Legacy Russell

A history of Black imagery that recasts our understanding of visual culture and technology In Black Meme, Legacy Russell, award-winning author of the groundbreaking Glitch Feminism, explores the “meme” as mapped to Black visual culture from 1900 to the present, mining both archival and contemporary media. Russell argues that without the contributions of Black people, digital culture would not exist in its current form. These meditations include the circulation of lynching postcards; why a mother allowed Jet magazine to publish a picture of her dead son, Emmett Till; and how the televised broadcast of protesters in Selma changed the debate on civil rights. Questions of the media representation of Blackness come to the fore as Russell considers how a citizen-recorded footage of the LAPD beating Rodney King became the first viral video. And the Anita Hill hearings shed light on the media’s creation of the Black icon. The ownership of Black imagery and death is considered in the story of Tamara Lanier’s fight to reclaim the daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors from Harvard. Meanwhile the live broadcast on Facebook of the murder of Philando Castile by the police after he was stopped for a broken taillight forces us to bear witness to the persistent legacy of the Black meme. Through imagery, memory and technology Black Meme shows us how images of Blackness have always been central to our understanding of the modern world.

glitch: hovor. nepředvídatelná chyba, zásek, zádrhel, problém, závada, která překáží hladkému chodu (…) sociálního stroje, narušuje hranici mezi životem, uměním a aktivismem online a AFK, zkoumá tvůrčí potenciál radikálního odmítnutí, který se odráží v tvorbě celé řady současných PoC, queer a trans uměleckyň. „Futuristický feminismus pro 21. století, který odhazuje růžové brýle a na poli digitálních platforem vyhlašuje západnímu patriarchátu hashtagovou válku.“ (Ondřej Trhoň, Revue Prostor) Kurátorka a spisovatelka Legacy Russell pochází z New Yorku, kde v současné době působí jako ředitelka a hlavní kurátorka alternativního centra umění The Kitchen. Russell studovala dějiny umění na Goldsmiths, University of London a její akademická, kurátorská a tvůrčí práce se zaměřuje na gender, performanci, digitální sebepojetí, internetové modlářství a rituály nových médií.

A New York Times Best Art Book of 2020 A new manifesto for cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender, and technology The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists. We are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are in this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together in solidarity? A glitch is normally thought of as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology, and the body. The glitch offers an opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art, and critical theory, as well as the work of contemporary artists—including Juliana Huxtable, Sondra Perry, boychild, Victoria Sin, and Kia LaBeija—who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Timely and provocative, Glitch Feminism shows how error can lead to revolution.