Self Inventions
Self Inventions pays homage to the spirit of perpetual regeneration and innovation in Black culture. Rashaad Newsome’s shape-shifting robotic figure reflects the resilience of Black people in the face of ongoing struggle. The optical effect of transformation from one form to another employs fractal geometry, an aesthetic that, along with the designs of the robotic figures themselves, is inspired by African art and its early use of abstraction. Often used as a term in computer science, abstraction here not only serves as a visual tool but illustrates a tactic in Black culture’s perpetual state of transformation.
Newsome draws comparisons between the labor performed by robots and the unpaid, compulsory service Black people have had to perform historically. In the face of untenable circumstances, Black culture has not only survived and adapted, but has found a way to flourish. This is the exciting yet vexing task of creating Blackness, a process that many of the residents in the Exposition Park area have long been engaged in. The figures in Self Invention are the “engineers of themselves,” paying homage to the legacy of Black resistance, carrying forward a history of endless innovation.
Self Inventions may be experienced at Exposition Park’s Rose Garden beginning this fall or from anywhere on Snapchat by searching in Lens Explorer or scanning the QR code below.
Composition and voice by Rashaad Newsome and music by Miles Jamison
Snapchat Lens support: Michael French
Self Inventions Original poem by Rashaad Newsome
Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed. I have been blessed with a heart that has survived. Filled to capacity with the epigenetic material I carry in my hard drive. Carry, I’m a carry, I’m carrying. Love into this future. From the djembay to the drum machine, look at what Africans are doing with the computer. Descendants of those who you cannot tame. They call us black because they don’t know our name. Nameless, aimlessly, we move through spaces. Adapt to spaces. Create space where there are no spaces. This is our safe space or perhaps a space with a healthy sense of risk. The first time I came to this place, I had a time! Past, present, and future. Block universe. African fractals transforming my form. I have no center, for I am the center of all things. I see myself in you and you in me. Engaged in a software kiki. Who you be? Forever coming into being! Where you from? An idea waiting to be deciphered by the computers of generations to come!