Letter From Halifax
Published in C Magazine, Issue 83, Fall 2004
I'm holding in my mind these two concerns, which have created a strange balance of pressure, like I'm holding two lumps of stuff in my hands: two ingots-of-worry.
When I first decided to be an artist, I had an incredible sense of urgency about my work. I had to express myself to others because I felt unbearably alone. It worked. I expressed myself and people understood. Now I don't feel alone as often or with as much intensity. Instead, I spend my time trying to re-conceptualize my job as director of a "regional" Artist Run Centre (the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Halifax, Nova Scotia) to make it feel even a tiny bit pressing.
At its worst, Artist Run Culture feels to me like a Frankenstein's monster stitched out of the offal of the white middle class, with the sole aim of distributing money to people who would get money anyway, and probably in about the same amounts. People like me. And Frankenstein (being in this instance Canadian) gives us the money in quite small sums, using the most lengthy and sober process imaginable.
It seems this way especially in the face of those things that Artist Run Culture is most akin to: charity and entertainment. Why not just fold ourselves in to one or the other of those entirely worthy cultural institutions? What is the special territory we designate for art practice--and more specifically, for Artist-Run-Culture? Contemporary art succeeds neither as good works nor as pleasurable diversion. This has become a kind of non-time-sensitive crisis for me. My life has come to be comprised of non-time-sensitive crises.
My friend S. was beaten by a small group of teenage boys on Thursday, June 17th. We had been out dancing. It was the mainstream, explicit hip-hop night at the Marquee, a venue with that special characteristic possessed by only small town nightclubs—it serves multiple populations: Goths, jocks, art kids, bangers and the occasional rockabilly punker. On Tuesdays, it's "Retro Night", which invariably features Video Killed the Radio Star and closes with Dancing Queen. Other nights, they feature Celtic music or skate punk or post-grunge indie-rock. Recently, they brought in an up and coming Christian rock band. Halifax is small, and in many ways this is an advantage, although I may not have made the reasons why apparent here.
In any case, we had a nice time on June 17th. S. left the Marquee a bit before us, and while Cooper and I were going home, we ran into him on his way to Video Difference to get a movie. When he stopped to talk to us, I saw three kids behind him. We were on Creighton, a side street in the North End, which is considered the sketchy part of Halifax. Halifax is a city with a shameful racial legacy, but the story I was told while I was growing up (at home, in school, on the CBC) was that Nova Scotia (Halifax and Preston particularly) were the glorious last stop on the Underground Railroad; that American slaves escaped and made it to this great province of equality and liberty. What wasn't stressed as often was the story of Africville, a poor African Nova Scotian neighborhood that was demolished by the city between 1964 and 1968. The citizens of Africville were uprooted and relocated by local government in a disgusting act of paternalism.
Increasingly, non-Black university students and artists populate the North End. Just like in Chicago, where I lived until two months ago, we're not totally welcome in the communities we're invading. Ryan is one of those not-totally-welcome people.
Anyway, I saw these three kids behind S., sort of following him, and I started to tease him:
"You should be careful, dude. Those kids are going to fuck with you. You're going to get mugged."
I have asked myself again and again whether it was straight-up racism that made me think those kids were going to mug S. “But they were a group of young toughs!” I think to myself. They were wearing baggy clothes and lurking behind him! They were all boys and they were watching him in what I drunkenly decided was a predatory way. Two of them were Black. I couldn't identify the race of the third boy.
The kids went around a corner into an alley. I could hear them talking. Me and Cooper talked to S. for about ten minutes. We watched S. put his headphones back on and then we biked away. Thirty to fifty seconds later, S. said, the kids came out and started talking to him.
"Hey man, you drunk?"
"No," S. lied.
"You got any money for us?"
"No!" S. lied again.
I have tried to picture S. saying this. I imagine his face to be fearful and contemptuous at once.
Then the kid who was addressing S. hit him across the jaw with a closed fist and immediately jumped back about three feet. Then the guy behind S. hit him with a two-by-four in the back of his head and S. collapsed. He tried to crawl away. He couldn't see because there was blood in his eyes. Then all the kids (who ranged in age from about 12 to 16, S. thinks) dragged S. into a construction site. They took S.'s Walkman and wallet, hit him with the two by four again and tried to push his body through a window into the basement—in that order. S. believed that if they got him in there, they would kill him with the two by four. He fought for his life and he escaped from the group of bloodthirsty children. He went to the hospital in an ambulance and they put twenty staples in his head.
Now we call him "Staples". I don't know if anyone really thinks it's funny, but it always makes S. laugh. We really like it when he laughs.
The reason I don't think this is hopeless is because I believe there are channels open to me to make positive change.
For instance, there's an organization here dedicated to exhibiting and promoting work by African Nova Scotian visual artists. It's called the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia, and their gallery is called B Space. BANNS recently organized a show called "Home: The Art of Preston". Here is an excerpt from the curatorial essay by David Woods and Dr. Harold Pearse:
"The community of Preston, consisting of East Preston, North Preston and Cherrybrook, is a part of the Halifax Regional Municipality located to the north east of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Originally settled in the late 1700s by free Black Loyalists as well as enslaved Blacks, Preston represents one of Canada's most significant centres for Black History and culture. The vitality and richness of the culture in the Prestons was familiar to David Woods, who spent much of his youth in the community. He knew that there were people of all ages who were engaged in all kinds of artistic activities(…). Some had formal training and some were self-taught. Most were practicing their art and craft in quiet, personal and unassuming ways.(…) This exhibition provides some insights into a particular community (and the idea of community) through the art and poetry of artists who live there and those who, while not residents, feel connected to the place."
The show included a series of graphite drawings that I really admired by a Preston-based artist called Fabian Fraser. They were kind of "scenes from life"--highly detailed, incredibly skillful renderings of his family and community.
Unfortunately, I was only able to find two of his images on the site, and when I went to BANNS to ask about him, Gayna Theophilus, the curatorial assistant, told me that he's almost impossible to contact, and that she particularly liked his work as well and had been pursuing him herself.
Now, this sets up a particularly fucked up relationship, and one that I certainly never expected. Now I'm the capital C (for colonial) Curator looking for the elusive, enigmatic artist on the social margins. I thought I was the socially marginal one! Once again, I have to realize that I am not.
There is urgency here. It is an urgent matter that I find ways to be white that don't contribute to the rage and alienation of the children who beat S., and especially that don't contribute to their subsequent incarceration. The Khyber may flounder and fail; I may never make another experimental art video. Both those things would sadden but not ruin me. In this other area, there is no margin for error. I have to act different in a way that keeps Black teens out of jail.
-- Emily Vey Duke, Summer 2004