Still Searching…

By describing a series of aesthetic strategies, I want to consider how the production of an image influences the way it moves, where aesthetics gives agency over circulation. For good reason, images of Black bodies are often examined at the point of consumption, the point at which an image becomes an object. What I will develop instead is an argument for the centrality and manipulation of form at the point of production.

The aesthetic strategies which will be proposed here – redaction, affect, dislocation, construction and errantry – are by no means exhaustive or prescriptive. They are intended as a guide for making, a means for moving which resists the voicing of images on behalf of Black bodies by treating the Black body like a ventriloquist’s dummy… A strategic approach is particularly important to the representation of Black culture, as the voicing of Black bodies is mired in photographic traditions which seek control or to render them invisible. The aesthetic strategies proposed here offer a lexicon to voice images by Black voices with agency in their representation. Not only are they useful for the Black experimental cinema which will be considered in the coming weeks but can be employed by others with a desire to move similarly; image-makers in diaspora, in minority, under oppression or working counter culturally, etc.

And so we move.’