Hey, my name is American, I am an artist. I primarily do sculpture and video work and I am based in Brooklyn, NY.

So when I decided to make Blue Life Seminar I had been thinking a lot about Christopher Dorner and what happened, which if you are not familiar, he was a Black ex-LAPD officer who reported one of his fellow officers for excessive use of force and then when they investigated they decided he was lying and he was fired. He continually tried to appeal getting back on the force, which didn’t happen, and then he published this manifesto about the racism and violence within the police department and then he went on a spree hunting different police officers and some of their family members. But this happened at a time shortly before Black Lives Matter really began and conversations around Blue Lives Matter definitely hadn’t started yet. And just this idea of Blackness and blueness was a lot different at the time. And so I was thinking about what this story about Christopher Dorner could mean in this moment that was sort of after Black Lives Matter had come to prominence and in response to Blue Lives Matter. And Blue Lives Matter was a direct response to Black Lives Matter, of police feeling like they were under attack and trying to sort of position themselves as a social or racial group. Which sounds absurd, which is partially how I came to this idea in the video of sort of critiquing blueness as if someone were trying to say this is my racial or subject position.

Then the other thing that I was pulling from in this work was the biography of the character Dr. Manhattan from the comic book the Watchmen. And this was before the HBO series, so it’s entirely coincidental that that came out shortly after that, I did not know that was happening. But the reason that that was also on my mind was because this character Dr. Manhattan, he’s literally a blue man, and in the original story he begins as this physicist. And he’s a white man and he then dies in this freak physics accident and then he comes back as this all powerful blue being, and then he gets recruited by the government to be basically a weapon in the Vietnam war. He gets annoyed at the fact that he is being used as a weapon and then he abandons humans to go to Mars. And I always thought that what was interesting about this character was his sort of position in time. He can exist in multiple times at once. He was extremely apathetic about everything because he had sort of seen everything. And so for me, I kind of thought what if Dr. Manhattan had actually been Black in his physical life or how much of his experience and thinking about what this subject position feels like, sounds similar to the abjectness of a Black American experience.

So these two characters came together for me and that’s where I brought them together in this video. And in terms of their biographies, Christopher Dorner, he sort of put his life into becoming a police officer—he was expertly trained and then he felt sort of betrayed by the police. So seeing a relationship between that and how Dr. Manhattan felt about the U.S. government, and both of them sort of having this breaking point, and then obviously handling it in very different ways, but trying to draw a parallel between those two stories. Yeah, and that’s how they came together and the script of the video is a little bit of a combination between some of what Christopher Dorner said in his manifesto as well as some aspects of Dr. Manhattan’s biography that I sort of wrote in, wrote them in a way that they could correspond and interweave with each other so it sounds like it is one person speaking.

The Performative Vulnerability of Blue Lives

So, in the installation you have the video sort of facing these sculptures, which are the desks with the police shields attached to them and thinking about this idea of Blue Lives Matter or this sort of ideology or mentality of police officers that was really what I wanted to critique and also explore. So, the video is sort of reprimanding the police for choosing to identify as blue, and this blue figure is sort of saying why would you want to be blue? I’m blue and it is painful and why would anyone want that? It’s sort of a little bit satirical but it’s also very serious because of the subject matter.

But also with these sculptures, when you see them in the installation, you presume who might be meant to occupy them and who would be sitting in them, which you can imagine is a police officer and they have this shield that’s covering their face in a way that they actually wouldn’t be able to see the video at all if they were sitting in it. At the base of each sculpture is a few books about police identity and police life. There is one that is sort of like a religious book about, sort of scriptures you can have with you while you are policing. Some are sort of about family life or the psychic life of being a police officer. One was written for the wives of police officers. One is about having a sentimental relationship to people who are blue, meaning cops, so all these books that are written for cops and probably by cops or people very close to cops that sort of are meant to address the psychological idea of being blue so to speak. And so, by including those, I was trying to convey these characters of this blue lives mentality, but also put them in this position of scrutiny and thinking about what it would mean to be in this classroom.

So, some of the psychological profile that I sort of read into this Blue Lives Matter mentality is fear and fragility and feeling vulnerable but at the same time being in this position to be able to cause so much harm and violence against vulnerable people in an actual way. So I feel like that claim to vulnerability is sort of false because these are people operating on behalf of the state, with a lot of power. In these sculptures, seeing that shield there that’s so much more than you would ever need to have. And it’s sort of dramatized in its defensiveness. And also the sculptures are built to be quite tall, so they almost are a little bit like high chairs, so, infantilizing of those that would be sitting in them. So all of these play around a sort of fragility or a performative vulnerability that doesn’t actually exist.

I think blueness relates to this idea of colorblindness or I don’t see color in the fact that it positions blueness as if it were race, or as if it’s this social group that needs to be protected. So in that process it does devalue actual races and ethnicities. It kind of says, Black life does not matter, nor does any other racial background. It sort of says that these police officers don’t have any backgrounds, they are all just blue, and that they are together by being blue. So, I think in that process of identifying as blue it does sort of erase any sort of, or claims to erase any sort of racial gaze or racial recognition which, as we know, still does exist, even if they pretend that it doesn’t.

A More Sustainable Life

In Blue Life Seminar, in terms of writing Dr. Manhattan’s biography I did take some liberties in sort of understanding what his position might be or how he might feel about everything. In the original comic book he does have this sentimental, nostalgic perspective all the time, he is sort of perpetually nostalgic. It also sort of made me think about what his relationship might be to Mars, for example. In the comic book he’s on Mars, he is building this infrastructure by turning the sand into glass and then he just builds these things out of nowhere, but he plays a lot with the literal soil in the place, and so that sort of made me think about what his relationship might be to this land where, in his concept of time, he has probably spent decades or more there, he has spent a lot of time there.

And also just using it as a way to plug in this idea of having a sustainable relationship to the land and acknowledging the land that you are on. So, by saying that he has this indigenous logic of not trying to take or own anything, which is very opposite of what the U.S. and the U.S. government is about. So, I sort of tried to say that in his act of leaving the Earth and going to Mars, he is also disavowing himself from the ideology of American-ness and the United States-ness. So part of that was about saying, I’m done, I’m not killing people, I’m not taking anything, I’m not owning anything, I’m I’m just chilling on Mars and trying to lead a more sustainable life.

Policing as Seeing

I definitely think of policing as a way of seeing and a sort of visual frame that recognizes people through different lenses, such as guilty or criminal or as targets. And that’s a framing that I think is also emphasized by this notion of Blue Lives Matter. In the film 2015, where you see sort of the view of the cop car that is driving and it has this heads up display imposed on the screen and you see it sort of identifying different people as they are walking, as potential targets and things like that. That was really meant to reflect an actual visual process that cops undergo in choosing to identify people or declare them as targets or criminal or guilty. Usually based on racially profiling them or through different types of behaviors or clothing or even their neighborhood. And that’s also important because with this film it takes place in different neighborhoods in Brooklyn such as Brownsville and Flatbush and areas where there is a heavy police presence. And this predictive policing software, that I sort of made the piece about or in reference to, do use geography as a way to say that they are not racially profiling people because they say that it’s not based on individuals its based on the place. But as we all know, a place can sort of be a stand in for what kind of people live there. So, all of these are sort of ways of seeing or framing and identifying that presupposes certain people are guilty or capable of certain actions, and then using that as an excuse to leverage violence or harm against them as sanctioned by the state. So, all of this notion of seeing is wrapped up in both the pieces.

2015 and Preditive Policing

In the video, 2015, I was really thinking about this contradiction of a crime that may or may not exist. And when you see the films it’s not entirely clear what is happening but it’s very ominous. You sort of, you see the cop car driving around somewhat erratically. You hear the cop getting out of the car and then suddenly the screen might say “crime deterred,” so you presume something was handled. I don’t know what or in what way. And there are different moments where it is a little more ambiguous than others.

There is also a scene near the beginning where they just drive through this road that, where on the road they identify many different subjects but they don’t do anything in particular, they just have their siren on, they drive through this street and then it says “Crime deterred.” And you’re like okay, well what exactly did they do? And that also alludes to the sort of conceit of predictive policing in that, whether or not it even works or does anything, and that is also something extremely debatable, whether it's actually even doing what it claims to do. I think this notion of whether something is actually happening, whether a crime is taking place, whether the police are a legitimate way to deal with this or not is all sort of brought into question through how it is framed in the video.

When I was making this video I was thinking about this gamified aspect of policing and also the predictive policing or statistics-based policing, even before algorithmic policing, is sort of about collecting statistics, comparing statistics, and deciding where to send officers and what they should be looking for and they are trying to fill their quota by arresting people and things like that, so it is very much about collecting statistics and trying to tick them off, tick boxes or gather or collect. And that all plays into the gamification of this role of the officer. You definitely feel that in this film as well because of the heads up display, it's meant to look a little bit of the future, sort of like Minority Report-style aesthetic, while at the same time taking place in the past. So it feels like this was happening in the past but it feels like it was happening of the future. The whole aesthetic does feel sort of reminiscent of a videogame but at the same time it is very mundane and boring, almost, so you also have this contradiction about, like — for some people, they told me it almost makes them want something to happen because they are watching this video and sort of not sure what exactly is supposed to be the outcome.

Reception

When I first made this show, I was a bit concerned about getting push back from police or police affiliated people. And it didn’t end up happening, fortunately. And also the gallery where it was showing, they were also a little bit worried about that being an issue. But I think there are a couple of reasons why that didn’t happen. And one being that art and, specifically art that is shown in galleries, has a way of being sort of insulated from a lot of people. And a lot of the people probably who saw it or who followed my work are a little more progressive in their thinking or aren’t really interested in the police or Blue Lives Matter, so they are more willing to take up this critique. And I think the other reason being that the way that it appears in the show is somewhat subtle. Even though you could say that a lot of the iconography of the show is sort of very visceral, like the police shields or something like that, it is still very subtle in terms of what it is saying or in being confrontational towards the police. Or even the video it has this sort of fantastical music around it, which doesn’t sound like aggressive or anything, so I think that through that sort of coding, though it wasn’t entirely intentional, does sort of put it in a position where it’s a little bit harder to parse that unless you are really looking for, or reading, or listening to the work.

Identification and Aesthetics

Especially with 2015, you are put in this position of the police officer. Essentially you sort of in there watching the dashcam, you could be driving the car. And I think different people have had a different relationship to that. For me, I wanted people to have a critical perspective and sort of just think about their resistance or discomfort in being in this position of seeing how this all unfolds, but also just sort of seeing the subtlety of the violence that is baked into the interface that you are watching.

And I think with the other show, with I am Blue and with the desk sculptures, when people entered into the show, they were always like not sure where they should go. Should they sit in the desks? Should they stand between the desks and the screen? Should they go behind the desks? And I think that was also putting people in a position of trying to figure out where exactly they fit and what their position is.

Appropriating Technology

A lot of my practice has used different technologies, networked technologies such as chat bots or building apps, and things like that, and why that’s been important for me, is sort of recognizing that in my own life as sort of a means of getting information or knowledge or sort of being able to have a critical perspective towards what I am engaging with. So a lot of these projects are really just about putting information where it wasn’t meant to be, or changing the frame around a certain bit of information.

With something like Sandy speaks, it was about changing the conversation around Sandra Bland away from this viral image of her being apprehended by the police, to her words that she was saying about her life and things like that, long before she was arrested. And also being able to give people answers about the prison industrial complex and what their rights are if they are apprehended, and different useful information that people might actually want to have but they find really hard to access.

And with the app that I made in connection with 2015, which was called 1956/2054. Which I won’t get too into, but that app was about providing information about predictive policing through news articles that you might not normally come across. So it was essentially a feed of news of what was going on around predictive policing and you would download it on your phone in the museum and then you would probably forget about it, and then for the next few months you might get little pings or notifications when there was news about this topic. So kind of, just a way to put this information into people's hands and so that they could sort of form their own idea about what this thing really is.

And so it has been important for me in thinking about how to change people's relationships around technology and primarily Black people or people that are often told that they don’t belong or don’t have a relationship with technology, sort of trying to change that by reframing how it is used and what it can potentially be. As far as whether I think that technology or high technology has the ability to counter all the racism and bias that is built into Silicon Valley, I mean, I don’t think it can, but I think that as long as it is a very normal part of our lives, we should at least think about what potential it has to do something other than what we are told it is meant to do. Which I think there is always room for, because as time goes by, our understanding of what technology is capable of gets narrower and narrower, but even our phone or computer has many capabilities to do so many things, so even just knowing that is so much more beneficial than just understanding it in this narrow way that you are told it should be used.