Evil Nigger Pt IV: A Five Part Performance for Julius Eastman

2017, performance with LaMont Hamilton, Shantelle Courvosier Jackson and Nyugen Smith, Issue Project Room and The Kitchen, New York, NY*

*video documentation may be accessed here (hyperlink opens new window)

For this iteration, I investigated Julius Eastman as an archetypal trickster (i.e. B’rer Rabbit or the Signifyin’ Monkey), within the course of Black American cultural practice and a tradition of subterfuge. Here, I am worked with ‘Evil Nigger,’ sonically and conceptually. Specifically the opening motif (me-re-do), as existing within the canon of popular music as ‘broody’ and ‘evil’ (Wolves In The Throne Room’s ‘Vastness And Sorrow’ as well as Three Six Mafia’s ‘Chop Me Up’ are examples which immediately come to mind). In addition to the composition ‘Evil Nigger,’ I looked towards The Eastman-led SEM ensemble’s performance of John Cage’s ‘Song Books’ at SUNY Buffalo in 1975. Performing Cage’s directives, to do what they wish so long as it falls under the philosophy of Henry David Thoreau, Eastman proclaimed "a radical new love" and proceeded to remove a white woman’s top, then fully undressed a white male crowd-goer. This act of ‘a radical new love’ incensed Cage. What’s important to me is not this rare moment in which we see Cage and Eastman at odds, but searching for the nuance between a joyful, loving act being received as anything but. This phenomenon, which might be seen as a full-on embodiment of Eastman as Trickster, is my point of departure, performatively.