Re-imagined, Multidisciplinary, Afro-centric Art History

Michelle Jacques

For my REWRITE project, I would focus on an exploration of what a ‘textbook’ that introduced such an art history could look like, expanding my understanding of a publication to propose a concept that could begin to successfully encompass the complexities of this re-imagined, multidisciplinary, Afo-centric art history.

1. The project is premised in the notion of rewriting the art historical canon, which of course is a re-write that has been approached from many critical perspectives. I have been mulling over the idea of this project as an exhibition or publication for years, but have come to the conclusion that the dissemination strategy needs to be more revolutionary than that. I have begun to imagine a new story unfolding in a multi-platform site that blurs everything – the architectural and textual, the public and the private, high and low, production and presentation, etc.

2. The eventual product might be a virtual reality experience, or better yet, a physical experience in a multi-disciplinary presentation space (an art museum that incorporates a recording studio, hair salon, rum shack, Baptist church, movie theatre, i.e. places that Black people hang out. I think of Hitsville, USA as an inspiration). However, at this early stage of the project, I still need to identify the milestones of the un-canon and the broad strokes of the dissemination methodology; this could happen in the form of simple architectural and programming plans in physical and/or virtual formats.

Image of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic performing at the Granada Theater in Dallas, Texas, 2006. Photographer Richard Anderson, This file is licensed under cc-by-sa-2.0. Source: Wikicommons.