{"id":7545,"date":"2017-11-16T13:49:59","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T13:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.saic.edu\/cate\/?p=7545"},"modified":"2025-01-09T11:09:43","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T17:09:43","slug":"on-sondra-perry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/2017\/11\/16\/on-sondra-perry\/","title":{"rendered":"On Sondra Perry"},"content":{"rendered":"

We close this season of Conversations at the Edge<\/a> with a performance and video<\/a> by New York-based interdisciplinary artist Sondra Perry whose work critically examines the technologies and power relations that affect representation and black identity.<\/p>\n

This week, we welcome School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduate student Lindsay A. Hutchens to reflect upon Sondra Perry’s\u00a0Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sondra Perry, still from Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One, 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sondra Perry\u2019s Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One<\/em> (2015) begins in the midst of a time-honored tradition: staging a family photograph. The viewer is positioned so that we are across the street looking back at a family in matching black sweats and chroma key green ski masks arranged in front of a home. They look cozy and warm on what would otherwise be a miserable cold and grey day.\u00a0 \u201cYou don\u2019t have to do it if you don\u2019t want to,\u201d is shouted from the camera, from Perry. Directions to aunts and uncles are given and repeated.\u00a0 \u201cCCCHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSEEEE.\u00a0 CCCHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSEEEE.
\nCCCHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSEEEE.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry frames this video against a chroma key computer desktop, which she uses to choreograph multiple windows and files of her family and more. While her works have been installed at MoMA PS1 and screened in theater spaces, I have only ever seen Sondra Perry\u2019s Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One<\/em>, or any of her videos on her website. There, I\u2019ve viewed them by myself, and in a way that mirrors many of the visual systems she references.<\/p>\n

Sondra Perry\u2019s work first came into my consciousness thanks to my good friend and curator, Natalie Zelt, who lives in Austin, Texas, but is from Houston where Perry has been a CORE Artist in Residence at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. I regularly make photographic and video work using my own family as subject matter, and Natalie knows this. Coming from what seems to be a much larger family than myself, Perry has fascinated me by drawing attention to the role of photographic mediation in intimate relationships. The camera is the loudest of all participants in the video, highlighted in layered windows, visible access to play buttons and runtimes, audible direction from behind the camera, and its presence repeatedly in the hands of those being recorded. Country also plays a role. Rituals involving the American flag are played out, first subtly and then explicitly. But it is the moments of specificity to Perry\u2019s family that bring us closer, provide access, and establish the stakes. Perry\u2019s grandmother is trying to tell about her process of burying flags too worn to fly, while her mother loudly proclaims \u201cIt\u2019s under the collard greens!\u201d<\/p>\n

In one early scene, Perry shows her hand as a director. Handing the camera off to a relative, she asks her mother to respond in a certain way to the sweater she is wearing. For a moment, the audience is just as confused as Perry\u2019s mother. She knows the sweater, but is she meant to know the sweater?\u00a0 She\u2019s acting surprised, but is she meant to have expected it? Direction is given from on-camera Perry as well as the male voiced videographer, both telling the mother in so many words, \u201cyou do you.\u201d Mom, perform mom. Not mom, but you as a mom. That\u2019s not how you use your hands. Perform yourself, with direction. Act natural. To which Perry\u2019s mother obliges, and ends the scene by reminding, \u201cWell, you are my baby. You can\u2019t take that away from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Perry introduces heavy bass with Venus X\u2019s 2015 track \u201cBeautiful. Gorgeous. Golden. Girl,\u201d leaping generations with music as well as casting. Three young women cheese in selfie mode and dance on the sidewalk, two with long glossy ponytails popping out the top of their chroma key green ski masks.\u00a0 They record themselves in a way no one else has yet. Flipping hair. Giggling. Performing without being directed on-camera. Their youth brings attention to the hyper-visibility of the chroma key green ski masks, and pushes against Perry\u2019s control as maker. These women have literally cut a hole in the masks for their hair to poke through, which Perry combs with care in return.<\/p>\n

The final scene shows Perry\u2019s entire family together at the table, poised to peel sweet potatoes or yams, again in matching black sweats and ski masks. Another family tradition, warm and cozy, which makes me almost smell Thanksgiving. Perry asks if her grandmother has chosen a song for everyone to sing while they peel, and eventually accompanied by hand claps, together they sing a gospel about family caring for one another. Another direction is given from Perry to \u201ctry and connect with each other, somehow, without talking.\u201d Nearly to the end, Perry\u2019s grandmother is seen at the table, having finished with peeling, attempting to remove her mask. She has a ponytail of her own, greyed and in curly tendrils but just as playful as the three young women, and Perry\u2019s mother along with a masked female relation reach over to help so as not to mess the matriarch\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Perry\u2019s Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One<\/em> embraces conversations about agency and representation in lens-based work, as well as the ways traditions and ritual are passed down through family\u00a0 But it\u2019s through these in-between acts of care and affection\u2013ponytails being guided in and out of ski masks\u2013which Perry seems to have picked up on in the moment, in the middle of construction and long after suggestion of non-verbal intimacy, that do something more for me. They remind me of sitting in front of my grandmother\u2019s chaise lounge so she could brush my hair while we watched The Golden Girls<\/em> together. That is the thing that pricks me\u2014these moments in which media is entwined with care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We close this season of Conversations at the Edge with a performance and video by New York-based interdisciplinary artist Sondra Perry whose work critically examines the technologies and power relations that affect representation and black identity. This week, we welcome School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduate student Lindsay A. Hutchens to reflect upon […]<\/p>\n

Read More… from On Sondra Perry<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":7426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[45,849,872,368,468,547],"class_list":["post-7545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-22","tag-3d","tag-blackness","tag-essays","tag-lindsay-a-hutchens","tag-performance","tag-sondra-perry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7545"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9797,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7545\/revisions\/9797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}