- this theme. Opening after years of social generation feminist leaders parade at the distancing and the fraying of the social fabric, 21 we hope it meets a collective longing to experience art and ideas in public, together. We hope it resonates with audiences in our galleries and those engaging with the many elements we have brought online. And we believe that highlighting the power of musical thinking in this generation will create space for more interdisciplinary exchanges to come. We know this is only the next chapter in a story of America still being sung through art, music, media and each of our creative contributions. Let’s welcome the chorus. Installation view of Christine Sun Kim, One Week of Lullabies for Roux, 2018 (Cat. 20). 22 LINER NOTES Works in the Exhibition ADÁL A worn suitcase stands upright on a platform; three passports are laid out alongside it (cats. 1–4). At first glance, these might seem born Adalberto Maldonado, 1948, Utuado, Puerto Rico to be the essentials for someone’s upcoming –died 2020, San Juan, Puerto Rico international trip. Coming closer, the viewer finds intricate details that reveal the more complex story that artist ADÁL, who lived “From the beginning…my work has been informed between Puerto Rico and New York most of his life, offers through these works. In these by the impossibility of ever achieving a definitive signature works about this “Nuyorican” picture of one’s self. By this I mean that our (a neologism of New York plus Puerto Rican) identity is fluid and constantly evolving.” 10 experience, ADÁL celebrates the way music and dance are embodied cultural treasures —ADÁL that travel with and connect communities. Reading the texts visible across the three passports, it is clear the complexity extends far beyond ADÁL’s personal experiences to encompass the fraught colonial status of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. Though Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States as a colony in 1898, it was not until 1917 that its residents were granted U.S. citizenship; Previous page: Cat. 4. ADÁL, West to this day, they remain without federal Side Story Upside Down, Backwards, representation or a sanctioned path toward Sideways and Out of Focus (La Maleta self-determination. Yet, these passports are de Futriaco Martínez), 2002, suitcase, clearly stamped as representing “El Spirit flat-screen LCD monitor, single-channel digital video (color, sound); 12:51 min. Republic de Puerto Rico,” and claim to be issued Smithsonian American Art Museum, by El Puerto Rican Embassy. Embassies and Museum purchase through the Luisita L. passports are symbols of national sovereignty; and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, as such they proved perfect conceptual sites 2013.20. 25 for ADÁL and his collaborators to creatively despite systemic oppression. It proclaims Top: Cats. 1–3. ADÁL, El Puerto Rican critique and speculatively solve the question that citizens of this conceptual terrain “have Passport, El Spirit Republic de Puerto of Puerto Rican independence.11 Beginning in proven that you can be on two Islands at the Rico, 1994, issued 2005/2012, lithography with photograph in 1994, ADÁL and poet and former Young Lords same time, Dancing to supernatural down to staple-bound booklet. Smithsonian activist Pedro Pietri hosted random pop-up Earth rhythms from Solitary jukeboxes from American Art Museum, Gift of the Embassy events full of song and poetry at the past, present and future!”12 That so many artist, 2013.19.1-.3. Nuyorican cultural centers. Pietri would lead already live this way—straddling diasporic attendees in singing “El Spanglish National locations, cultures, and temporal registers Bottom: Fig. 2. Still from El Puerto Rican Anthem” (fig. 2), and ADÁL would create —proves “El Spirit Republic” to be real, even Embassy performance of “El Spanglish individualized passports, taking out-of-focus if the Embassy and passports are artistic National Anthem”; Pedro Pietri (center) portraits and gathering personal data, to be fabrications. Creating work in this speculative and ADÁL (left). added to the first page (cats. 1-3). mode cleverly confronts U.S. colonial power, which the artists see as seeking to make Printed at the center of each passport, a four- self-determination literally unimaginable. page manifesto by Pietri defines El Republic This participatory political theater, instead, as “a Sovereign State of Mind,” and centers invites all to cocreate other possible world music and dance, alongside other creative orders by decolonizing the imaginary. and imaginative expressions, as key to claiming independence, maintaining cultural Alongside these passports, ADÁL’s video- pride, and empowering self-emancipation sculpture directly addresses the role that 26 popular culture—especially music, theater, moved as a teenager from the mountainous Stills of actress Rita Moreno, who and movies—plays in shaping that imaginary. countryside of Puerto Rico to New Jersey portrayed Anita in the 1961 movie Embedded in the leather front of a nicked and then the Bronx in the mid-1960s. West Side Story, upside down and luggage case, a small flat-screen monitor By the 1970s, he was a force in the inverted, from ADÁL, West Side Story Upside Down, Backwards, Sideways plays, as promised in the title, West Side Story burgeoning downtown Nuyorican scene—a and Out of Focus (La Maleta de Upside Down, Backwards, Sideways and Out movement that explored the hybrid identities Futriaco Martínez), 2002 (Cat. 4). of Focus (La Maleta de Futriaco Martínez) of those who straddled both cultures (2002; cat. 4). This manipulated footage is and celebrated the creative flourishing in from the classic movie musical West Side music, dance, poetry, and visual arts that Story, which widely disseminated stereotypical came from this convergence, while critiquing Puerto Rican characters, mostly performed by the imperial, colonial, racial, and class white actors, to audiences across the United conditions that continue to impact the island States. The all-white creative teams behind the and its diaspora. 1957 Broadway show and 1961 film adaptation Taking aim at this power imbalance, ADÁL’s had no ties to New York City’s vibrant Puerto West Side Story Upside Down… treats the Rican community that they casually used to Hollywood footage as the moviemakers treated colorfully update Shakespeare’s Romeo and their fictionalized Puerto Rican community, Juliet.13 ADÁL, on the other hand, was part of inverting colors and values, distorting and the generation of Puerto Ricans supposedly repeating cliches, and blurring and filtering depicted—those who came to the United States scenes until they are unrecognizable. in growing numbers after World War II— having 27 ADÁL counterbalances this jumble by editing in clarifying moments. Carefully chosen documentary clips contextualize the postwar pressures that pushed Puerto Ricans to the continent, and showcase the unmistakable talents of fellow Nuyoricans, such as Latin jazz legends Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez, Grammy Award–winning singer Brenda Feliciano, and ADÁL’s regular collaborator, Pietri. Importantly, in this battle for cultural self-definition, the soundtrack is entirely theirs; the well-worn showtunes are replaced by propulsive percussion, Spanish- language ballads, spoken word, and, eerily, the crackle of police radio—a sonic layering that truly evokes New York City at night. Though ADÁL was best known as a photographer, this multimedia assemblage fits within decades of work in which he foregrounded music as exemplary of Still of Tito Rodríguez performing from a Nuyorican culture that simultaneously ADÁL, West Side Story Upside Down, carries on and reinvents traditions, recognizes Backwards, Sideways and Out of Focus roots but transcends borders, and stays true (La Maleta de Futriaco Martínez), 2002 (Cat. 4). to itself while powerfully contributing to the fabled melting pot of America. 28 Raven Chacon (Diné) The first sounds heard in Raven Chacon’s video Report (2001/2015; cat. 5) are sheet music and flimsy music stands shaking in the wind, and born 1977, Fort Defance, Navajo Nation, Arizona then the distinct click of ammunition being loaded and locked into various-size firearms. Much as a string section tunes before a concert “I am a listener. My belief is that sound work begins, the instrumentalists here are inspecting guns and clicking off safeties before raising cannot be made in isolation. These are acoustic, their arms, awaiting a conductor’s signal. conceptual responses to land; they seek to Standing side by side on a dirt patch within acknowledge the people who have history in a New Mexican landscape, the eight performers aim straight over their music stands toward those places. There is a pedagogical and wild bushes, trees, and scrub grass. Chacon, on a generative feedback loop within these the left side of the screen, counts the ensemble 14 in, and a volley of shots fills the air. Watching land-based practices.” the performers check the score and listening —Raven Chacon to the distinct rhythms, it is clear the sonic potential of each revolver, rifle, shotgun, or handgun has its own role in this arrangement. The staccato of pops and bangs, lulls for reloading, and crescendos of synced explosions are shaped by the tonality of the various calibers, their tempo for successive firings, and the precisely notated percussion line that Chacon wrote in his eight-part score. An exhibition copy of the score is spotlit on Previous page: Cat. 5. Raven Chacon, Report, a stand in the center of the video gallery, 2001/2015, single-channel video (color, allowing those who read music to follow along. sound); 3:48 min., shown with printed score on music stand, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2020.61A-C. 30 This video installation captures a singular, instruments themselves.”15 In titling Report, Still from Raven Chacon, Report, artist-directed performance in 2015 of Chacon’s Chacon explicitly referenced not only the 2001/2015 (Cat. 5). 2001 score of the same name. As a music sound an explosion makes as it reverberates student at the University of New Mexico, in an environment, but also the way Chacon set out to create a composition that news is shared and statistical or research placed maximum constraints on Western summaries are delivered. Open to the musical parameters. He decided to use “loaded,” subversive, or instinctual responses firearms as musical instruments, as they have the piece could provoke, Chacon also no flexibility for composers or interpreters saw parallels between its compositional in controlling pitch, harmony, volume, timbre, constraints and the societal limits that people or tuning. This leaves only structuring time— often face: When so many choices are taken a reduction of musical components promoted away, what other options remain but firing? by midcentury avant-garde composer John Myriad decisions related to the performance Cage and his next-generation followers, scenario, however, point to other registers for like James Tenney, with whom Chacon meaning making. The selection of location, studied. However, unlike Cage, Chacon is not instrumentalists, conductor, and presentation insistent that sound is just sound with no shape readings as to who the shooters are, interpretive layer: “I’m getting more and what brought them to this place, and how more excited about writing for [percussion] their actions are seen: Are they defending because of its potential for metaphor. It’s or taking a territory? Are they hunting or symbology that you can have inside of the 31 occupying? While Chacon created Report as honoring a different contemporary Native “a proposition, rather than a position on the woman musician.18 These include odes to morality of firearms,” he describes its recasting well-known figures, like For Buffy Sainte- of guns from instruments of violence to sonic Marie representing the folk icon and Oscar- tools as a “mechanism for musical resistance.”16 winning composer, while others point to a new In a recent interview, he added that “people generation of artist-activist instrumentalists, of color and women performing sound . . . when like For Laura Ortman (2019; cat. 9) or there was no place for them before, is For Olivia Shortt (2020; cat. 10). The visually [musical] resistance.”17 This recording, then, striking yet minimally marked compositions with performers of various backgrounds and variously draw inspiration from the subjects’ mixed genders, defiantly shooting across affiliated tribal symbols and philosophies, stolen lands with instruments that evoke both personal experiences, primary instruments, and colonial violence and Indigenous resistance, political or aesthetic interests. This reflection fully manifests that goal. on the complexity of what Native women today are navigating and how they turn their Chacon’s career itself is part of this resistance. Fig. 3. Gertrude Käsebier, Zitkála-Šá, experiences into art and music is dedicated His early encounters with music were rooted ca. 1898, platinum print, 6 3/16 x 4 1/2 in. to Zitkála-Šá, a Yankton Dakota writer, in family tradition, listening to his grandfather National Museum of American History, musician, and educator born in 1876 in sing Navajo songs and learning to play piano Smithsonian Institution, Mina Turner, what was then the Dakota Territory (fig. 3). from a neighbor. While learning Western acc. no. 287543. Zitkála-Šá’s The Sun Dance Opera (1913) is composition and histories, he began exploring among the first known instances of a Native the mechanics of various instruments and composer working with Western musical forms foregrounding noise as part of music, and and notation. An accomplished violinist, short- became interested in new ways in which story writer, and poet, her legacy extends compositions can be written, whether by beyond creative fields. Today, she is most using staff notation for unlikely sound-making remembered as an activist and advocate for devices or reimagining scores as visually Native peoples and women’s rights. striking graphic guides for interpretation. Beyond its in-gallery presentation, For For Zitkála-Šá is a print portfolio of thirteen Zitkála-Šá is also an ever-evolving program of graphically notated scores (five of which are on songs that can be imaginatively animated view in Musical Thinking). Each cream-colored in performance. Chacon’s accompanying sheet is a portrait or “musical transcription” 32 instructions suggest how to read the varied graphics, while leaving abundant space for interpretive agency. In For Olivia Shortt, for example, each arrow extending from the circle represents an Anishinaabe teaching and cardinal direction and is to be sonically marked by a “change in timbre or effect”; what the change will sound like and how it might reflect Anishinaabe ways is determined by each activator. This facilitates cocreation across generations, with a chain of insights and inspirations that extends from the nineteenth century to contemporary leaders to future audiences. As Chacon imagines, “Everyone who encounters this set of scores is invited to perform them, to better understand where they have been and where they are headed, and to consider all the sites of conflict they are placed between.”19 Chacon now consistently works across media and disciplinary boundaries, creating videos, installations, concerts, and convenings. His scores remain central, serving as tools for such generous forms of collaboration among performers and audiences, but also with significant sites, nonhuman actors, found sounds, and natural elements.20 In this way, he connects Diné worldviews and relationship Cat. 10. Raven Chacon, For Olivia Shortt, from models with Western classical, avant-garde, series For Zitkála-Šá, 2019–20, two- or three- and art music traditions. color lithographs on Somerset Satin paper; 11 x 8 1/2 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong Endowment, 2022.7.1.12. 33 Mariam Ghani A voice lifts in worshipful song, and a roomful of dancers comes into alignment, looking each other in the eye as they start to move born 1978, New York City in harmony. Over the next twenty minutes, in the central projection of Mariam Ghani Erin Ellen Kelly and Erin Ellen Kelly’s three-channel video, When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved (2019; cat. 11), we see these performers cycle born 1976, St. Louis, Missouri through choreographic sequences and musical expressions that are based on an unusual score. Assembled by Ghani and Kelly, the text that appears on the gallery wall (and at the “What we look for…are places that are really end of this entry) knits together first-person containers for histories where you can archival accounts from Kentucky Shakers. Their reconstruct from the place itself what the words evocatively trace the dynamic emotional and spiritual arc of worship meetings held history was that unfolded there…and using weekly by this community in the mid-nineteenth performance and film in some way to century; they also guide the artists’ reanimation speculate backwards from what has been of these experiences through song, dance, and video. Using historical documents to left in the present.” 21 compose a performance is a logical extension —Mariam Ghani (with Erin Ellen Kelly) of Ghani and Kelly’s multiyear collaboration, Performed Places (2006–ongoing). Across ten projects so far, Ghani’s filmmaking and Kelly’s choreography have been brought to bear on their shared investment in excavating layers of history, memory, and meaning enmeshed in specific sites. Through research that informs Previous page: Cat. 11. Still from Mariam Ghani responsive movement, videography, and and Erin Ellen Kelly, When the Spirits Moved Them, narrative structuring, their Performed Places They Moved, 2019, three-channel video (color, activates and unlocks what is held in these sound); 23:36 min. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 2021.23.1. 35 spaces and what might remain to be learned emergent United States—a representational Stills from Mariam Ghani and Erin from listening closely to our surroundings. democracy that nevertheless preserved Ellen Kelly, When the Spirits Moved inequality, and promoted expansion, Them, They Moved, 2019 (Cat. 11). In When the Spirits Moved…, the artists focus accumulation, and individualism. on Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, the largest private collection of preserved Ghani and Kelly’s crisply shot and serenely nineteenth-century buildings in the United paced video takes the Shaker ethos to States. The American Shakers were a Protestant heart and, when projected at human scale, Christian sect founded by prophet Mother allows audiences—perhaps unfamiliar with Ann Lee in 1774, with settlements up and this chapter in U.S. history—to experience down the Northeast and west into Ohio and these embodied philosophies and imagine Kentucky. At its height, the movement had Cat. 13. Mariam Ghani and Erin around five thousand adherents living in Ellen Kelly, Meeting House, Morning, nineteen communities organized around from the series When the Spirits principles of simplicity, celibacy, pacifism, Moved Them, They Moved, 2019, dye shared resources, and equality, regardless transfer print on Dibond, 20 x 30 in. of race or gender. Seeking to create a more Smithsonian American Art Museum, perfect society on Earth, the Shakers’ example Gift of the artists, courtesy of RYAN of utopian communalism runs counter to the LEE Gallery, New York, 2021.94.3. settler-colonial values that would shape the 36 themselves as part of one of their transformative convenings. As described in the archival score, gatherings at Pleasant Hill’s Meeting House interwove hymns, marches, and the bestowing of “blessings from heaven” that sparked individual and collective shaking (cat. 13). Assemblies could last up to nineteen hours, evolving from orderly greetings to ecstatic release and divine possession. To recapture this energy, the artists devised a daylong performance that would use repetitive movements, solo voice, and the percussive power of foot stomping and clapping to call in the same joyful spirit. As Twana Patrick, a singer who specializes in Shaker hymns, weaves among the shaking dancers, her repertoire shifts from light and airy to forcefully intoning that all “Come to Zion.” This is met with heavier footfalls that clapping speeding up as individuals step into Still from Mariam Ghani and hit in time with the recurring chorus, and the center to channel and release waves of Erin Ellen Kelly, When the Spirits exuberant social dances that take up more “quickening power” that spin, sway, and drop Moved Them, They Moved, 2019 and more of the room. Patrick’s singing them to the floor. Suddenly, a quiet overtakes (Cat. 11). recedes and swishing feet and clapping the group as they lay with heads to the center, crowds join constant bird and wind sounds taking in what has been received. Finally, they to form an environmental soundtrack that spread out, each occupying their own corner merges practice and place. As the artists or crevice of architecture, molding their bodies reflected afterward, the Meeting House is to the door frame or bench, lost in private a purpose-built “machine for making a joyful reverie that connects an inner landscape with noise,” its Gothic truss architecture resonating its outer form. so each stomp sounds like five and a single These twelve hours are distilled in the central voice sounds like a chorus.22 Many hours in, edit of the three-channel video, the sense of the dancers form a circle, their insistent 37 duration and endurance preserved through enabling him to just be in the experience.23 the changing quality of light and increasing On either side of the performance footage, evidence of the group’s exertion. Though their mirrored video channels show static and breathing becomes labored and clothing panning shots of Pleasant Hill’s rolling hills, sticky, the dancers’ faces are consistently manicured pathways, thoughtfully placed aglow with intensity, moments of connection fences and walls, and simple clapboard and introspection visible as they come in and buildings. These underscore, as the artists out of sync. One of the dancers shared later note, the “highly ordered patterns of that, in addition to spiritual uplift, he felt movement and rituals of faith” that himself release patterns of judgement— circumscribed Shaker life, apart from the whether about the Shakers as a sect or about chaotic energies unleashed during meetings.24 how he is seen or sees himself in performance— Inspired by the highly symmetrical gift drawings Shaker women produced from divine visions (fig. 4), this structure also illustrates how everything they made—from the built and natural environment to their famous craftwork, design, and hymns—served as containers for and expression of their spirituality. A similar symmetry is seen in the photographic series of diptychs and triptychs taken from the video. In front of these frozen and silenced images, visitors can contemplate, at their own pace, the juxtapositions set up by the artists Cat. 15. Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen (cat 15). Kelly, Triptych (Trees Above, Amanda Abandoned, and Stones Below) from Together, Ghani and Kelly’s video, performance, the series When the Spirits Moved Them, Fig. 4. Orville Cline (artist), Polly and photographs—and all they contain—offer They Moved, 2019, dye transfer print on Reed (object maker), Western Reserve a unique contemporary meditation on Shaker Dibond. Courtesy of RYAN LEE Gallery, Museum (object owner), Shaker ways of being-in-common and places where New York. Visionary Image, 1935/1942, pen and we might become attuned to, and reawaken, ink and watercolor on paper, Index of a different set of early American values. American Design, 1943.8.13738. 38 The following text is adapted from diaries in the Shaker Village archives and is presented to viewers as an introduction to the project: On Mother Ann’s birthday the whole Society met we would all unite and shake heartily. A great Text adapted from: at the Meeting House to celebrate the day. Like many were wrought upon by an irresistible power, all Sabbaths in Shaker villages, a beautiful stillness which caused the assembly to shake and reel and A Brief account of the proceedings of the day, and the pervaded. After the body of worshipers gathered toss like the trees of the forest when shaken with the meeting of the Society at Pleasant Hill, Ky. December into order, we commenced the services by one bow wind. The involuntary exercise became so violent 25th, 1845. / Western Reserve Historical Society and opened the meeting by singing a hymn. All that we discontinued ranks and all united in the VIII A-49 June, 1847 / Spiritual journal, Pleasant that were able united into ranks to step for dance, and one was moved upon by the departed Hill archives the first song, then formed two circles for the spirit of a female of some other Nation, and all her march. At this time in a meeting it was usual movements and motions seemed to prove she had Monday, March 8, 1852 / Spiritual journal, Pleasant to step quick and lively for two songs, sing lived to a very old age. There was some quiet Hill archives two songs for the slow march, then two for the sleepy kind of spirit took possession of Illinois round dance with the circle unbroken. On this Green, which caused her to sit about on the Saturday, February 14, 1857, and March 1, Sabbath occasion the house was too crowded to march floor apparently asleep for some time, then all 1857 / Filson Historical Society, Bohon Shaker with convenience, so the dancing commenced of a sudden she sprang to her feet and whirled Collection, Volume 11 of 40, “Journal Kept by James in a promiscuous manner by the middle and young and jumped about the room as tho she was Levi Balance, April 1, 1854–March 31, 1860” classes, and was attended with great power. The affrightened into a fit. About the middle of the seats had to be taken out of the room to give meeting, Emma McCormack was possessed by THE LORD’S DAY, MAY 25TH / JUNE 1st [1873] / place for the spirits to sing and dance, and the a spirit and lay helpless for some time, continually ”A Journey to Kentucky in the Year 1873,” Elder gifts and blessings of heaven were poured forth hollowing, then suddenly sprang to her feet and Henry C. Blinn by the heavenly Orders in great abundance. We danced round the room very swiftly for a short received gifts of freedom and simplicity, life and spell. After this Emma broke out in the most zeal, balls of love and blessing, sparks of holy melodious strains that the human mind could fire, palms of victory, staves of strength, crowns conceive of, singing songs new to us, that appeared of love, mantles and robes of wisdom, chains to be from the Spiritual world. Much praise was of union, and numerous other gifts of a similar danced and sung that day, and towards the kind, calculated to strengthen our souls and fill conclusion we received from Holy Mother Wisdom, us with life, which continued to flow almost each one a drop of her pure love…. Some of incessantly throughout the meeting. Sometimes those that were there say it was one of the liveliest when an individual would receive a bush or other meetings they were ever in. emblem filled with quickening power or holy fire, 39 Martine Gutierrez The satisfying clonk of a wood block keeping steady beat and the electric fuzz of synthesizer chords open the soundtrack for Clubbing born 1989, Berkeley, California (2012; cat. 17). A central figure, in a sparkly black dress with long black hair, coyly peers over their shoulder, and then turns to face the “It’s one of my favorite things to watch people camera. The video cuts to another similarly framed figure in a light glittery jacket and tie watch me. Usually people don’t recognize with close-cropped hair, swiveling from back me in my work, I can stand alongside them as to front to meet the viewer with a flirtatious they scrunch up their nose, squint their eyes smile. The video’s title appears in shimmery letters before the camera pans down to find or point. It feels like I finally get to see how our two protagonists facing each other. As people internalize their perception of me, or a thumping new bass line comes in, they begin of a person similar to me. Whether they question dancing intently, at first maintaining a cool distance and distinct movement repertoires the gender or ethnicity of the pop-star I perform from the 1960s before finding synergy doing or if they don’t, both are interesting and say the twist. Increasingly feeding off each other, they break into mirrored choreography that something about how they might interpret me has them circling, shimmying, and sliding as an individual irl [in real life].” 25 across the dance floor. Their synced steps —Martine Gutierrez match the exuberance of the instrumental chorus, while their stylistic flourishes mark unique interpretations of this groove. As this section winds down, we find they are not alone. Repeating the sequence at the top, close- up shots introduce another pair of dancers, Previous page: Cat. 17. Still from one with a beehive and striking crystal-drop Martine Gutierrez, Clubbing, 2012, earrings, and another with sideburns and single-channel digital video (high- a turtleneck. Pulling back to a long view definition, color, sound); 3:06 min. reveals all four revelers sharing this surreally Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 2021.23.2. 41 abstract, silvery setting. The new couple is noticeably looser with their own bodies and more confident with each other; when the chorus returns and all leap into the interlocking choreography, their gestures are bigger and more playful. The scene suddenly feels like a party and, as often happens, we see shier attendees watching from the sidelines. As we meet this third duo, who look noticeably similar to the previous couples, they are tentatively finding the rhythm. When the mustached figure’s shoulders get too wild, their companion’s attitude changes from reluctant participation to wide-eyed surprise as the music takes possession of both their bodies. Without further hesitation, they jump Design, the video “explores self-transformation Still from Martine Gutierrez, Clubbing, 2012 (Cat. 17). into the mix, six dancers now crisscrossing and the intersection of fantasy and reality,” and boogeying down in a pattern that as well as the cultural coding and performance 26 connects their movements but leaves plenty of gender binaries. (The artist’s own of room for individual expression. As the song transition adds yet another layer of fluidity reaches its apex, figures and faces are layered to the narrative, signing past works using the until they fill the screen with fierce, fabulous forename Martín, as written in the video, later dancers staring down the viewer. The video’s to be known as Martine after moving to New title appears again along with the credit, York City.) To say the film is “by” Gutierrez is “a film by Martín Gutierrez.” an understatement. The artist is total auteur, filling every role in front of and behind the Clubbing stands as an ode to the creativity camera. Gutierrez performs all six roles, made and liberation of dance floors and their into distinct characters thanks to hair, makeup, importance as places for self-discovery, and costume design by Gutierrez. The original interpersonal harmony, and nonconformist score is written by the artist, composed after community building. Created in Gutierrez’s watching the choreography she created and final semester at Rhode Island School of executed multiple times and shot from many 42 angles in front of a green screen alone in her from physical references. The textured gray Still from Martine Gutierrez, Clubbing, studio. Splicing, compositing, and cleaning up background erases any architectural or 2012 (Cat. 17). these layers of performance, Gutierrez’s skillful geographic markers. The glowing white floor editing and postproduction effectively deliver stretches infinitely, and all edges and outlines on her vision, transporting viewers to another are intentionally fuzzy, due to gauze fabric dimension where all these unique personas are covering the lens. As if recalled through layers believably, simultaneously moving together. of time and smoke, this hazy undefinable locale explicitly evokes the idea of dance Notably, the space where this is possible floors, and queer nightclubs in particular, is depicted as a realm apart, untethered 43 as utopian zones carved out from a rigid and also featured stars in close-up, staring divisive outside world. Utopia, derived from right out at the viewer and mugging for the Greek words for “no place,” always exists the camera. in this tension—defined as literally impossible Exaggerated lashes, a signature flair for to achieve, it is constantly being modeled mod makeup, are here taken to extremes in big and small ways by alternative with fully painted-on eyes that amplify facial communities. Clubbing powerfully channels expressivity and the overall performativity feelings that emanate from discotheques of these roles. This era is widely associated around the world — the joy of digging with increasing freedom to explore sexuality into a groove, discovering how one’s body and assert individuality, yet how this was wants to move, on its own and in relation promoted in popular culture often reinforced to others, and finding individual and expectations of a fixed gender divide collective connectivity through the music— and cisgender heterosexual matchmaking.27 and suggests their revolutionary potential. Revisiting this time with a more fluid mindset, Fig. 5. Still of Bob Fosse’s “Rich Conversely, the time period referenced in Gutierrez celebrates identity exploration Man’s Frug,” featured in the Gutierrez’s art direction is clear and consistent. unbound by these limits. movie Sweet Charity (1969). The mod-influenced minidresses, beehive- topped long tresses, and stylish suits and pompadours are classic mid-sixties looks, pointedly mixed with Latinx details, like a bolero-cut jacket and finely stitched brocade, that resist the whitewashing of this period in fashion history. The vamping music, inspired by R&B dance-floor stalwarts like “September” (1978) by Earth, Wind & Fire, offers an easy, smooth beat that anyone can sway to. The staging draws from formalized sixties dance number cutaways, like those in choreographer-director Bob Fosse’s movie musicals (fig. 5), and television revues like Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (1968–73), which 44 Casting herself into roles that read as three men and three women paired up as heterosexual couples, Gutierrez points to the surface understanding of identity implied by such simplistic categories. Through the complexities of drag, what at first seems a reaffirmation of conservative gender lines and pairings becomes a kaleidoscope of queer possibility. This is something Gutierrez explores across her creative practice, in videos, photographs, performances, installations, and self-released albums and magazines that knowingly play on stereotypes and their repeated commodification (fig. 6). As she writes, “I was driven to question how identity is formed, expressed, valued, and weighed as a woman, as a transwoman, as a Latinx woman, as a woman of indigenous descent, as a femme artist and maker. It is nearly impossible to arrive at any finite answers, but for me, this process of exploration is exquisitely life-affirming.”28 Fig. 6. Cover of Indigenous Woman (2018), an artist magazine Martine Gutierrez created in 2014 to explore the commodification of identity. 45 Arthur Jafa Speaking into a news microphone, American hero Charles Ramsey shares his perspective after saving three kidnapped women. “I knew born 1960, Tupelo, Mississippi something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a Black man’s arms,” he recalls, before repeating with eyebrows raised “How can we interrogate the medium [of film] to and a knowing smirk, “Something is wrong here.” This statement hangs in the air as find a way Black movement in itself could carry, hummed singing begins and the screen cuts for example, the weight of sheer tonality in to basketball fans swag-surfing at Howard Black song? And I’m not talking about the lyrics University, Jafa’s alma mater, and then to a woman in her bathrobe being escorted that Aretha Franklin sang. I’m talking about along a hallway. Those with a visual archive of how she sang them…. How can we analyze the African American history in their head may tone, not the sequence of notes that Coltrane hit, recognize Black Panther leader Fred Hampton’s wife the morning after he was assassinated. but the tone itself, and synchronize Black visual Her dignified devastation is followed by movement with that?…I’m developing an idea black-and-white footage of young civil rights activists, arms linked, stepping in sync, full that I call Black Visual Intonation.” 29 of joy as they set about changing the world. —Arthur Jafa Matching their faith, Kanye West’s voice on the soundtrack sings the chorus of the accompanying song for the first time: “We on an Ultralight Beam…This is a God Dream… Previous page: Cat. 18. Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, This is Everything.” By the time the chorus The Message is Death, 2016, single-channel digital video concludes, hope has been replaced by horror, (high-definition, color, sound); 7:25 min. Joint museum as grainy cell-phone footage shows unarmed purchase with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, civilian Walter Scott being shot in the back by Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Nion T. a police officer. McEvoy, Chair of SAAM Commission (2016–2018), and McEvoy ’s fellow Commissioners in his honor; additional funding provided by Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 2020.001; 2020.3. 47 So unfolds the first thirty seconds of Arthur range, like its temporal sourcing, whiplashes Stills from Arthur Jafa, Love is the Jafa’s Love is the Message, The Message is viewers between moments of celebration and Message, The Message is Death, 2016 Death (LMMD; 2016; cat. 18), a seven-and- mourning, humor and crisis, profound historical (Cat. 18) showing historical footage that a-half-minute tour de force hailed as one of significance and everyday intimacy. Yet, it is oscillates between hope and horror of America’s civil rights struggle in the the most important artworks of the twenty-first clear that the artwork’s power is found not 1960s. From left: Getty-watermarked century. The ultimate realization of the artist’s only in this expansive, incisive content but, like footage of a furniture store fire during stated goal of creating a “Black cinema with Aretha Franklin’s singing, in how Jafa makes the Chicago riots, sparked by the the power, beauty, and alienation of Black these notes vibrate. assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; music,” LMMD majestically brings together Martin Luther King Jr. in a motorcade; Deploying a technique Jafa termed “Black Jafa’s filmic strategies and cherished subjects and Black demonstrators sitting at Visual Intonation,” the musically derived so the video simultaneously represents and a counter as a white mob attempts to approach to filmmaking that he proposed drag them from their seats. resonates with the aesthetic and spiritual over twenty years ago, Jafa treats time dimensions of Black life in America.30 Jafa as an unstable and malleable element. composed this opus from clips across a century Through editing that favors “affective of moving images, found on the internet and proximity,” he draws out resonant harmonies encompassing excerpts from silent films, between seemingly unrelated selections.31 internet memes, documentary footage with By manipulating the playback rate in Getty Image watermarks, and Hollywood certain clips, Jafa controls the flow of blockbusters, as well as his own home movements within the frame, more forcefully movies and past projects as a director and aligning them with the soundtrack while cinematographer. The selection’s emotional 48 extending Black rhythmic virtuosity into the visual realm. While often subtle, we can see this technique in action when, about a minute into the film, a young boy (Jafa’s son Ayler) leaps along a sidewalk, floating in slow motion toward an open door. As his trajectory arcs down, he resumes normal speed to land in sync with a crunchy warped downbeat. Four minutes later, a crowd of protesters digitally morphs between stilled poses, the swelling and pulsing of their shifts matched to Chance the Rapper’s syncopated lyrics. Jafa immediately recognized the resonance between his visuals and the souring music and searing commentary of West’s “Ultralight Top: Still from Arthur Jafa, Love is the Beam” (2016), itself a compendium of Message, The Message is Death, 2016 Black musical innovation and talent.32 (Cat. 18) showing Jafa’s son Ayler A contemporary gospel and hip-hop anthem, midair. the song features rapped verses by West and Chance, R&B vocals from The-Dream and Kelly Price, and a chorus powered by gospel singer Kirk Franklin and his ten-piece choir. Though not originally edited to match, after Jafa set this newly released song to Still from Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016 the video-in-progress, he found it took only (Cat. 18) featuring gospel legend Lateria tweaking for them to amplify each other. Wooten leading chorus and congregants. 49 sparking a summer of international uprisings Still from Arthur Jafa, Love is the for racial justice. With the artist’s full support, Message, The Message is Death, 2016 the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and (Cat. 18), one of several included Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden scenes shot by Jafa at his daughter’s wedding. co-organized a global forty-eight-hour live, looping stream of LMMD that June, the first time the full work was made available online. In addition to ensuring the video could be part of urgent conversations in the broader world, the screening became a fulcrum for Crucially, at what he calls “landmark moments,” discussions with SAAM’s audiences and Jafa cuts away from West’s song altogether communities in Washington, D.C. to allow original synced audio to come through.33 In one such moment, a mother Both LMMD and the massive photographic begs cops not to “terrorize my children”; panels of APEX GRID (cat. 19) stem from Jafa’s in another, actress Amandla Stenberg asks, lifelong practice of compiling visual material “What would America be like if we loved Black he deems striking. As a child in Mississippi, people as much as we love Black culture?” the future filmmaker would arrange clippings While that vision remains elusive, LMMD into notebooks and binders, later graduating demonstrates exactly what an artwork based to digital images in desktop folders. APEX in that love looks, sounds, and feels like. GRID displays the full content of one of these folders. Within their glossy surfaces, hundreds Debuting on the eve of the 2016 presidential of images are scaled to fit, like thumbnails, election, LMMD was celebrated for the timely into neat rows that stretch across an imposing mirror it held to the role of systemic wall. Juxtaposed with strong representation racism in shaping the United States. Yet, of Black musicians, album covers, and other as Jafa has noted, the work emphasizes cultural touchstones, one finds cartoon the continuity of this reality and is tragically, characters, African-inspired fashion, punk repeatedly proven relevant. One such instance posturing, and a vast array of science fiction came in May 2020, when the police murder of and horror references—instances of what Jafa George Floyd circulated via nine excruciating sees as popular culture mining and managing minutes caught on a cell-phone video, 50 ideas and fears around Blackness. Jafa first shared this sequence of images and set them to techno music in his propulsive 2013 video, APEX. By reimagining and deconstructing them into a static, wall-based work, Jafa gives viewers an opportunity to slow down and consume the images at their own pace, to linger on singular components or draw their own subjective connections. And because the scale makes it impossible to take in the full collage and image details at once, Jafa encourages audiences to move backward and forward, left and right, creating their own affective rhythm for setting these visuals into motion. Cat. 19. Arthur Jafa, APEX GRID (installation view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York, and detail), 2018, Epson fine print face-mounted Diasec acrylic on aluminum panel, 105 1/2 x 352 1/2 x 2 1/4 in., Private collection. 51 Christine Sun Kim A long bench stretches across the gallery, a set of headphones resting atop each of its seven colorful cushions. Depending on where a born 1980, Orange County, California visitor enters One Week of Lullabies for Roux (2018; cat. 20), the earpieces might be playing field recordings of a frog-filled bog or a man “When I started to consider sound as art, imitating ocean sounds with his voice. The length might be less than thirty seconds or vibration was the first thing that came to mind. over eleven minutes. In all cases, though, After a while, I realized it wasn’t enough and the compositions conform to a score by I needed to go beyond its materiality. I began artist Christine Sun Kim and shared with seven collaborators. As a Deaf parent of a shifting towards other aspects: idea, musicality, hearing child, Kim immediately found herself social currency, notation, phenomena.” 34 questioning what others might take for granted: What is a lullaby? What is a healthy —Christine Sun Kim “sound diet” for an infant? Who decides? Intending “to be mindful of what my baby [Roux] grows up listening to,” Kim did not feel comfortable sharing the pre-recorded songs on a sleep monitor, and instead, “invited my parent friends to make lullabies for Roux based on [my] conceptual score.”35 The written instructions specified no lyrics or speech, an emphasis on low frequencies, and welcomed tracks of any length that could be played on repeat, at low or medium Previous page: Cat. 20. Christine Sun Kim, volume, between seven and eight in the One Week of Lullabies for Roux, 2018. Seven evening, to encourage sleep. Accessible audio tracks, installation with bench, cushions by moving along seating designed by the and headphones, Smithsonian American Art artist to evoke a weekly pillbox, these songs Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita are now offered to gallerygoers as daily L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2020.79.1. 53 supplements for an otherwise frenetic and unregulated sound diet. In this work, as in so many across her multimedia practice, Kim turns the notion that Deaf people are excluded from the world of sound on its head. Her work reveals, instead, the critical awareness, social sensitivity, and political insights that comes from navigating that world without audio as the primary guide. For example, if one sets aside the melody and focuses on the lyrics of many traditional lullabies, like “Rock-a-bye Baby,” they are surprisingly violent and not soothing at all, promising treacherous treetop falls for baby and all. Kim’s audiences are often confronted with how the status quo of a hearing-dominated society keeps us all from thinking more deeply about how and what we communicate. Cat. 21. Christine Sun Kim, Close Readings, The challenging yet incredibly creative terrain 2015, four-channel video (color, silent); 25:53 min., in collaboration with Jeffrey of translating between different expressive Mansfield, Ariel Baker-Gibbs, Alison systems, sensory registers, and unique O’Daniel, Lauren Ridloff. Smithsonian perspectives is at the heart of Kim’s video American Art Museum, Museum purchase artwork Close Readings (2015; cat. 21). When through the Luisita L. and Franz H. one first approaches this silent piece, which Denghausen Endowment, 2020.79.2. plays on four monitors hung in a line on the wall, it seems all screens are playing the same material. As edited together by Kim, the twenty-six-minute sequence draws together five feature films that foreground voice, Detail, Christine Sun Kim, One Week of voicelessness, and agency in their plot. Despite Lullabies for Roux, 2018 (Cat. 20). 54 the top two-thirds of the images being blurred, many audiences will recognize scenes with the independently animate hand known as Thing from 1991’s The Addams Family; Whoopi Goldberg translating as a psychic-medium for Patrick Swayze in Ghost (1990); the speechless flirtations of Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989); and the deadly dictation of HAL, the mission- control computer, in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Perhaps less familiar is an intense family confrontation from the Greek art-house film Dogtooth (2009), which appears after The Addams Family. As the four channels play these clips in sync, the difference between them becomes apparent in the contrasting captions seen along the styles and perspectives change the impact Christine Sun Kim, Close Readings, 2015 (Cat. 21). bottom of each screen. Again, working of matching scenes. In this way, Close collaboratively, Kim asked four fellow d/Deaf/ Readings highlights the highly subjective and hard-of-hearing creatives—architect and inconsistent practice of film captioning, the designer Jeffrey Mansfield, writer and editor significant responsibility captioners have Ariel Baker-Gibbs, artist and filmmaker Alison for shaping experience, and the generally O’Daniel, and actor and Marvel superhero untapped possibility for captions to creatively Lauren Ridloff—to respond to her edit by support the filmic vision. For some movies, this providing their own linguistic interpretations might mean adding details about era, style, of the given visuals and imagined audio. instrumentation, and tempo to the barely These individualized captions appear in bold, useful note that “[music]” is playing, while thick font above the closed captions that film others might invite the poetic or humorous studios created for each release. Viewers are descriptions offered here, such as “[single invited to contrast the robust and evocative breathy violin],” “[the sounds of internal texts of Kim’s collaborators with the paltry struggle becoming external],” or “[music information shared by standard captions, as formulated to biologically stimulate our mirror 36 well as to observe how the writers’ distinct neurons to trigger uncontrollable weeping].” 55 Stills from Christine Sun Kim, Close Readings, 2015, with captions by Alison O’Daniel (left) and Jeffrey Mansfield (right) (Cat. 21). Kim started her graduate studies as a painter at New York’s School of Visual Arts in 2006, but it was not until she redefined her creative realm and pursued a second master’s of fine arts in sound and music from Bard College that she found her artistic voice.37 She has since embraced her position as a sound artist who approaches this field conceptually, psychologically, and socially, rather than as a singular medium. Using everything from charcoal to Velcro, she mines parallels between musical notation and glossing, a notation system for sign language; between the way a score directs instrumentalists and she conducts American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters; and between the expressive registers of certain musical forms, like opera and anthems, and the embodied visual Fig. 7. Christine Sun Kim, bottom, language of ASL. and pop singer Demi Lovato, top, performing at the Super Bowl. Photo by Scott McIntyre. 56 These lines of inquiry, along with Kim’s political justice into the frame, while calling out how activism, come together in the two score- the song itself represents the values of an based drawings (cats. 22, 23) that she made enslaver, the lyricist Francis Scott Key.39 after performing as the ASL interpreter for the Knowing that—whether belted out or signed— national anthem and “America the Beautiful” the songs we build community around at the Super Bowl in 2020 (fig. 7).38 The matter, Kim’s artist note for this piece (on combination of graphic lines with punctuating the following page) encourages the adoption notes and parsed, reordered, and spatialized of a new anthem. lyrics show how she had carefully prepared her translation from spoken English to ASL in a way that matched the singer’s rhythmic and dynamic range with her own. Her decisions about what to emphasize and how to lay out the pages comes out of her continued reflection on this moment and material, and conveys a perspective on these patriotic songs that is both hopeful and critical. In America the Beautiful (2020) the words “grow,” “grace,” “group,” and “shine” make strong impressions, while in The Star-Spangled Banner (Third Verse) (2020), Kim places “hireling,” “slave,” “gloom,” and “grave” under the four striped long notes that evoke the flag Cat. 22. Christine Sun Kim, The Star- Cat. 23. Christine Sun Kim, America the Spangled Banner (Third Verse), 2020, Beautiful, 2020, charcoal on paper, and centers “war” and “bomb,” underscoring charcoal on paper, 58 1/4 x 58 1/4 in. 58 1/4 x 58 1/4 in. Smithsonian American America’s long history of racism and violence, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Art Museum, Museum purchase and present at its founding and embedded in Museum purchase and purchase through purchase through the Asian Pacific American national symbols and rituals still active today. the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, Initiatives Pool, administered Football player and activist Colin Kaepernick’s administered by the Smithsonian Asian by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American decision to take a knee, rather than stand, Pacific American Center and through the Center and through the Julia D. Strong during the national anthem in 2016 brought Julia D. Strong Endowment, 2021.31.1. Endowment, 2021.31.2. attention to the United States’ unfulfilled promise of racial equality; Kim brings disability 57 Artist Statement July 2020 September 2020 This is a notation drawing of the American Sign The full song of “The Star-Spangled Banner” consists is perhaps his reaction to them as a slave owner, Language (ASL) translation of “The Star-Spangled of four stanzas; only the first one is used for the cursing both to the grave. I added this focus Banner,” the national anthem of the United States, national anthem. The following is the third stanza: on the third verse in response to racial injustices which I signed during Super Bowl LIV in February that have been inflicted for centuries, and I support 2020 in front of millions of viewers. Accepting the And where is that band who so the growing call to replace “The Star-Spangled invitation to give such a performance was not an vauntingly swore, Banner” with “Lift Every Voice and Sing” of easy decision; however, it was vital for creating That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion 1899 by J. Rosamond Johnson and James visibility for the Deaf and disabled communities in A home and a Country should leave us no more? Weldon Johnson, which is considered the Black America. While I initially dissected and rearranged Their blood has wash’d out their foul national anthem. the anthem in a way that suits ASL and my vantage footstep’s pollution. point as a disabled performer, I have since learned No refuge could save the hireling and slave — Christine Sun Kim that Francis Scott Key, the anthem’s lyricist, actively From the terror of flight or the gloom of defended the rights of slave owners, owned slaves the grave, himself, and cultivated an openly anti-Black and And the star-spangled banner in triumph anti-Abolition attitude. With this information in doth wave mind, I wish for the work’s potential visibility to O’er the land of the free and the home of now be extended by highlighting the fact that Black the brave. disabled people are disproportionately targeted by the police: Half of people killed by police have Upon reading all four stanzas, I found them to be a disability (David M. Perry and Lawrence Carter- heavily tainted with racism and mockery. I selected Long, 2016) and more than half of Black people three phrases (above in bold) and placed them with disabilities will have been arrested at least under the beams of the stripe notes, as if they’re once by the time they reach their late 20s (Erin part of the flag. Analyzing the text, a number of J. McCauley, 2017). Systemic racism permeates experts have suggested that “Where is that band” American culture so deeply that it becomes a norm refers to the Colonial Marines, a group of enslaved and it goes unchallenged, and often unnoticed — Black Americans that fought for Britain in order to much like the country’s anthem. We must all support earn freedom. “The hireling and slave” is Francis the movement by practicing both anti-racism and Scott Key’s way of mocking both British soldiers anti-ableism. Black Disabled Lives Matter. and the Colonial Marines. “The gloom of the grave” 58 Simone Leigh Lights come up on a raked mezzanine of an empty old theater. Echoing footfalls precede the appearance of a woman walking down the born 1968, Chicago, Illinois aisle and into the frame. The camera comes closer to this Black figure in a dark, dignified Liz Magic Laser sleeveless dress, as she bows her head and draws a deep breath. When the performer, renowned mezzo-soprano and artist Alicia born 1981, New York City Hall Moran, shatters the silence with a piercing cry of “Oh my God!,” the sounds and feel is of “We were interested in how the different a polished professional launching into an aria at an audition. The piece quickly reveals itself representations of the female hysteric were for as something even more complex: a musical the most part overwrought and grotesque…It is interpretation of deep, profound emotional stress; an operatic breakdown layered with too much for the viewer to take in — the viewer references that stretch from early Christian is fascinated but it eventually makes us shrink hymns to reality TV. Moran’s vocalization away. We worked with those cringe-worthy ranges from guttural depths to melodious peaks, as her face and body jerk between expressions, but Alicia [Hall Moran] performed wildly divergent expressive states. She shifts them with such virtuosity. She can make us hear without warning from smoothly held notes those unpalatable utterances and receive those and refined posture to heartbreaking cracks, contorted limbs, and off-kilter whispers, expressions because of her virtuosic delivery.” 40 careening between signs of virtuosic control —Liz Magic Laser with Simone Leigh and emotional instability. Throughout, Moran remains alone. Her experience goes without an audience save the video viewer, whom she Previous page: Cat. 24. Still from Simone Leigh confronts with long, sustained eye contact and and Liz Magic Laser, Breakdown, 2011, single - a raised finger pointed directly at those she channel digital video (color, sound); 9:00 min. knows are out there, witnessing her pain. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Samuel and Blanche Koffler Acquisition Fund, 2019.33.2. 60 Breakdown (2011; cat. 24) builds on a history into the final recording, Laser and Leigh looked Stills from Simone Leigh and Liz Magic of women’s psychological breakdowns in to Moran’s artistic range and improvisational Laser, Breakdown, 2011 (Cat. 24). stage and screen portrayals, and in “real dexterity to transmute the mundane repetitive life.” The script, assembled by Laser and phrases and “unpalatable” shrill cries of Leigh, includes sections from Amiri Baraka’s hysteria into the musical layers that would 1964 play Dutchman, the long-running A&E imbue them with gravitas, heroism, and history. reality TV series Intervention (2005–22), and “The music [from seeing Alicia’s shows] was the the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, turning point in Breakdown, because we found Mary Hartman (1976–77), in which characters very specific references for the singing style,” narrate their thoughts during mental crisis. Laser noted in a later interview, and Leigh Laser and Leigh’s collaboration began with emphasized, “I was interested in representing shared interest in earlier citations of female as many African American song styles as hysteria, including the infamous photographs possible.”41 Within the overarching operatic of mentally distressed patients of nineteenth- frame, touches of the blues, show tunes, and century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot spirituals come through, with one moment (fig. 8), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 intentionally mimicking the nineteenth-century feminist short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” English hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” On another cue, Moran’s loss of words morphs These appropriated texts and poses become into jazz scatting reminiscent of Betty Carter. the libretto and choreography for Moran’s tour- de-force performance. In developing the script 61 Borrowing the declaration of a stressed housewife, Moran sends her voice soaring like an “Amen” to testify, “I’ve been performing myyyy whoooole liiiii-iiife!” This rings true as a meta-commentary connecting her individual insight with societal expectations for women and Black people writ large. Deploying operatic style to align this Black woman’s emotive release with a traditionally elitist under surveillance.”42 With today’s heightened Fig. 8. Jean-Martin Charcot’s late European high-art form, the video invites self-surveillance and performed realities for nineteenth-century photographic empathy but also demands analysis — What the camera, this pressure has only increased. studies of hysteria, taken at the kinds of overwrought emotional displays are Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where While the research-based scripting of Charcot was a medical teacher valued, and which are pathologized? Whose Breakdown is a mainstay of Laser’s ongoing and clinician. personal dramas are legitimized and whose practice, which regularly assembles public are dismissed? What extra limitations are texts and restages them in revealing ways, placed on women of color and their agency Leigh is best known for ceramic and bronze to express themselves? When are they sculptures that, like this video, center recognized as being in distress and how Black female subjectivity in ways that are they treated? Further, her statement simultaneously signal and protect private points to the mediated self-consciousness depths and complexities.43 Shown alongside of all contemporary individuals, carefully Breakdown, Leigh’s Cupboard VIII (2018; maintaining appearances in the face of daily cat. 25) presents us with a striking female inequities, stressors, and pocket-sized cameras figure, just over ten feet tall. Her multilayered at every turn. As cultural critic Claire Barliant dried raffia leaf skirt is monumentally scaled, wrote about TV show character Mary Hartman raising her torso far above audiences below. in an essay that the two artists shared as This material and grand silhouette appear part of their research, “the 1970s nervous regularly in Leigh’s sculptures, simultaneously breakdown seems to have mostly sprung referencing racist “mammy” tropes in U.S. visual from…an awareness of self as Audience, and culture, and innovative architectural structures of self as being under scrutiny, as a subject 62 from West Africa. The stoneware upper body, however, is perfectly life-sized and lifelike with warm-brown arms elegantly outstretched, echoing the stance of a vocalist poised to begin an operatic performance. Balanced atop the neck, where one might expect a human head, Leigh has molded a bulbous jug, its open mouth tipped slightly forward. One of Leigh’s collaborators, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, wrote how this figure reminded her of a woman whose “songs came out of her like waves, like water spilling over a rim.”44 And yet, there is a silence here too—without a mouth, without a face, Leigh’s monument is anonymous and expansive, encompassing many histories and giving away no identities, guarding inner worlds from public spectacle even as she gestures outwards and demands attention. Cat. 25. Simone Leigh, Cupboard VIII, 2018, stoneware, steel, raffia, Albany slip, overall: 125 x 120 x 120 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Bridgitt and Bruce Evans. 63 Cauleen Smith Listening to the music and writing of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda is at the core of filmmaker Cauleen Smith’s recent work. born 1967, Riverside, California Fascinated by the sense of freedom and the collapsing of time found in Coltrane’s musical oeuvre, Smith started working on projects “I thought, if you can just listen to the way this that open from Coltrane to an expansive web of Black feminist brilliance and utopian woman [Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda] experimentation. In two related films, Sojourner plays keyboard and literally takes us on this (2018; cat. 26) and Pilgrim (2017; cat. 27), Smith insane trip…. I can actually use her music to talk draws evocative parallels between Coltrane’s spiritual journey, begun in the 1960s, and about these different speculations. If I’m thinking that of Rebecca Cox Jackson, a free Black about her music as scores, because her songs Shaker Eldress in the nineteenth century. Smith are a kind of travel outwards and inward, and emphasizes their relevance for the present, encouraging all to listen carefully for their I make images to speak to that, then I might be wisdom reaching through the ages. doing something.” 45 Pilgrim opens with a black screen, the sound —Cauleen Smith of applause, and Coltrane’s voice from a 1978 performance recording. She dedicates the next piece to her late husband, jazz icon John Coltrane, and begins a nonstop flow of melodic progressions up and down the keyboard as contemporary footage of the Vedantic Center, a spiritual retreat or ashram she founded in the mountains outside of Los Angeles, appears. The camera lingers over the surfaces of her Previous page: Cat. 26. Still from Cauleen Smith, Sojourner, 2018, single-channel digital plexiglass-encased organ and then moves video (color, sound); 22:41 min. Smithsonian outward to show its pride of place at the front American Art Museum, Museum purchase of the congregation room, preserving and made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund, entombing her presence where she once led 2020.54.1. 65 devotees in life and in song. Pulling further out, dappled sunlight plays over the ashram buildings, trees, and disciples, captured on color-saturated celluloid, while Coltrane’s solo piano continues to rumble and swell.46 After a brief interlude visiting Watts Towers, an art structure and community hub in southern Los Angeles, these California locations are replaced by the lush greenery and older structures of northeastern farmland. The camera plunges past a white picket fence to commune with flowers and headstones while Coltrane’s playing dives to a deeper register and pounds out closing chords. In the final shot, the historic marker for this Shaker cemetery is overtaken by washes of red and gold as the soundtrack returns to applause. Stills from Cauleen Smith, Pilgrim, A filmmaker noted for early works that 2017 (Cat. 27), showing Watts Towers aligned with Afrofuturist, speculative modes and Shaker cemetery. of storytelling, Smith has also always been driven by histories that resonate across time. Long obsessed with Shaker gift drawings, manifested in the mid-1800s by young women Cat. 27. Stills from Cauleen Smith, adherents during ecstatic visions, Smith was Pilgrim, 2017, single-channel digital immediately struck by similarities found there video (color, sound); 7:41 min. and in Coltrane’s mystical writings.47 Though Smithsonian American Art Museum, created within a community that banned Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund, 2020.54.2. all music but worshipful a cappella singing, Shaker drawings often featured small structures labeled “Heavenly Musical 66 Stills from Cauleen Smith, Pilgrim, 2017 (Cat. 27), showing Coltrane’s Vedic ashram, California, with the Watervliet Shaker community, New York. Instruments”; almost a hundred years later, Arkestra’s respective residences; and Jackson’s Coltrane describes encountering “celestial Urban Shaker Community, all in Philadelphia, instruments” in the astral plane. Following as well as a community art center in Chicago, this connective thread, Smith found out about a city where we also see present-day Rebecca Cox Jackson, whose precise accounts organizers calling on crowds to imagine of floating above Earth’s atmosphere are “Freedom City.” Coltrane’s ashram, the Shaker shockingly resonant with Coltrane’s and with cemetery, and Watts Towers reappear, Still from Cauleen Smith, Sojourner, 2018 images taken from space a century later. amid other vistas that highlight California’s (Cat. 26) of organizers of R3 (Resist. From here, Smith notes, “I started thinking majestic landscape. Reimagine. Rebuild), a Chicago-based about women in general turning to visions and The soundtrack opens and closes with songs activist coalition. projections outside of ourselves just to live, just from Coltrane’s album Eternity (1975), where to be.”48 a blend of cosmic jazz, Indian devotional Tracing these other ways to live and be, chanting, and church music convey her spiritual Sojourner weaves together examples of and sonic evolution. In between, the airwaves “radically generous community and intentional are filled with voices alternately offering world building” that exist across time and Jackson’s and Coltrane’s detailed mystical space and can be built on in the here and visions in the first person, and the Combahee now.49 These include the Fletcher Street River Collective’s 1977 political manifesto on Stables, a century-old anchor for urban Black the need for Black feminism. On-screen, we cowboy culture; John Coltrane and Sun Ra see a crew of futuristically dressed, multiracial 67 young women receive these broadcasts of space with rotating disco balls and iridescent Above: Stills from Cauleen Smith, timeless wisdom through old-fashioned wallpaper that bounce light around the room, Sojourner, 2018 (Cat. 26), with scenes radios, while marching and posing with Day- enveloping viewers in an intentional listening of (from left) the Fletcher Steet Stables, Glo orange banners. In the film’s final and environment. Smith’s multimedia installations the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, and Antelope Valley California longest passage, they listen while exploring have led to stand-alone sculptures, also often Poppy Reserve. artist Noah Purifoy’s otherworldly Outdoor inspired by musical references, including Desert Art Museum, before processing through several neon pieces that take song lyrics the desert to Coltrane’s swelling, swinging as points of departure. In Light up My Life organ. In a final pose, meant to echo a 1966 (For Sandra Bland) (2019; cat. 28), neon photo by Bill Ray featuring stylish Black men letters flash between reading, “I will light at Watts Towers (fig. 9), Smith’s protagonists up your life,” a play on the title refrain from present her vision: a women-led future that is a saccharine 1970s ballad, and “I will light tuned into and inspired by the transtemporal, you up,” the threat issued to Sandra Bland, intersectional network of utopian realities her a Black woman on her way to start film has just traced. a university job, before a Texas trooper pulled her from her car during a routine traffic After premiering a feature film right out of stop in 2015. Bland was found hanging in her master’s at UCLA in 1998, Smith found a jail cell days later; the death was ruled increasing support for her experimental and suicide by authorities. The words in Sunshine multilayered approach in the art world, where (for Brayla, Merci, Shakiie, Draya, Tatiana, the worlds she was envisioning could extend and Bree, Riah, Dominique, ...) (2020; cat. 29), beyond the screen. Sojourner is projected in a 68 light from the bottom to the top, building the choral repetitions of “my life” that kick off Roy Ayer’s summer classic, “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” (1976). Smith’s title offers a darker kind of repetition, recounting the names of eight trans women all killed within weeks of each other in 2020. These women dared to live in the light as their true selves. Their names are now shouted at protests affirming that their lives matter even if their deaths go unsolved. Smith uses these songs’ familiarity as a hook for considering complicity —when do you notice the violence, and when do you just sing along? Whether in 16mm films, immersive media experiences, or singular sculptures, Smith repeatedly turns to music and musicians to find points of connection Cat. 26. Still from Cauleen Smith, and constellations of brilliance that she can Sojourner, 2018, of women posing in follow and amplify. Noah Purifoy’s Outdoor Desert Art Museum. Fig. 9. Bill Ray, Young men hang out near Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, 1966. 69 Cat. 28. Cauleen Smith, Light up My Life (For Sandra Bland), Cat. 29. Cauleen Smith, Sunshine (for Brayla, Merci, 2019, neon, Plexiglas, faceted hematite, and aluminum chain, Shakiie, Draya, Tatiana, and Bree, Riah, Dominique…), overall: 106 3/4 x 68 x 5 in. Blanton Museum of Art, The 2020, neon, MDF, paint, gold-pleated chain link, 60 x 45 University of Texas at Austin, Commissioned and produced by in. Courtesy of the artist and Morán Morán, Los Angeles. Artpace San Antonio. Purchase through the generosity of an anonymous donor, 2020.33. Edition loaned to the exhibition by the New Britain Museum of American Art (see “Catalogue of Works,” p. 110). 70 Postscript as Prelude: HISTORIES OF MUSICAL THINKING IN SAAM’S TIME-BASED MEDIA ART COLLECTION The exhibition Musical Thinking: New Video technological experimentation as they evolved Previous page and below, Fig. 10. Stills Art and Sonic Strategies, as its title suggests, over the twentieth century. Across the case from Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, is focused on recent artworks that merge studies, one may note a shift as artists Video Synthesizer and “V Cello” music and video. In fact, all the pieces in the affiliate their work with different notions and Collectibles, 1965–71, single-channel video (color, sound); 23:25 min. show are twenty-first-century creations. Yet, qualities of music: first with classical music, Electronic Arts Intermix, NY. the contemporary artists featured in this idealized as a pure aesthetic experience; exhibition are continuing a long history of and then avant-garde experimental music, visual artists looking to music as a sister art challenging classical music’s formalities but form, especially after electricity and other still catering to elite tastes; and, more recently, technological innovations allowed their work with popular music, whose familiar references to spring into motion in the nineteenth century. allow social critique and commentary to This interrelationship is known to scholars, resonate broadly. In turning to musical forms but not often shared widely or traced from its that were (at least initially) anti-authority, historic roots to current trends. As a prelude from rock to punk to hip-hop, artists invoke to the present exhibition, then, this section countercultural movements not often explicitly aims to introduce wider audiences to the role referenced in museum art. Alongside this, we of “musical thinking” in the development of can observe an increasing interest in sound time-based media art in the United States, as and music as creating different kinds of well as the strength of the media art collection audience experiences, emphasizing shared, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum communal, or interactive reception by the (SAAM), through case studies that illustrate 1960s, changing both expectations of how to key moments in this journey. engage with work in an art gallery and also where art might be encountered well beyond Tracing this chronological arc through SAAM’s the gallery. collection also illuminates the intersections of American art, popular culture, and 72 This topical tour also narrates a history of Like those earlier devices, which could bring artists exploring new technologies as they full symphonies into an average living room, become available for creative tinkering. We this modestly scaled instrument promised see artists following emergent possibilities cutting-edge electrified abstract art—the as electrical power for light bulbs and motors art of light, or “lumia” as Wilfred called it— becomes common; as celluloid film, videotape, to home viewers. Settling in for the evening, closed-circuit cameras and then digital video the owner could select from several “opuses” can capture the world in motion; and as or hand-painted color records that fit onto analyzers, synthesizers, and computers are a rotating player hidden below the projection able to modulate, morph, recombine, and screen. When set into motion, the color record, recode that reality. Perhaps it is not surprising combined with mechanisms that moved that the creatives who defy art categories light bulbs and reflective shapes inside the are also eager adopters of new tools. Or cabinet, would bounce an array of changing perhaps as changing technologies unlocked luminescent forms and fluidly shifting hues more ways of shaping time and experience, onto the translucent surface above. The music remained a useful art form to keep in operator could also use a remote control mind. Either way, musical thinking turns out to adjust “tempo of movement, color intensity Fig. 11. Thomas Wilfred, Unit #86, to be an effective lens through which to track and levels of brightness,” making the Clavilux from the Clavilux Junior (First Home innovations in time-based media art. Junior an early example of interactive media Clavilux Model) series, 1930, metal, glass, electrical and lighting elements, art, as well.51 and an illustration-board screen in Thomas Wilfred’s Wilfred was originally from Denmark, where a wood cabinet. Promised gift to the he was known as “Wilfred the Lute Player” Smithsonian American Art Museum from LUMIA AND LIGHT CONCERTS Carol and Eugene Epstein Collection. for his musical livelihood. He moved to New To contemporary eyes, Unit #86, from the 1930 York in 1916, seeking like-minded creatives. series Clavilux, Junior (First Home Clavilux He was most interested in advancing spiritual Model) by Thomas Wilfred (1889–1968), might matters through modern art—he saw light art, look most like an old television set (fig. 11). in particular, as a new and superior medium Invented decades before television became for achieving transcendent expression. Wilfred popular, though, the Clavilux Junior series was became widely known as the creator and initially compared to a gramophone or radio by advocate of lumia after he began giving one of Wilfred’s most important supporters.50 public recitals across the United States on his 73 large-scale Clavilux organ in 1922. Received recitals, Wilfred signaled this was an art that with great critical admiration, his invention benefited from focused attention from capped a twenty-plus-year burst of energy beginning to end. By naming his structured in which artist-engineers in Europe and the pieces with opus numbers, a tradition he United States sought to harness electric light continued from composers like Ludwig van to create color-organs that could play Beethoven, Wilfred signaled they are luminous color with keys like a piano. not random light effects, but repeatable Distinguishing himself from other competitors sequences carefully orchestrated and like Philadelphia pianist Mary Hallock- executed with precision by the instruments Greenewalt, who invented her own light he designed. Even as he rejected theories instrument to add visuals to her concerts, pairing specific colors and notes, Wilfred Wilfred insisted that if lumia was to stand used his training in music to shape works on its own as an art form, it should be that had distinct tempos, durations, appreciated in silence.52 and dynamics, and with “movements” that would spark imagination and provoke Yet, musical thinking is inseparable from emotion over the course of the composition. this history of early twentieth-century light Perhaps most importantly, Wilfred used art, driving Wilfred’s experimental impulse language from the elevated, long-standing towards an organ-like instrument, the traditions of classical music to frame lumia notation of light compositions into scores, as not just a popular spectacle but an and the initial performances into concert emergent high art form—uniquely modern format. And even as Wilfred built on and and technologically enabled but still in broke from this trajectory with his removal service of universal ideals and transcendent of sonic accompaniment, he clearly found experiences.53 musical terms and analogies essential to communicating about how this new time- based visual experience should be understood and encountered. By inviting audiences to 74 Dwinell Grant designing an “experimental symphonic drama” at the school, he saw that by controlling the AND VISUAL MUSIC ON FILM stage lights’ color and intensity, he could shift The 1941 stop-motion animation Contrathemis compositions “in time and space.”55 While he by Dwinell Grant (1912–1991) is composed of was aware of Thomas Wilfred’s lumia, he saw over four thousand pencil drawings and paper greater potential in translating these effects collages (fig. 12). Grant shone various colored from a theatrical setting to celluloid film. lights onto sequences of pages as he captured With this goal in mind, he moved to New York them on individual film frames to make up the in the early 1940s. There he worked for, and eight-minute piece. When the reel is projected, received support in his mission from, Hilla von the images spring into motion. Lines move Rebay, an artist, collector, and, at that time, Fig. 12. Dwinell Grant, Contrathemis, back and forth. A repertoire of shapes takes the first director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim 1941, 16mm film (color, silent); 8 min. Smithsonian American Art Museum, up different arrangements on screen. The Foundation and what is now called the alternating light hues allow similar actions to Guggenheim Museum in New York.56 Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.36. replay with a different mood, creating rhythmic Contrathemis puts into action the concepts interplay between the abrupt changes in Grant was developing with funding from the background color and the fluidly dancing Guggenheim Foundation. His essays, often forms. By visualizing the principles of a musical unfinished, sought to lay out guiding principles fugue, when complementary themes play out for nonobjective films, or those without subject in different voices or instruments throughout matter, story, or symbols. Without these an arrangement, Grant creates variety while narrative goals, many of his predecessors and maintaining formal cohesion over time.54 contemporaries in artistic animation turned While there is no audible music, we see pure to music as an alternative structuring device. musicality and compositional dynamism unfold Many created visuals that interpreted specific before our eyes. songs or compositional types, leading to the In 1935, Grant was teaching art and theater at term “visual music” being applied to this vein Wittenberg College, in Springfield, Ohio, where of abstract filmmaking. Grant, like Wilfred, he was born, when he first became excited advocated for a looser connection with music, about creating moving abstract art. While translating musical concepts and effects into 75 that create “a single coherent melodic line… regulated by the key and tempo of the movement.”58 Contrathemis likely came later, after he received advice from Rebay that once a theme is started, he should “find a counter- theme.”59 For Grant and his circle, the emphasis on themes rather than subject matter, in visual art as in music, carried political, as well as spiritual, intentions. Amid the animosities of World War II, Grant proposed that abstract animation could become “a visual expression of a fundamental rhythm…based on universal constants and not limited to the narrow Fig. 12. Still from Dwinell Grant, backgrounds of a single group of people.”60 Contrathemis, 1941. visual equivalents that would be experienced Nam June Paik: in silence. Still, in theorizing this “entirely new art form,” he regularly recommended music’s EXPANDING MUSIC, EXPANDING MEDIA creative strategies and qualities—such as rhythm, melody, and counterpoint—as the In 1963, a young music composition student basis for orchestrating a time-based visual in Germany, Nam June Paik (1932–2006), experience.57 He also suggested a notation debuted Zen for TV in an art exhibition entitled system that, like the musical score, would allow Exposition of Music–Electronic Television the artist-composer to outline a piece’s key (1963; fig. 13). Paik based this, his first visual movements and have someone else perform art installation, on a “score” previously written it or in the case of animation, execute the in 1961, entitled Sinfonie for 20 Rooms. This thousands of drawings necessary for a few process, structure, and even the show’s title minutes of film. conflate music, art, and technology in ways that would continue throughout Paik’s forty- In an unpublished essay, “The Structure of plus-year career. When the “symphonic rooms” the Theme,” Grant calls for film animations were realized, one famously featured modified televisions scattered around the floor, the first 76 known use of this transformative technology in a fine-art setting.61 Paik altered their circuitry in various ways so that what visitors would see, and in some cases hear, was produced by the intersection of his electrical intervention and whatever was broadcasting at a given moment.62 In one case, he simply decided to display a defective set that compressed any signal into a thin line of electrons, like a single note held for minimalist contemplation, and named it Zen for TV.63 This became one of Paik’s signature works, and he reverse engineered the effect over the years to create multiple versions of Zen for TV, one of which is among the many works by Paik in SAAM’s collection. Paik’s early training in and expanded notion of music would inform his boundless intermedia experimentations wherever it might appear and whatever form it might take. Born in his own form of “action-music,” in which found Fig. 13. Nam June Paik, Zen for TV, Korea, Paik left to study music composition sounds and recorded texts, surprising bursts of 1963, 1976 version, manipulated first in Japan and then in Germany. There, activity, and chance interruptions or audience television set (black and white, silent); he engaged with new thinking about avant- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift responses came together to make chamber garde music. Paik was inspired by the Zen- of Byungseol and Dolores An, 2006.20. evening performances that defied definition informed approach of American composer John or expectations.64 Cage, who refuted the distinction between music and noise, and deployed chance in After his studies, Paik moved in 1964 to his compositions so the same score would New York. The following year, Paik got his sound different at each performance—for hands on one of the first portable videotape example, by playing radios tuned to whatever cameras, making what is believed to be one was broadcasting at a given time and place. of the first works of video art while driving Following from this, Paik started to develop across town.65 This kicked off a period of 77 exuberant experimentation for Paik and an expanding circle of “visual” artists—also influenced by Cage and often associated with the international art movement known as Fluxus—who embraced multimedia, multisensory practices, including video, television, film projections, slide shows, and musical and mediated performances to create embodied and durational experiences. These were presented not just in art galleries but at music venues, industrial lofts, repurposed barns, college campuses, and unexpected public places like random sidewalks or commuter ferries. Upon landing in New York, Paik also forged a creative partnership with performance- art cellist and intermedia festival organizer Charlotte Moorman. Moorman, too, had broken with her classical music training after being introduced to Cage’s experimental scores. Together Paik and Moorman disrupted serious music conventions with sexuality, humor, and advanced technologies, such as closed-circuit video cameras and wearable TV monitors. In an iconic photograph of their performance, Concerto for TV Cello & Videotapes (1971), Fig. 14. Peter Moore, Charlotte Moorman (Performing N.J. Paik’s “Concerto for TV Moorman is seen wearing Paik’s TV Glasses as Cello & Videotapes” (1971) at Galeria she plays his newly invented TV Cello (fig. 14; Bonino, New York, November 23, 1971), see also fig. 10). 1971, silver gelatin print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift from the The TV Cello consists of three television collection of Barbara and Howard Wise, monitors, encased in plexiglass, sized and 2020.2.6. 78 stacked to mimic the shape of a cello. In various stating, “‘This is a glimpse of a video landscape combinations, the screens show recorded of tomorrow when you will be able to switch performances by Cage and singer Janis Joplin, on any TV station on the earth.”66 Paik mimics and a live feedback loop of Moorman playing this imagined future-channel-surfing by the TV Cello in infinite regression. As she bows abruptly editing between clips that convey and plucks the amplified strings that run up different cultural expressions, primarily in the the sculpture’s front, the sounds are translated form of music and dance, from around the into electronic feedback that distorts the world. Starting with American tap dancers video signal of this responsive instrument. shaking a leg to a rhythm-and-blues medley, Through this work, Paik and Moorman explore he includes a long stretch of Moorman Fig. 15. Still from Nam June Paik, the many ways that musical performances, or playing the TV Cello, as well as a Korean Global Groove, 1973, single-channel any live experience, can now be captured and percussion performance and a ceremonial video (color, sound); 28:30 min. Smithsonian American Art Museum, mediated, thanks to portable video cameras song and dance from Nigeria.67 Writing about Gift to the Nam June Paik Archive and instant playback. These devices promise an earlier project that similarly cut between from the Nam June Paik Estate, intimacy, becoming extensions of Moorman’s the Beatles and musical interludes from NJP.1.VID.303. body and zooming in to Joplin’s expressive face. Japanese TV, Paik argued that such video But they also create distance and distraction, juxtapositions “demonstrate the togetherness making it hard for the viewer to focus on one of mankind by showing successively two kinds place, performance, or person when presented of music from two kinds of continents.”68 with so much media at once. Experiencing this Throughout Global Groove, images are work in the 1970s offered an insightful glimpse subject to colorful, dizzying, and disorienting of the future, when so many now record and visual effects. These distortions were broadcast their own self-performances via controlled by his newly invented Paik-Abe smartphones that are constantly in hand. Video Synthesizer, developed with Japanese In addition to inspiring score-based engineer Shuya Abe starting in 1969 (fig. installations with televisions and multimedia 16). Describing his goal for this visual Fig. 16. From left: Nam June Paik, concertos that merge performer and screen, instrument, Paik stated, “I wanted a piano Charlotte Moorman, and John Godfrey work on the Paik-Abe Paik’s musical thinking shows up in the content keyboard that would allow me to edit Video Synthesizer at WNET’s TV and creation of his single-channel video art seven different sources [in] real time.”69 Lab studio in New York City. as well. One of his best-known videos, Global Like color-organ inventors at the turn of Groove (1973; fig. 15) opens with a voice-over the twentieth century, Paik (and others 79 designing early video synthesizers in the late 1960s) looked to their audio equivalents. The resulting psychedelic effects were often used to make dreamy “visual music,” frequently paired with evocative soundtracks to offer a complementary, transportive sensory immersion.70 Paik’s hope that both TV and music could foster intercultural understanding shows up decades later in his global satellite broadcasts of the 1980s, which switched between studio performances in the United States by pop stars David Bowie and Laurie Anderson and international music acts from France, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere. The monumental Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Fig. 17. Nam June Paik, Electronic Alaska, Hawaii (1995; fig. 17), on view in SAAM’s Steina Vasulka’s Superhighway: Continental U.S., galleries, combines 336 TV monitors and 575 Alaska, Hawaii, 1995, fifty-one-channel feet of colored neon tubing to form a map of Violin Power video installation (including one closed- America. On the screens within each state’s AND RETHINKING THE RECORDING STUDIO circuit television feed; color, sound); brightly lit borders, Paik assembled content custom electronics, neon lighting, steel related to each location’s character. Through In the single-channel video Violin Power and wood; Smithsonian American Art the cacophony of fifty competing channels, (1970–78), the artist, Steina Vasulka (born Museum, Gift of the artist, 2002.23. a few songs emerge in their entirety where 1940), is seen playing a violin (fig. 18). As the Paik incorporated golden-age movie musicals video progresses, another activation becomes to represent Oklahoma (Oklahoma!), Missouri clear: in playing the violin, she is also playing (Meet Me in St. Louis), and Kansas (The Wizard with the video’s visuals, producing interference of Oz). Even within his adopted country, he and oscillation between multiple perspectives knew that nostalgic music bound some people that match the vibrato from her bowing. together, while for others it marked divergent For this mediated performance, Vasulka tastes, identities, and exclusionary affiliations. stood between two cameras feeding images 80 in a closed-circuit to facing monitors, so she could see herself live from divergent angles. Vibrations from her instrument were picked up by microphone and transmitted to a frequency shifter, which spread the horizontal lines that are the basis for any video image, and a keyer, that combined the two video inputs, as well as a Rutt/Etra Scan Processor, in which magnets pull at the horizontal video lines to distort the image. The combined, modulated result was projected and recorded to produce the final video artwork.71 This creative layering of technology, instrumental performance, re-mediation, and fluid visual effects perfectly exemplifies what musicians like Vasulka brought to the first generation of experimental video art. A conservatory-trained string player like Moorman and an immigrant to the United States like Paik, Vasulka became a force in New York’s cultural scene within this path: “My background is in music. For Fig. 18. Steina Vasulka, Violin Power, years of arriving from her native Iceland me, it is the sound that leads me into the 1970–78, single-channel video, in 1965. Though she had a prestigious image. Every image has its own sound and in (black-and-white, sound); 10:04 min. position as a violinist with the Icelandic it I attempt to capture something flowing Smithsonian American Art Museum, Symphony Orchestra, she and her husband, Museum purchase made possible by the and living. I apply the same principle to art Czechoslovakian-born Woody Vasulka, saw Ford Motor Company, 2008.21.12. as playing the violin: with the same attitude New York as where they could build a of continuous practice, the same concept of creative life together. While they came to composition. Since my art schooling was in be known as a video art duo, Steina always music, I do not think of images as stills, but foregrounded her musical roots in discussing always in motion.”72 81 into more public-facing experimentation and presentations. Within a year, The Kitchen became an important alternative to pristine white galleries or formal concert halls, a place where the visual and sonic, performance and installation could be experienced without artificial divisions between art forms or rigid expectations for audience behavior.74 The Kitchen was among a wave of artist-led institutions that ensured time- Fig. 19. Robert Watts, David Behrman, based practices could flourish and, in Bob Diamond, Cloud Music, 1974–79, so doing, remade American art as an hybrid sound/video installation emphatically intermedial conversation. It with custom electronics, Smithsonian continues to be a leading cultural force today. American Art Museum, Museum Fig. 18. Still from Steina Vasulka, Violin Power, 1970–78. purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2013.64. This orientation toward thinking in terms of musical processes and principles can also be Cloud Music seen in the groundbreaking arts space the AND CHANCE COMPOSING WITH VIDEO Vasulkas cofounded in 1971. The Electronic Kitchen, soon after renamed The Kitchen, Cloud Music (1974–79), a sound/video was initially premised on the notion that installation by Robert Watts (1923–1988), artists working with electronics, whether David Behrman (born 1937), and Bob Diamond video or audio, increasingly needed access (born 1946), showcases another way that to multiple forms of expensive equipment video was conceived of as a compositional to produce their work.73 Like a music device (fig. 19). Rather than focus on the studio, The Kitchen was to be a shared musicality that visual effects or video resource where artists could spend time content could convey, the collaborators who with these machines to complete a given built Cloud Music saw the potential of the project or jam with fellow creatives to video camera to create music directly. By see what unexpected results might come reading the environment as an open score, from the mix of talent and technology. the camera becomes the piano player rather This behind-the-scenes creation morphed than the keyboard. 82 When set up in the gallery, Cloud Music consists Fig. 19. Robert Watts, David Behrman, of a video camera pointed out a window and Bob Diamond, Cloud Music, 1974–79. upwards so that clouds move across its field of vision. A specially designed video analyzer reads six points within this sky, marked by crosshairs on a connected monitor, for changes in light intensity as clouds cover and reveal the sun. These shifts translate into electronic voltages of related intensity that are sent to an electronic music system, which converts the information into six harmonic notes that play out of six loudspeakers placed near the window and monitor. Like an old-fashioned self-playing piano, which pushes down keys the creative process, fluid experiences, and in response to punched holes across a rolled- the artistic potential in the everyday, rather up score, this configuration turns dark and than precious objects or polished products. light patches in the sky into dynamic chord A signature part of Fluxus practice was the progressions. Unlike early twentieth-century writing of “event scores.” These simple text punch-scores that produced recognizable instructions would reframe common gestures tunes, this composition is written entirely by or actions as artistic performances—Cloud nature and sounds different every time. Music extends this to include reinterpreting This outcome fits the goals of many artists the weather. influenced by John Cage. Since the 1940s, As a transplant from Iowa to New York, Watts Cage had been inviting chance operations missed having uninterrupted views of wide- to guide his musical notations and random open sky, and so began to incorporate the elements from the real world to shape sky, clouds, and other natural elements in his their sonic outputs. Watts was a key figure art from the 1960s onward. To realize his in the Fluxus movement, an international, “poetic idea of listening to the clouds,” Watts interdisciplinary network that included Paik enlisted skilled technological partners who and Moorman and built on Cage’s ideas. shared his creative range and references.75 Artists associated with Fluxus emphasized David Behrman was an electronic music 83 environment as a collaborator and fluctuating information from the outside world as a compositional element, Cloud Music connects to these musical traditions. It also leads to current experiments in time-based art, in which real-time data is processed visually and sonically to imaginatively reflect on an ever-changing ecosystem.79 Dara Birnbaum AND THE ART/MUSIC VIDEO A siren goes off, a multiplicity of repetitive Fig. 19. Robert Watts, David Behrman, fiery explosions fills the screen immediately Bob Diamond, Cloud Music, 1974–79. followed by a woman in seventies business pioneer who worked with Cage and knew attire, spinning and exploding over and over Paik; Bob Diamond was a systems and video again until she finally transforms into her engineer who contributed both to NASA’s alter ego, Wonder Woman. This is the start to Apollo systems and Paik’s experimental studio Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman setup at New York’s WNET-TV (Channel 13).76 (1978–79; fig. 20), a celebrated video artwork Perfecting the system took several years, and by Dara Birnbaum (born 1946). In a whirlwind they showed versions of the work starting five and a half minutes, the viewer takes in in 1974, with its ultimate configuration first a supercut of the popular TV show followed by appearing at the Whitney Museum of American a closing karaoke-style sing-along, with rolling Art in 1979.77 On reflection, Behrman notes text on-screen, of the lyrics to Wonder Woman that while Cloud Music depends on 1970s Disco, as performed by the Wonderland Disco video and circuitry to translate natural Band (1978, Hippopotamus Productions). Full phenomena into sounds, “in spirit the project of sexual innuendos and sensual oohs and might be close to the old outdoor wind and ahhs, the scrolling lyrics encourage viewers to water driven musical instruments of Southeast affirm “I am wonder . . . wonder woman,” but Asia and Polynesia.”78 By embracing the also promise to “shake my wonder-maker” as 84 the main expression of those powers. In this Fig. 20. Still from Dara Birnbaum, early work of video appropriation, Birnbaum Technology/Transformation: Wonder shows, in her words, “the possibilities of Woman, 1978–79, single-channel video manipulating a medium already known to be (color, sound); 5:50 min. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase highly manipulative,” and using television’s own made possible by the Ford Motor techniques to analyze, critique, and ultimately Company, 2007.33.10. “to talk back to the media.”80 To do this in a pre-VCR era, Birnbaum pirated this footage directly from network sources with help from friends on the inside. She then edited it to isolate and repeat the core actions of every episode, but otherwise left her choices of imagery from the show unaltered. As she wryly of rhythmic repetition—though her goal was observed, cutting back to this “abbreviated to draw attention to recurring patterns rather narrative—running, spinning, saving a man— than dance to them. allows the underlying theme to surface.”81 Wonder Woman’s transformation is revealed Birnbaum studied architecture in college. After as purely superficial—her appearance and graduating from Carnegie Mellon University storyline still orient toward male fantasies, as the only woman in her class in 1969, she whether she is serving men as an attractive worked at Lawrence Halprin and Associates, secretary or sexy superhero. An icon of a renowned architectural firm, but increasingly feminist critique, this video is a prime example gravitated toward visual art, studying of appropriation art that addresses the painting before discovering video as a medium impact of mass media on individual identity. It in the mid-1970s. After learning through the also kicked off a wave of video remixing that Nielsen ratings that the average American paralleled the rise of DJs remixing records watched some seven hours of television daily, in the 1970s and ’80s. Like the early hip-hop she came to see it as “the architecture of the DJs that isolated and prolonged recognizable day . . . [that it] defined the way that we were instrumental “breaks” from popular dance living and the way in which we occupied public 82 tracks, Birnbaum’s approach leaned into the and private space.” With this interest in how familiarity of her material and the satisfaction and where people absorb culture, Birnbaum 85 wanted her rebuke of mass-media stereotypes to reach wide audiences in unexpected ways. Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman was first shown in the storefront windows of a downtown hair salon, before screening as a kinescope at The Kitchen in a film festival and on a public-access TV station, programmed opposite CBS’s time slot for Wonder Woman. It also appeared at the Mudd Club, a live-music venue, and on massive video-walls (among the first in the United States) at the Palladium, a famous New York nightclub.83 In some ways, these presentations continued an ongoing “visual music” lineage, in which abstract light and film artists turned concerts and club events into multimedia experiences. At the same time, they point ahead to emergent forms of VJ culture, in which found and modulated video clips, full of insider references for the intended audience, are paired by the VJ, or video jockey, Fig. 20. Stills from Dara Birnbaum, Technology/Transformation: Wonder with songs selected by the DJ, or disc jockey. Woman, 1978–79. When MTV premiered in 1981, the channel’s hallmark fast-moving editing, playful transitions, often repetitive clips, and short format had already been pioneered by Birnbaum, Paik, and other artists who dared take up pop-culture video on its own terms and remix it to their own ends. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that Birnbaum was among the artists commissioned for MTV’s Art Break series in 1987. 86 Dan Graham’s through euphoric dance and song. With this theory, Graham connects frontier preachers ROCK MY RELIGION, AND MUSIC speaking in tongues and Native American AS THE MESSAGE ghost dancers, as well as 1950s teenagers’ Artist Dan Graham (1942–2022) created Rock frenzied shrieks around Elvis, hippies finding My Religion (1982–84) as an extended video collective frequencies, and hardcore punk fans essay on the subject of music itself (fig. 21). sweating it out as one. It traces a certain kind of musical ideal, one Graham’s argument is laid out via voice-over that fosters ecstatic embodied experiences, and exemplary musical selections, paired Fig. 21. Still from Dan Graham, Rock through historical connections that Graham with on-screen scrolling texts and footage of My Religion, 1982–84, single-channel theorizes and illustrates in this hour-long resonant sites, artworks, and performances. video (color and black-and-white, presentation. An artist who analyzed the While his references range widely, the rough sound); 55:27 min. Smithsonian relationship between capitalism and culture quality of the video and sound, the shaky American Art Museum, Museum across media, Graham was also a published camerawork, choppy edits, and dissonant purchase made possible by the Ford rock critic and devoted punk rocker and Motor Company, 2007.33.14. juxtapositions are all indebted to Graham’s hardcore fan. His interweaving interests preferred music of his time. A punk aesthetic coalesce in Rock My Religion, as he rules, aggressively resisting a polished, easily insightfully links economic shifts, religious digestible product. Graham’s confrontational impulses, and identity formations from the approach underscores his message: we as 1700s to the 1980s. Interestingly, the same “cultural consumers” are implicated in building Shaker philosophies and rituals that are such an individualistic society that any important touchstones for two works in “yearning for communalism free from sexual Musical Thinking are Graham’s starting point. and economic competition” can only be briefly He saw Shakers’ renunciation of heterosexual satisfied by revival meetings or mosh pits.84 marriage and uplifting of alternative communal values as a direct response to Rock My Religion is Graham’s most direct the soul-deadening work of the Industrial engagement with music as the primary subject Revolution. Their emigration from England to of his art. His early minimalist conceptual art the United States in the eighteenth century projects in magazines, and his later sculptural established an American tendency to counter pavilions — abstract constructions of metal, modern alienation with momentary liberation mirrors, and glass that one can walk within 87 and look through—would seem to have nothing rock, without a realization of the elevated to do with music when first encountered. Yet, role that rock culture had played within Graham is explicit that he was “influenced in artistic thinking, it would not be possible my art by structures I found in rock music.”85 to understand what had made art avant- His magazine projects move through sequences garde in the 1970s and ’80s. Rock My of formal repetitions that Graham related Religion suspended the hierarchies that to the seriality of early twentieth-century rock cultures and art worlds continually composers, like Karlheinz Stockhausen (who tried to resurrect—it melted them into also influenced Cage and Paik). His shared states of intensity, attitudes, Fig. 21. Still from Dan Graham, Rock architectural forms encourage awareness gestures, performances, parties, scenes My Religion, 1982–84. of being framed and looked upon while and cliques. By doing so, it rewrote art simultaneously looking through the glass at history as rock history.87 others. This dynamic was one he regularly This shows how differently musical thinking commented on as a rock critic, writing that operated for Graham’s generation of media one is always “aware of your relationship to art makers. As discussed, in the early 1900s, other spectators and other people in a group analogies to classical music allowed early situation” in these venues.86 innovators in time-based media, like Thomas Perhaps most importantly, as scholar Kodwo Wilfred and Dwinell Grant, to mark their Eshun writes in his book-length analysis of Rock abstract compositions as high art. By the My Religion, this work points to an overriding 1980s, with video an established tool for visual belief Graham held about the relationship artists, Graham used the medium to explore between art and music in his time: how popular music and art could break down elite cultural barriers together. What was important to grasp about avant-garde art, Graham insisted, was the seriousness that it bestowed upon rock. Without an awareness of the sustenance that artists had drawn from 88 commentary and storytelling. Their approaches are disparate and at times diffuse, but show how musical thinking, training, and inspiration continued to infuse video art as it became a more prominent, visible presence in contemporary art spaces around the world. Stephen Vitiello (born 1964), a sound artist extending the lineage of Cage and Watts, added a video camera to an array of contact microphones to capture sounds and sights out of the top-floor window of his aptly titled Fig. 22. Still from Stephen Vitiello, World Trade Center Recordings: Studio View World Trade Center Recordings: Studio (1999–2011; fig. 22). Vitiello was encouraged View, 1999–2011, single-channel video to take up video by none other than Nam June (color, sound); 11:47 min. Smithsonian Paik, who asked him to document a month American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Frank K. Ribelin of Fluxus performances in 1994. When Vitiello Endowment, 2015.16. explained he was a musician, not a video artist, Paik replied, “It’ll make you a better musician.”88 As Vitiello notes, it ultimately Playing in pointed him toward a more interesting, blended practice in which sound and Every Key visuals tune audiences into the experiences of a given architectural space. By turn of the twenty-first century, any and Rico Gatson (born 1966), an artist who makes all of the above approaches to weaving photocollage odes to Black musical icons music and moving image production together of the twentieth century, also uses video were embraced by artists working in the software to collage existing footage into United States. Even a quick review of pieces kaleidoscopic effects that move to the from the early 2000s in SAAM’s collection music. Jungle, Jungle and Gun Play (fig. 23), shows artists expansively playing with both 2001, pair percussive, appropriated formal experimentation as well as cultural 89 soundtracks with distorted scenes from old movies to undermine their racial encoding— the first using a colorized version of King Kong (1933), the second intercutting the blaxploitation film Foxy Brown (1974) and the spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Discussing the works on paper, but equally resonant with the videos, Gatson points to parallels between his art and the rhythmic geometries and disruptive patterns of jazz, explaining, “I think about visual time, Cory Arcangel (born 1978) was studying Fig. 24. Still from Cory Arcangel, visible time…I’m thinking about improvisation, classical guitar at Oberlin Conservatory of Beach Boys/Geto Boys, 2004, single- about how the eye moves and the potential Music when he first got access to high-speed channel video (color, sound); 4:13 min. for some sort of impact on the viewer.”89 Smithsonian American Art Museum, internet, beginning his journey to becoming a Museum purchase made possible by visual artist engaged with computer culture the Ford Motor Company, 2007.33.5. and creative coding. In Beach Boys/Geto Boys (2004; fig. 24), Arcangel creates a split-screen juxtaposition of the two existing music videos to make his commentary. The resulting new work merges the sounds while contrasting the looks of two similarly named but wildly dissimilar “boy bands,” provoking observations about what has changed and what stays the same within pop culture. This is a video equivalent of the “mash-up,” a form of remixing individual songs that became widespread in the early Fig. 23. Still from Rico Gatson, Gun Play, 2001, single-channel video 2000s, as digital tools allowed home DJs to (color, sound); 2:35 min. Smithsonian knit together unlikely, often ironic, musical American Art Museum, Museum pairings that cross decades and genres. purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2015.7.1. 90 Takeshi Murata (born 1974) continues to push the boundaries of digital media. His Monster Movie (2005), set to propulsive drum and bass breaks, is a contemporary blend of the “visual music” tradition of early experimental animation and more recent appropriation tendencies (fig. 25). In Murata’s work, rather than just remixed, the source material is digitally manipulated, morphed, and pixelated. The psychedelic distortions abstract the B-movie monster of the title so it is only occasionally recognizable within the brightly colored, blurry trails that flow across the screen and seem to express rhythm and tonality more than anything else. In other ways, the impact of musical thinking on contemporary art is expansive, subtle, and part of pervasive changes that rippled out from but can no longer be pinpointed as explicitly or exclusively tied to music. As previously noted, the inclusion of sound-rich media works and live performances that take time to absorb opened art spaces to very different kinds of attention and engagement, and fostered a range of immersive and dynamic experiences. The embrace of open, Fig. 25. Still from Takeshi Murata, participatory scores as conceptual artworks, Monster Movie, 2005, single-channel with instructions that someone else (or video (color, sound); 4:19 min. something else) might enact and outcomes Smithsonian American Art Museum, that the artist shapes but does not completely Museum purchase through the Luisita L. control, radically altered understandings of and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2013.71. 91 what an artwork can be and how it is formed and experienced. Writ large, this means that crafting a fixed, singular artwork is now just one option for artists, who often make pieces that are ever evolving, exist in many versions, and rely on audience and environmental input or further interpretive decisions to be realized. At SAAM, this means that some works of video art in our collection are not edited, singular files that we can replay exactly the same each time, but are more like scores that get set into motion when we reinstall them. In their interactive installation Text Rain (1999; fig. 26), artists Romy Achituv (born 1958) and Camille Utterback (born 1970) embed a video camera in a wall pointed at gallerygoers; it reads their bodies as dark against a light background. This allows those bodies to appear to “catch” letters as they fall in a video projected on the facing program that sequences and joins thousands Fig. 26. Romy Achituv, Camille wall. This participatory artwork is responsive of original film clips and sound files from Utterback, Text Rain, 1999, interactive digital installation, Smithsonian American to its setting, much like Cloud Music (see p. 82), an artist-provided digital library. Though Art Museum, Museum purchase made except the clouds are now humans, and their the “Serendipity Machine,” as she calls the possible by the American Art Forum, movements impact lines of poetry rather than program, uses metadata tags to organize 2015.14. chord progressions. Once visitors understand and shuffle its selection, the sequence and the machine-vision mechanism, they can “play” combinations are unique each time it is the piece, improvising in response to what the played. Such relinquishing of control over artists are sending their way. the final arrangement of a piece is most associated in the United States with Cage For whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir (2009–11; and his Fluxus followers, but it is also a central fig. 27), Eve Sussman (born 1961) and her way of working for so many artists today. artistic think tank, the Rufus Corporation, These artists and works are not explicitly created a specially designed computer musical in form or content, but they flourish in 92 a creative landscape that has been abundantly seeded with musical thinking for more than a hundred years. The artists discussed in this section, as well as those featured in Musical Thinking, are also creating work for a broader culture transformed by the digitization of both music and video content. Artists raised on MTV are drawing on digital tools, file sharing, and mash-up culture to make their own musically driven visual statements. Millions who have used YouTube playlists to listen to their favorite musicians and access peer-to-peer downloads to find rare releases, are mining such online resources to provocatively collage a world at once opened and flattened by the information flows of the internet. And the inescapability of social media has many rethinking performance for the camera and commodified culture to release new energies Fig. 27. Eve Sussman, Rufus Corporation, how we project ourselves in the world. Across and imagine other world orders; raising up or whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir, 2009–11, the board, twenty-first-century artists are resurrecting musical figures, philosophies, and two-channel digital cinema installation, responding to and making work within a global sonic legacies that can now resonate across Smithsonian American Art Museum, attention economy where short-form videos Museum purchase through the Luisita L. global networks; and building communities dominate public and private life and massive and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, that can feel copresent across time and space. 2014.43. media installations fill prominent urban We cannot predict the full scope, complexity, spaces and contemporary art institutions and nuance of how music and media art will alike. Musical thinking will remain a critical interact, but we can certainly look forward to way to navigate, create, and connect in tracking the call-and-response and ensuring this context—exploring dynamics of chance this creative interplay continues to be well and improvisation in media composition represented in the Smithsonian American Art and performance; pirating and remixing Museum’s collection. 93 Notes p. 5: Brian Vandenberg, “Magical Thinking,” there is no standard definition across these in Encyclopedia Britannica, October 9, 2019, uses, and because here it relates to a very https://www.britannica.com/science/magical- specific approach to time-based art-making thinking. where it appears to be newly applied, I have laid out my meaning in the context of this 1. While “musical thinking” came to me as exhibition without seeking to square uses an appropriate term and title to signal what of the term across time and disciplines. is distinct about the way today’s media See “That Keys Influence Musical Thinking,” artists engage music through their work, The Spectator, November 15, 1828, 313, I found the phrase has a rich interdisciplinary https://www.proquest.com/magazines/ history. A note in The Spectator (London) that-keys-influence-musical-thinking/ from 1828 muses on how compositions in docview/1295155091/se-2; and E. H. Turpin, certain keys spark different associations “On Musical Thinking,” Musical Standard 25, as a kind of musical thinking; another, from no. 993 (August 11, 1883): 84—85, https:// 1883, encourages soundlessly thinking www.proquest.com/historical-periodicals/on- through tone, as one silently thinks through musical-thinking/docview/7262430/se-2. words, to develop musical ideas. While these early instances speak musician to 2. This exhibition builds on historical musician, the phrase goes on to be used by considerations of sound and art, such as philosophers, musicologists, ethnologists, Sons & Lumières: Une histoire du son dans anthropologists, and psychologists to l’art du XXe siècle at Centre Pompidou, Paris, address various cultural and cognitive in 2004, and Visual Music: Synaesthesia in phenomena, from Hegel’s aesthetics to Art and Music since 1900 at the Smithsonian’s computer algorithms. Online, one now finds Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, business consultancies and early-education Washington, D.C., and Museum of products that encourage applying “musical Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2005, thinking” to the office or nursery. Because as well as contemporary snapshots, like 94 Notes Soundings: A Contemporary Score, at both Wilfred and Grant sought to translate New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2013; experiences and themes but not specific and joins a current wave of museum shows notes or musical pieces, and wanted their inviting sound-based or -inspired works visuals to be appreciated on their own terms, into their galleries. The specificity here of in silence. For more on the history of color music rather than sound, and video as the music into visual music, see William Moritz, primary lens through which this interaction is “The Dream of Color Music, And Machines explored, adds to this field, as does the focus That Made It Possible,” Animation World on what American artists today are saying Magazine, issue 2.1 (April 1997), https://www. through this convergence. See “Suggested awn.com/mag/issue2.1/articles/moritz2.1.html. Reading” in this publication. 7. For more details on this history, see 3. Langston Hughes, “I, Too,” The Weary Blues “Postscript as Prelude” section in this (New York: Knopf, 1927). In the poem, Hughes publication. concludes: “They’ll see how beautiful I am/ And be ashamed—/ I, too, am America.” 8. Jafa and Campt, “Love Is the Message.” 4. Arthur Jafa and Tina M. Campt, “Love Is the 9. Aria Dean, “Worry the Image,” Art in America, Message, The Plan Is Death,” e-flux Journal, May 26, 2017, https://www.artnews.com/art-in- issue 81, April 2017, https://www.e-flux.com/ america/features/worry-the-image-63266/. journal/81/126451/love-is-the-message-the- plan-is-death/. 10. Connor Brooke, “An Interview with Adal Maldonado on the Identity of Photography,” 5. See Judith Zilcer, “ ‘Color Music’: last updated December 10, 2012, Business 2 Synaesthesia and Nineteenth-Century Community, https://www.business2community. Sources for Abstract Art,” Artibus et com/travel-leisure/an-interview-withadal- Historiae 8, no. 16 (1987): 101—26. maldonado-on-the-identity-of-photography- 0352780. 6. Importantly, as will be discussed in “Postscript as Prelude” in this publication, 95 Notes 11. The concept for El Spirit Republic de Puerto importantly, continuing to invest in powerful Rico and Embassy was first put forward in white directors and screenwriters instead 1979 by Eduardo Figueroa, another Nuyorican of supporting Puerto Ricans to tell their own cultural activist, who died in 1991. Honoring story on their own terms. For one take, see this important idea, ADÁL and Pietri re- Andrea González-Ramírez, “West Side Story inaugurated the Embassy in 1994. See Timo Can’t Be Saved,” The Cut-New York, December Schrader, Loisaida as Urban Laboratory: 13, 2021, https://www.thecut.com/2021/12/ Puerto Rican Community Activism in New York west-side-story-is-not-for-puerto-ricans-like- (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2020), me.html. 125—44, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j. ctvxkn522.12. 14. “Raven Chacon: Artist Statement, December 2021,” Foundation for 12. Pedro Pietri, “El Manifesto: Notes on Contemporary Arts, https://www. El Puerto Rican Embassy,” El Puerto Rican foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/ Embassy, https://elpuertoricanembassy.msa recipients/raven-chacon/. -x.org/index.html. 15. “Raven Chacon: Fluidity of Sound,” 13. The 1957 Broadway musical was adapted SoundLives, episode 16, interview by Frank for the big screen again, in 2021, directed J. Oteri for New Music USA, June 8, 2022, by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/raven-chacon- Tony Kushner. While Spielberg and Kushner fluidity-of-sound/. engaged an advisory council to address earlier inaccuracies and avoided the white- 16. Raven Chacon, “SAAM TBMA Artists washed casting from the 1961 film version, Questionnaire-Video: Report,” SAAM the remake was criticized for not having conservation files. Puerto Ricans at the helm, still not having Puerto Rican leads or an authentically portrayed community, and perhaps most 96 Notes 17. “Performing Sound: An Interview with 21. Mariam Ghani, “Creating with Mariam Raven Chacon,” American Academy in Ghani + Erin Ellen Kelly: Part One,” panel Berlin, https://www.americanacademy.de/ discussion hosted by Speed Art Museum, performing-sound/. October 19, 2020, video, 4:50 mins., https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqm-wo0VEIs. 18. Raven Chacon, Raven Chacon: For Zitkála-Šá, New Documents, 2022, 8, https:// 22. Ghani, “Creating with Mariam Ghani + Erin new-documents.org/books/for-zitkala-sa- Ellen Kelly.” raven-chacon. 23. Phillip Velinov, “Creating with Mariam 19. Raven Chacon: For Zitkála-Šá, 9. Ghani + Erin Ellen Kelly: Part Five,” panel discussion hosted by the Speed Art Museum, 20. Chacon’s 2021 composition, Voiceless December 17, 2020, video, 5:13, https://www. Mass, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in youtube.com/watch?v=zw7SwOkoMvc. Music, drew together the historic resonance of a cathedral pipe organ and the Thanksgiving 24. Mariam Ghani, “When the Spirits Moved holiday, the quietude and cries of life during Them, They Moved,” artist’s website, COVID-19, and an ensemble dispersed https://www.mariamghani.com/work/1288. throughout an audience. For more on this groundbreaking selection, see Javier C. 25. “Marie Tomanova’s Conversation with Hernández, “The Pulitzer Prize Winner That Martine Gutierrez,” Ravelin, accessed July Emerged Out of a Time of Quietness,” 2022, https://www.ravelinmagazine.com/ New York Times, May 9, 2022, https://www. posts/marie-tomanovas-conversation- nytimes.com/2022/05/09/arts/music/raven- martine-gutierrez/. chacon-pulitzer-prize-music.html. 97 Notes 26. Martine Gutierrez, “SAAM TBMA Artist 30. This mantra is repeated in almost every Questionnaire-Video: Clubbing,” SAAM interview Jafa gives and is cited in most conservation files. writings on his work. For one rich recent contextualization, see Tina M. Campt, 27. Cisgender describes a person whose A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We gender identity and expression corresponds See (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021), 79. with the sex they were assigned at birth. The growing use of this term reflects increasing 31. The artist, quoted in Megan O’Grady, awareness that sex, the cluster of biological “Arthur Jafa in Bloom,” New York Times characteristics that are used to mark a baby Magazine, August 14, 2019, https://www. as male or female (even though they might nytimes.com/2019/08/14/t-magazine/ have characteristics that blur this as a binary), arthur-jafa-in-bloom.html. As Jafa notes in is not the same thing as gender, which is this interview, the term “affective proximity” the internal understanding a person has of was coined by John Akomfrah, another artist themselves and how they relate to socialized whose media works evocatively juxtapose and innate experiences of living in the world resonant images that speak to colonial history as a man, woman, or gender nonconforming from the perspective of a Black British citizen. or nonbinary person. 32. This song’s release, and Jafa’s selection 28. Martine Gutierrez, introduction to of it, predates West’s engagement with Indigenous Woman (New York: Ryan Lee presidential politics and later controversies. Gallery, 2018). In early 2016, his primary public image was as a critically acclaimed and globally 29. Arthur Jafa, “Black Visual Intonation,” recognized music star. in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, ed. Robert G. O’Meally (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 267. 98 Notes 33. Antwaun Sargent, “Arthur Jafa and 38. For the artist’s reflections on this the Future of Black Cinema,” Interview experience, including the fraught politics of Magazine, January 11, 2017, https://www. accepting this invitation and the frustration interviewmagazine.com/art/arthur-jafa. afterward on finding that the broadcast cut away so much that her ASL interpretation 34. Jeppe Ugelvig, “Sonic Identity Politics was barely visible for home viewers, see Kim, with Christine Sun Kim,” Discover (blog), “I Performed at the Super Bowl. You Might DIS Magazine, January 20, 2016, http:// Have Missed Me,” New York Times, February 3, ghebaly.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/ 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/ Kim_2016_Dis-Mag.pdf. opinion/national-anthem-sign-language.html. 35. Christine Sun Kim, “SAAM TBMA 39. For a discussion on Key, see Christopher Artists Questionnaire-Audio: One Week Wilson, “Where’s the Debate on Francis of Lullabies for Roux,” SAAM conservation Scott Key’s Slaveholding Legacy?,” files. Smithsonian, July 1, 2016, https://www. smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ 36. Captions by Alison O’Daniel, Ariel Baker- wheres-debate-francis-scott-keys-slave- Gibbs, and Lauren Ridloff respectively. holdinglegacy-180959550/. 37. Ann Friedman, “Christine Sun Kim: On What 40. Andrianna, Campbell, “Collaboration Listening Looks Like,” The Gentlewoman, ‘Breakdown’: A Conversation with Liz Magic issue no. 24 (Autumn-Winter 2021), https:// Laser and Simone Leigh,” in Collaboration thegentlewoman.co.uk/library/christine- and Its (Dis)Contents: Art, Architecture, and sun-kim. Photography since 1950, ed. Meredith A. Brown and Michelle Millar Fisher (London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2017), 130. 41. Campbell, “Collaboration ‘Breakdown,’” 129. 99 Notes 42. Claire Barliant, “From a Waxy Yellow 46. Interestingly, Arthur Jafa joined Smith to Buildup to a Nervous Breakdown: The Fleeting shoot 16mm footage at the ashram, serving as Existence of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” cinematographer for this part of his friend’s East of Borneo, October 10, 2010, https:// project. “Rhea Anastas in Conversation with eastofborneo.org/articles/from-a-waxy- Cauleen Smith,” 41. yellow-buildup-to-a-nervous-breakdown- the-fleeting-existence-of-mary-hartman- 47. Sally L. Kitch, “‘As a Sign That All May mary-hartman/. Understand’: Shaker Gift Drawings and Female Spiritual Power,” Winterthur Portfolio 43. In 2022, Leigh brought this committed 24, no. 1 (1989): 1–28, https://www.jstor.org/ focus to the 59th Venice Biennale as the first stable/1181214. Black woman to represent the United States in this international art exhibition’s 125-year 48. “Rhea Anastas in Conversation with history. For more on her presentation, and Cauleen Smith,” 39. the symposium she co-organized centering Black female brilliance across creative fields, 49. “Cauleen Smith Imagines a Black, Feminist see “Simone Leigh: Sovereignty,” https:// Utopia,” video, 4:54 mins., San Francisco simoneleighvenice2022.org. Museum of Modern Art, https://www.sfmoma. org/watch/cauleen-smith-imagines-a-black- 44. Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, “Artist Unknown, feminist-utopia-2/. Vessel Possibly for Water,” in Simone Leigh: Luhring Augustine, September 8 – October 20, 50. Keely Orgeman, “A Radiant Manifestation 2018 (New York: Luhring Augustine, 2018), 20. in Space: Wilfred, Lumia, and Light,” in Orgeman et al., Lumia: Thomas Wilfred 45. “Rhea Anastas in Conversation with and the Art of Light (New Haven, CT: Yale Cauleen Smith,” in Cauleen Smith: Give It or University Art Gallery, 2017), 24. Leave It, ed. Kristi McGuire (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of 51. Orgeman, “A Radiant Manifestation.” Pennsylvania, 2019), 43. 100 Notes 52. Kenneth Peacock, “Instruments to Perform spiritual and formal relevance for creative Color-Music: Two Centuries of Technological work across media. For more on her work, and Experimentation,” Leonardo 21, no. 4 (1988): this circle, see The Museum of Non-Objective 404–5, https://doi.org/10.2307/1578702. Painting: Hilla Rebay and the Origins of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York: 53. For more on Wilfred and his circle’s Guggenheim Museum, 2009). association between transcendent experiences and abstraction in art, see 57. Moen, New York’s Animation Culture, 118. Andrew R. Johnston, Pulses of Abstraction: Episodes from a History of Animation 58. Dwinell Grant, “The Structure of the Theme” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, (unpublished essay, dated 1944–48), 35, box 2020), and Gregory Zinman, Making Images 2, folder 5, Dwinell Grant Papers, 1930–1988, Move: Handmade Cinema and Other Arts Archives of American Art, Smithsonian (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020). Institution, Washington, D.C. 54. Kristian Moen, New York’s Animation 59. Moen, New York’s Animation Culture, 132. Culture: Advertising, Art, Design and Film, 1939–1940 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 60. Moen, 134. 2019), 132, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3- 030-27931-8. 61. See Tomas Schmit, “Exposition of Music,” in Nam June Paik and Wulf Herzogenrath, 55. Moen, New York’s Animation Culture, 128. Nam June Paik: Werke 1946–1976 (Cologne: Kölnischer Kunstverein, 1977), 70; and the 56. Rebay was an early advocate of Wassily original score for Sinfonie for 20 Rooms, Kandinsky’s musically inspired abstract reproduced in John G. Hanhardt et al., paintings, which are key foundations for Nam June Paik (New York: Whitney Museum the Guggenheim Museum’s collection, and of American Art, 1982), 88. encouraged the modern artists she cultivated in New York to attune themselves to music’s 101 Notes 62. In this first show, that would have been 66. “Global Groove: Nam June Paik and John the signal from the only television channel Godfrey,” Electronic Arts Intermix, accessed in Germany, which only broadcast for four June 23, 2022, https://www.eai.org/titles/ hours a day, likely the reason the exhibition global-groove. was open at later times in the day. See “Nam June Paik: Exposition of Music – Electronic 67. Marina Isgro, “Video Commune: Nam June Television,” Medien Kunst Netz (Media Art Paik at WGBH-TV, Boston,” Tate Papers, no. Net), accessed June 23, 2022, http://mkn.zkm. 32 (Autumn 2019), https://www.tate.org.uk/ de/works/exposition-of-music/?desc=full. research/tate-papers/32/video-commune- nam-june-paik. More specifically, this cultural 63. Hanna Hölling, Paik’s Virtual Archive: collage moves from R&B singer Mitch Ryder’s Time, Change, and Materiality in Media Art “Devil with a Blue Dress On” (1964), to the (Oakland: University of California Press, Korean dancer-choreographer Sun Ock Lee 2017), 78. performing as a Korean shaman or mudang, to excerpts from an ethnographic film shot by 64. Musically notated scores, textual Percival Borde in Nigeria. instructions for action-music events, and other music-related ephemera can be found in the 68. Isgro, “Video Commune.” Nam June Paik Archive (NJPA), a collection of his papers and the contents of his final studio, 69. Peter Sachs Collopy, “Video Synthesizers: at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. For From Analog Computing to Digital Art,” IEEE more on NJPA, see https://americanart.si.edu/ Annals of the History of Computing 36, no. research/paik. 4 (October–December 2014): 76, https://doi. org/10.1109/mahc.2014.62. 65. Holly Rogers, Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music (New York: Oxford 70. Collopy, “Video Synthesizers,” 74. University Press, 2013), 28. 71. Rogers, Sounding the Gallery, 29. 102 Notes 72. Rogers, 28. 78. Watts, Behrman, and Diamond, 153. 73. “Steina and Woody Vasulka: Biographical 79. Mike Maizels, “The New Geography: Earth Chronology (1937–1969),” Daniel Langlois Music and Land Art, Version 2.0,” Art Journal Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, Open, October 15, 2014, http://artjournal. 2001, https://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/ collegeart.org/?p=5319. collection/vasulka/archives/chrono_cadre. html. 80. Dara Birnbaum, “Talking Back to the Media,” in Patti Podesta, Resolution: 74. “Vasulka: Biographical Chronology.” A Critique of Video Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 75. Janine D. Randerson, “Cloud Music: A Cloud 1986), 52. System,” Proceedings of the 19th International 81. Alex Greenberger, “Changing Channels: Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA2013), ed. Dara Birnbaum’s Televisual Art Comes into Ross Harley, Laura Fisher, and Kathy Cleland, 2. Focus,” ARTnews, March 27, 2018, https://www. artnews.com/art-news/artists/icons-dara- 76. Randerson, “Cloud Music,” 2; Robert Watts, birnbaum-9973/. David Behrman, and Bob Diamond, “Cloud Music,” in Peter Weibel, Woody Vasulka, and 82. Dara Birnbaum, “My Pop: Dara Birnbaum,” Steina Vasulka, Eigenwelt der Apparatewelt: Artforum International 43, no. 2 (October Pioneers of Electronic Art, ed. David Dunn 2004), https://www.artforum.com/ (Santa Fe, NM: The Vasulkas, 1992), 152—53, print/200408/dara-birnbaum-7663. http://www.vasulka.org/Kitchen/PDF_ Eigenwelt/Eigenwelt.htm. 83. Dara Birnbaum, “The Individual Voice as a Political Voice: Critiquing and Challenging 77. Watts, Behrman, and Diamond, “Cloud the Authority of Media,” in Women, Art, and Music,” 152. Technology, ed. Judy Malloy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 137. 103 Notes 84. Quote comes from Graham’s on-screen Rock My Religion text: “There is an unresolved conflict between Puritan individualism and a yearning communalism free from sexual competition.” 85. E. C. H. de Bruyn, “‘Sound Is Material’: Dan Graham in Conversation with Eric de Bruyn,” Grey Room, no. 17 (Fall 2004): 113. 86. Dan Graham and Jeff Wall, Two-Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art, ed. Alexander Alberro (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 148. 87. Kodwo Eshun, Dan Graham: Rock My Religion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014), 195. 88. Stephen Vitiello, “Stephen Vitiello and Steve Roden: The Space Contained in Each,” interview by Steve Roden, Bomb Magazine, October 1, 2013, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/steve- roden-and-stephen-vitiello/. 89. Siddhartha Mitter, “Black Lives Shine in Rico Gatson’s New Show,” Village Voice, July 11, 2017, https://feldmangallery.com/assets/pdfs/ Gatson_selected-Press.pdf. 104 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition All works are in the collection of the Smithsonian El Puerto Rican Passport, El Spirit Republic American Art Museum, unless noted otherwise. de Puerto Rico: Luciana Alexandra del Rio Dimensions are presented in inches; height de la Serna precedes width and depth. Entries marked with 1994, issued 2012 an asterisk (*) are not illustrated. lithography with photograph in staple-bound booklet ADÁL closed: 5 x 3 1/2 in. born Adalberto Maldonado, 1948, Utuado, open: 7 x 5 in. Puerto Rico–died 2020, San Juan, Puerto Rico Gift of the artist, 2013.19.2 El Puerto Rican Passport, El Spirit Republic de Cat. 2 Puerto Rico: Adál Maldonado 1994 El Puerto Rican Passport, El Spirit Republic lithography with photograph in staple- de Puerto Rico: Koki Kiki bound booklet 1994, issued 2005 closed: 5 x 3 1/2 in. lithography with photograph in staple- open: 7 x 5 in. bound booklet Gift of the artist, 2013.19.1 closed: 5 x 3 1/2 in. Cat. 1 open: 7 x 5 in. Gift of the artist, 2013.19.3 Cat. 3 105 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition West Side Story Upside Down, Backwards, *For Candice Hopkins, from the series Sideways and Out of Focus (La Maleta de For Zitkála-Šá Futriaco Martínez) 2020 2002 lithograph on paper suitcase, flat-screen LCD monitor, single- sheet and image: 11 x 8 1/2 in. channel digital video (color, sound); 12:51 min. Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong 14 x 20 x 7 in. Endowment, 2022.7.1.5 Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Cat. 7 Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2013.20 Cat. 4 *For Joy Harjo, from the series For Zitkála-Šá 2020 Raven Chacon (Diné) lithograph on paper born Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, Arizona sheet and image: 11 x 8 1/2 in. 1977 Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong Report Endowment, 2022.7.1.10 2001/2015 Cat. 8 single-channel video (color, sound); 3:48 min.; printed score, music stand *For Laura Ortman, from the series Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and For Zitkála-Šá Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2020.61A-C 2019 Cat. 5 lithograph on paper sheet and image: 11 x 8 1/2 in. *For Ange Loft, from the series For Zitkála-Šá Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong 2020 Endowment, 2022.7.1.11 lithograph on paper Cat. 9 sheet and image: 11 x 8 1/2 in. Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong Endowment, 2022.7.1.1 Cat. 6 106 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition For Olivia Shortt, from the series For Zitkála-Šá Meeting House, Morning 2020 from the series When the Spirits Moved Them, lithograph on paper They Moved sheet and image: 11 x 8 1/2 in. 2019 Museum purchase through the Julia D. Strong dye transfer print on Dibond Endowment, 2022.7.1.12 overall: 20 x 30 in. Cat. 10 Gift of the artists, courtesy of RYAN LEE Gallery, New York, 2021.94.3 Mariam Ghani Cat. 13 born New York City 1978 Erin Ellen Kelly *Triptych (Two Houses, Two Shadows, Ashley born St. Louis, Missouri 1976 Fallen to the Floor, and Last Cow in the Field) When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved from the series When the Spirits Moved Them, 2019 They Moved three-channel video (color, sound); 23:36 min. 2019 Museum purchase, 2021.23.1 three dye transfer prints on Dibond Cat. 11 each/overall: 20 x 30 in. Courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York *Diptych (Bend in the Wall and Theresa at the Cat. 14 Door) from the series When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved Triptych (Trees Above, Amanda Abandoned, 2019 and Stones Below) two dye transfer prints on Dibond from the series When the Spirits Moved Them, each/overall: 20 x 30 in. They Moved Courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York 2019 Cat. 12 three dye transfer prints on Dibond each/overall: 20 x 30 in. Courtesy RYAN LEE Gallery, New York Cat. 15 107 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition *Benched #1 Arthur Jafa from the series When the Spirits Moved Them, born Tupelo, Mississippi 1960 They Moved Love is the Message, The Message is Death 2019 2016 dye transfer print on Dibond single-channel digital video (high-definition, overall: 20 x 30 in. color, sound); 7:25 min. Courtesy of RYAN LEE Gallery, New York Joint museum purchase with the Hirshhorn Cat. 16 Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Nion T. Martine Gutierrez McEvoy, Chair of SAAM Commission (2016– born Berkeley, California 1989 2018), and McEvoy’s fellow Commissioners Clubbing in his honor; additional funding provided by 2012 Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 2020.001; single-channel digital video (high-definition, 2020.3 color, sound); 3:06 min. Cat. 18 Museum purchase, 2021.23.2 Cat. 17 APEX GRID 2018 Epson fine print face-mounted Diasec acrylic on aluminum panel 105 1/2 x 352 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. Private collection Cat. 19 108 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition Christine Sun Kim America the Beautiful born Orange County, California 1980 2020 One Week of Lullabies for Roux charcoal on paper 2018 overall: 58 1/4 x 58 1/4 in. seven tracks; sound frame: 60 3/4 x 60 3/4 in. Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Museum purchase and purchase through Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2020.79.1 the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, Cat. 20 administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and through the Julia D. Close Readings Strong Endowment, 2021.31.2 2015 Cat. 23 four-channel video (color, silent); 25:53 min. In collaboration with Jeffrey Mansfield, Ariel Simone Leigh Baker-Gibbs, Alison O’Daniel, Lauren Ridloff born Chicago, Illinois 1968 Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Liz Magic Laser Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2020.79.2 born New York City 1981 Cat. 21 Breakdown 2011 The Star-Spangled Banner (Third Verse) single-channel digital video (color, sound); 2020 9:00 min. charcoal on paper Museum purchase through the Samuel and overall: 58 1/4 x 58 1/4 in. Blanche Koffler Acquisition Fund, 2019.33.2 frame: 60 3/4 x 60 3/4 in. Cat. 24 Museum purchase and purchase through the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and through the Julia D. Strong Endowment, 2021.31.1 Cat. 22 109 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition Simone Leigh Light up My Life (For Sandra Bland) born Chicago, Illinois 1968 2020 Cupboard VIII neon, MDF, paint, faceted hematite, and 2018 aluminum stoneware, steel, raffia, Albany slip 78 x 48 in. 125 x 120 x 120 in. New Britain Museum of American Art, 2021.3, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; General Purchase Fund gift of Bridgitt and Bruce Evans Cat. 28 Cat. 25 Sunshine (for Brayla, Merci, Shakiie, Draya, Cauleen Smith Tatiana, and Bree, Riah, Dominique…) born Riverside, California 1967 2020 neon, MDF, paint, gold-pleated chain link Sojourner 60 x 45 in. 2018 Courtesy of the artist and Morán Morán, single-channel digital video (color, sound); Los Angeles 22:41 min. Cat. 29 Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund, 2020.54.1 Cat. 26 Pilgrim 2017 single-channel digital video (color, sound); 7:41 min. Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund, 2020.54.2 Cat. 27 110 Works Cited Anastas, Rhea. “Rhea Anastas in Conversation Campbell, Andrianna. “Collaboration with Cauleen Smith.” In Cauleen Smith: Give It ‘Breakdown’: A Conversation with Liz Magic or Leave It, edited by Kristi McGuire, 34—49. Laser and Simone Leigh.” In Collaboration Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, and Its (Dis)Contents: Art, Architecture, and University of Pennsylvania, 2019. Photography since 1950, edited by Meredith A. Brown and Michelle Millar Fisher, 122—33. Barliant, Claire. “From a Waxy Yellow Buildup London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2017. to a Nervous Breakdown: The Fleeting Existence of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.” Campt, Tina M. A Black Gaze: Artists Changing East of Borneo, October 10, 2010, https:// How We See. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. eastofborneo.org/articles/from-a-waxy- yellow-buildup-to-a-nervous-breakdown-the- “Cauleen Smith Imagines a Black, Feminist fleeting-existence-of-mary-hartman-mary- Utopia.” Video, 4:54 mins., San Francisco hartman/. Museum of Modern Art, https://www.sfmoma. org/watch/cauleen-smith-imagines-a-black- Birnbaum, Dara. “The Individual Voice as a feminist-utopia-2/. Political Voice: Critiquing and Challenging the Authority of Media.” In Women, Art, and Chacon, Raven. “Raven Chacon: Fluidity of Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, 134—47. Sound: Interview.” By Frank J. Oteri for New Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Music USA. SoundLives, episode 16, June 8, 2022, https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/raven- ———. “My Pop.” Artforum International 43, no. chacon-fluidity-of-sound/. 2 (October 2004). https://www.artforum.com/ print/200408/dara-birnbaum-7663. ———. Raven Chacon: For Zitkála-Šá. New Documents, 2022, 8, https://new-documents. ———. “Talking Back to the Media.” In org/books/for-zitkala-sa-raven-chacon. Patti Podesta, Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, 51—56. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1986. 111 Works Cited Collopy, Peter Sachs. “Video Synthesizers: Ghani, Mariam. “When the Spirits Moved From Analog Computing to Digital Art.” IEEE Them, They Moved.” Artist’s website, https:// Annals of the History of Computing 36, no. 4 www.mariamghani.com/work/1288. (October–December 2014): 74—86. https://doi. org/10.1109/mahc.2014.62. Ghani, Mariam, and Erin Ellen Kelly. “Creating with Mariam Ghani + Erin Ellen Kelly: Part Dean, Aria. “Worry the Image.” ART in America, One.” Panel discussion hosted by Speed Art May 26, 2017. https://www.artnews.com/art- Museum, October 19, 2020, video, 4:50 mins., in-america/features/worry-the-image-63266/. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqm- wo0VEIs. De Bruyn, E. C. H. “‘Sound Is Material’: Dan Graham in Conversation with Eric de Bruyn.” “Global Groove: Nam June Paik and John Grey Room no. 17 (Fall 2004): 107—17. Godfrey.” Electronic Arts Intermix. Accessed June 23, 2022. https://www.eai.org/titles/ Dunn, David, ed. Eigenwelt der Apparatewelt: global-groove. Pioneers of Electronic Art. Santa Fe, NM: The Vasulkas, 1992. Graham, Dan, and Jeff Wall. Two-Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham Duplaix, Sophie, and Marcella Lista, eds. Sons on His Art, edited by Alexander Alberro. & Lumières: Une histoire du son dans l’art du Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. XXe siècle. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2004. Grant, Dwinell. Dwinell Grant Papers, 1930– Eshun, Kodwo. Dan Graham: Rock My Religion. 1988. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. Institution, Washington, D.C. Friedman, Ann. “Christine Sun Kim: On What Greenberger, Alex. “Changing Channels: Dara Listening Looks Like.” The Gentlewoman, Birnbaum’s Televisual Art Comes into Focus.” issue no. 24 (Autumn-Winter 2021), ARTnews, March 27, 2018. https://www. https://thegentlewoman.co.uk/library/ artnews.com/art-news/artists/icons-dara- christine-sun-kim. birnbaum-9973/. 112 Works Cited Gutierrez, Martine. Indigenous Woman. Jafa, Arthur, and Tina M. Campt. “Love Is the New York: Ryan Lee Gallery, 2018. Message, The Plan Is Death.” e-flux Journal, issue 81, April 2017. https://www.e-flux.com/ ———. “Marie Tomanova’s Conversation with journal/81/126451/love-is-the-message-the- Martine Gutierrez.” Ravelin. Accessed July plan-is-death/. 2022. https://www.ravelinmagazine.com/ posts/marie-tomanovas-conversation- Kitch, Sally L. “‘As a Sign That All May martine-gutierrez/. Understand’: Shaker Gift Drawings and Female Spiritual Power.” Winterthur Portfolio Hanhardt, John G., et al. Nam June Paik. New 24, no. 1 (1989): 1–28. http://www.jstor.org/ York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1982. stable/1181214. Hölling, Hanna. Paik’s Virtual Archive: Time, London, Barbara, and Anne Hilde Neset. Change, and Materiality in Media Art. Soundings: A Contemporary Score. New York: Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Museum of Modern Art, 2013. Hughes, Langston. The Weary Blues. New York: Knopf, 1927. Maizels, Mike. “The New Geography: Earth Music and Land Art, Version 2.0.” Art Journal Isgro, Marina. “Video Commune: Nam June Open, October 15, 2014. http://artjournal. Paik at WGBH-TV, Boston.” Tate Papers, no. collegeart.org/?p=5319. 32, Autumn 2019. https://www.tate.org.uk/ research/tate-papers/32/video-commune- McGuire, Kristi, ed. Cauleen Smith: Give nam-june-paik. It or Leave It. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Jafa, Arthur. “Black Visual Intonation.” In The Pennsylvania, 2019. Jazz Cadence of American Culture, edited by Robert G. O’Meally, 264—68. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 113 Works Cited Medien Kunst Netz (Media Art Net). “Nam Orgeman, Keely, and James Turrell, Maibritt June Paik: Exposition of Music–Electronic Borgen, Jason DeBlock, Carol Snow, and Television.” Accessed June 23, 2022. Gregory Zinman. Lumia: Thomas Wilfred http://mkn.zkm.de/works/exposition-of- and the Art of Light. New Haven, CT: Yale music/?desc=full. University Art Gallery, 2017. Mitter, Siddhartha. “Black Lives Shine in Rico Paik, Nam June, and Wulf Herzogenrath. Gatson’s New Show.” Village Voice, July 11, Nam June Paik: Werke 1946–1976. Cologne: 2017, https://feldmangallery.com/assets/pdfs/ Kölnischer Kunstverein, 1977. Gatson_selected-Press.pdf. Peacock, Kenneth. “Instruments to Perform Moen, Kristian. New York’s Animation Culture: Color-Music: Two Centuries of Technological Advertising, Art, Design and Film, 1939–1940. Experimentation.” Leonardo 21, no. 4 (1988): London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. https://doi. 397—406. https://doi.org/10.2307/1578702. org/10.1007/978-3-030-27931-8. “Performing Sound: An Interview with Moritz, William. “The Dream of Color Music, Raven Chacon.” American Academy in Berlin, And Machines That Made It Possible.” https://www.americanacademy.de/ Animation World Magazine, issue 2.1 (April performing-sound/. 1997). https://www.awn.com/mag/issue2.1/ articles/moritz2.1.html. Randerson, Janine D. “Cloud Music: A Cloud System.” In Proceedings of the 19th O’Grady, Megan. “Arthur Jafa in Bloom.” International Symposium of Electronic Art New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019, (ISEA2013), edited by Ross Harley, Laura https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/t- Fisher, and Kathy Cleland. http://ses.library. magazine/arthur-jafa-in-bloom.html. usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/9475. 114 Works Cited “Raven Chacon: Artist Statement, December “Steina and Woody Vasulka Biographical 2021,” Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chronology (1937–1969).” Daniel Langlois https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts. Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, org/recipients/raven-chacon/. 2001. https://www.fondation-langlois.org/ e/collection/vasulka/archives/chrono_ Rhodes-Pitts, Sharifa. “Artist Unknown, Vessel cadre.html. Possibly for Water.” In Simone Leigh: Luhring Augustine, September 8–October 20, 2018, Ugelvig, Jeppe. “Sonic Identity Politics 17—39. New York: Luhring Augustine, 2018. with Christine Sun Kim.” Discover (blog). DIS Magazine, January 20, 2016, http:// Rogers, Holly. Sounding the Gallery: Video ghebaly.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/ and the Rise of Art-Music. New York: Oxford Kim_2016_Dis-Mag.pdf. University Press, 2013. Vitiello, Stephen. “Stephen Vitiello and Steve Sargent, Antwaun. “Arthur Jafa and the Future Roden: The Spaces Contained in Each.” of Black Cinema.” Interview Magazine, January Interview by Steve Roden. Bomb Magazine, 11, 2017, https://www.interviewmagazine.com/ October 1, 2013, https://bombmagazine.org/ art/arthur-jafa. articles/steve-roden-and-stephen-vitiello/. Schmidt, Tomas. “Exposition of Music.” In Nam Watts, Robert, David Behrman, and Bob June Paik and Wulf Herzogenrath, Nam June Diamond. “Cloud Music.” In Peter Weibel, Paik: Werke 1946–1976. Cologne: Kölnischer Woody Vasulka, and Steina Vasulka, Eigenwelt Kunstverein, 1977. Der Apparate-Welt: Pioneers of Electronic Art, edited by David Dunn, 152—53. Santa Fe, NM: The Vasulkas, 1992. 115 Suggested Reading Abbado, Adriano. Visual Music Masters: Duplaix, Sophie, and Marcella Lista. Sons & Abstract Explorations: History and Lumières: Une histoire du son dans l’art du XXe Contemporary Research. Milan: Skira, 2017. siècle. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2004. Bois, Yve-Alain, Branden W. Joseph, Rebecca Elder, R. Bruce. Harmony and Dissent: Film Y. Kim, Liz Kotz, James Pritchett, and Julia and Avant-Garde Art Movements in the Early Robinson. The Anarchy of Silence: John Cage Twentieth Century. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid and Experimental Art. Barcelona: Museo de Laurier University Press, 2008. Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona, 2009. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant Than the Sun: Born, Georgina. “On Musical Mediation: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Ontology, Technology and Creativity.” Books, 1998. Twentieth Century Music 2, no. 1 (March 2005): 7—36. Hanhardt, John G., Gregory Zinman, and Edith Decker-Phillips, eds. We Are in Open Circuits: Brougher, Kerry, ed. Visual Music: Synaesthesia Writings by Nam June Paik. Cambridge, MA: in Art and Music since 1900. New York: Thames MIT Press, 2019. & Hudson, 2005. Higgins, Hannah. Fluxus Experience. Berkeley: Campt, Tina M. Listening to Images. Durham, University of California Press, 2002. NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Jennings, Gabrielle, ed. Abstract Video: Cassel Oliver, Valerie. The Dirty South: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art. Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the With a foreword by Kate Mondloch. Oakland: Sonic Impulse. Richmond: Virginia Museum of University of California Press, 2015. Fine Arts, 2021. Joselit, David. Feedback: Television Against Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 116 Suggested Reading Joseph, Branden W. Beyond the Dream Robinson, Dylan. Hungry Listening: Resonant Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Cage (A “Minor” History). New York: Zone Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Books, 2008. Press, 2020. Kahn, Douglas. Noise, Water, Meat: A History Silverthorne, Diane V., ed. Music, Art and of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Performance from Liszt to Riot Grrrl: The Press, 2001. Musicalization of Art. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. Korsgaard, Mathias Bonde. Music Video After MTV: Audiovisual Studies, New Media, and Smith, Owen F. Fluxus: The History of an Popular Music. London: Routledge, 2017. Attitude. San Diego, CA: San Diego State University Press, 1998. Kotz, Liz. “Post-Cagean Aesthetics and the ‘Event’ Score.” October 95 (Winter 2001): Young, La Monte, and Jackson Mac Low, eds. 55—89. An Anthology of Chance Operations, Concept Art, Anti-Art, Indeterminacy, Improvisation, London, Barbara. Video/Art: The First Fifty Meaningless Work, Natural Disasters, Plans Years. London: Phaidon, 2021. of Action, Mathematics, Poetry, Essays. New York: George Maciunas & Jackson Mac Low, London, Barbara, and Anne Hilde Neset. 1962. Soundings: A Contemporary Score. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2013. Youngblood, Gene. Expanded Cinema. With an introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller. New Mollaghan, Aimee. The Visual Music Film. York: Dutton, 1970. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Zinman, Gregory. Making Images Move: Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: Handmade Cinema and Other Arts. Oakland: The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limit. University of California Press, 2020. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 117 Image Credits Unless otherwise specified, all photographs/stills were Fig. 1: Getty Images; fig. 2: © ADÁL, Courtesy of the Estate provided by the owners or collections of the artworks noted of Adál Maldonado and Roberto Paradise; fig. 3: National in the captions and are reproduced with permission. Every Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution; fig. 4: effort has been made to obtain permissions for all copyright- Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington; fig. 5: Photo protected images. by Lawrence Schiller / Polaris Communications / Getty Images; fig. 6: © Martine Gutierrez, courtesy of the artist and Additional credits: RYAN LEE Gallery, New York; fig. 7: Photo by Scott McIntyre Cats. 1–3: © 2012, ADÁL; cat. 4: © 2002, ADÁL; cat. 5: for The New York Times; fig. 8: Images from Bourneville and video © 2015, Raven Chacon / composition © 2001, Raven P. Regnard, Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière: Chacon; cats. 6–10: © 2019–20, Raven Chacon; cat. 11: © service de M. Charcot (Paris: Progrès médical, 1878) / 2019, Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly; cats. 12, 14–16: © Courtesy Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, via Mariam Ghani and Erin Kelly, Courtesy of the artists and RYAN archive.org; fig. 9: Bill Ray / Life Pictures / Shutterstock; fig. LEE Gallery, New York; cat. 13: Gift of the artists, courtesy 10: Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; fig. 11: of RYAN LEE Gallery, New York; cat. 17: © 2012, Martine Courtesy of Clavilux.org. From the Carol and Eugene Epstein Gutierrez / Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New Collection. Photo: Courtesy Yale University Art Gallery; fig. York; cat. 18: © 2016, Arthur Jafa. Image courtesy of the artist 12: © 1941, Jean O’Hart Grant; figs. 13, 17: © Nam June Paik and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome; cat. 18 (p. Estate; fig. 14: Photograph by Peter Moore; © Northwestern 46) installation view: Photography by Thomas Müller, © Arthur University. Courtesy Peter Moore Photography Archive, Jafa, Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery; cat. 19: © Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Arthur Jafa, Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery; cat. Northwestern University Libraries; fig. 16: Photo by Brownie 20: © 2018, Christine Sun Kim / Courtesy of the artist and Harris / Corbis via Getty Images; fig. 18: © 1978 Steina François Ghebaly Gallery, and White Space, Beijing; cat. 20 Vasulka / Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; (pp. 20, 54) installation view: Photo: Kaelan Burkett, courtesy fig. 19: © 1979, Robert Watts Estate, David Behrman, Bob MASS MoCA; cat. 21: © 2015, Christine Sun Kim / Courtesy Diamond; fig. 20: © 1978–79 Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy of the artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles. Photos: Peter Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; fig. 21: © 1982–84 Harris Studio, courtesy MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Dan Graham. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New MA; cats. 22, 23: © 2020, Christine Sun Kim / Courtesy of the York; fig. 22: © 2011, Stephen Vitiello; fig. 23: © 2001, artist and François Ghebaly Gallery, and White Space, Beijing; Aunrico Gatson; fig. 24: © 2004 Cory Arcangel / Courtesy cat. 24: © 2011, Simone Leigh and Liz Magic Laser; cat. 25: Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; fig. 25: © 2005, © Simone Leigh. Photograph by Ron Amstutz; cats. 26, 27: © Takeshi Murata; fig. 26: © 1999, Romy Achituv and Camille 2020, Cauleen Smith; cat. 29: Photo courtesy of Jack Shainman Utterback; fig. 27: © 2011, Eve Sussman / Rufus Corporation. Gallery, New York. 118 Smithsonian https://scholarlypress.si.edu Scholarly Press ISBN-13: 978-1-944466-68-8 (online) ISBN-13: 978-1-944466-69-5 (print) This publication is open access and available online from the publisher.