To Fabian Tompsett,

The subject your email is a constant source of debate especially amongst musicians. In the work I'm currently engaged with below I too I find myself agreeing with Roiyah.

Dub Sweat And Tears – a journey of discovery
Fifty years of black music in the UK reflected in a multi-media photographic exhibition.

BMET will be staging Dub Sweat and Tears a photographic exhibition as part of the Destination Brixton Expo - July 2003.

Exhibition objectives;
To create as much as possible an animated experience, reflecting the level of interaction between, the audience and the media and black music, over the last fifty years in the UK. Showcasing from a Black music perspective the level of social and cultural exchange over this period. In addition there will also be a multimedia element through film, video and live performance.

We would like as much as possible to make contact with the photographs, which capture this story. Professional and amateur photographers are welcome. We will simply scan your photographs or negatives and return them to you. They will then form part of the first exhibition in July, and the second in Black History month. This forms part of the work the Black music education trust is doing to highlight the “Black” contribution to culture and heritage in the UK.

The Destination Brixton - Expo July 2003 offers an enlightening journey through the rich entrepreneurial, cultural and creative mix that exists within the UK. It will act as an inspiring shop window for people around the world, a central marketplace from which to do business. The Brixton Expo is approached on the basis of respect for the learned and lived experiences of black people in Brixton, London and beyond.

Mykaell S Riley


School of Communication & Creative Industries, Commercial Music, University of Westminster, Watford Road, Northwick Park, Harrow HA1 3TP. Tel / Fax: +44 020 7610 5051 – email: [log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: The Black and Asian Studies Association
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Fabian Tompsett
Sent: 24 April 2003 09:44
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Indexing: Who is looking at whom?


Indexing: Who is looking at whom?

As soon as someone starts looking through photographs and attempts to identify people as ‘Black’ this opens a veritable Pandora’s box of paradoxes. Written archives are generally bureaucratic in nature, and whilst individuals making entries may have their idiosyncrasies, and while different bureaucratic structures may tolerate different levels of variance in recording, they nevertheless remain within the bureaucratic remit and rationale which has given birth to the archive in the first place. Within a specific context the signifier ‘Black’ will have a particular connotation. This is something that John Ellis has come across looking at Army records e.g. what does the word ‘dark’ mean? Was Joseph Conrad Black because his seacraft records record him as ‘dark’? When dealing with records, I would argue, it is important to recognise that we are dealing with primary historical resources constructed in the particular way they are constructed. If we add further interpretation, then we are creating a further cultural gloss on this which far from being objective is transfused by our own prejudices and purposes (here I am using ‘prejudice’ in an epistemological sense, in that any judgement can only be made in terms of heuristic categories which pre-exist any act of judgement).

The problems facing the assessment of visual material are of a different category, being less susceptible to discourse analysis which at least gives some possibility of anchoring interpretative work. Who is looking at whom? First we have an event. Then we have the interpretation of that event by a photographer, and often we then have the selection of what is considered the ‘best’ photographs to be preserved and archived, (unless the record contains the contact strips taken by the photographer) and finally we have a cataloguer coming along, perhaps well removed from the event determining whether individuals in the photograph are ‘Black’, ‘Asian’ or whatever.

This is clearly at variance with the liberal model of racial self-definition, with the individual being identified by a remote researcher/archivist/academic. Indeed different people in this latter role may make different judgements according to their perception of race. Also would this imply that photographs without some sort of Black interest marker constitute images of White people?

Marika has also indicated that she would use the term ‘Black’ to mean peoples of the Indian sub-continent. But this is a clearly a controversial issue. As there are quite distinct uses of this term, this should be recognised, regardless of how each of us might individually wish to use the term. Whilst I have no wish to return to the debates around the name of BASA, such debates are symptomatic of very real issues which usually are fruitless because the issues cannot be resolved in the terms in which they are raised.

In the current climate of living under a regime which is trying to promote a de-racialised sense of nationhood (which I find every bit as problematic as a racialised sense of nationhood), I find myself agreeing with Royiah about the benefits of classification systems which grow out from use of the collection. Undoubtedly this does not resolve the problems I have outlined above, indeed I don’t think there is any likelihood of a quick resolution of this Gordian Knot, however in practice I feel that what I would regard as positive is more likely to emerge from such an organic process rather than a proscriptive formula descending down from some more abstratct formulation.

Fabian


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