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damali ayo's performace art hits home
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what is rent-a-negro.com?
(a letter written by damali ayo, creator of rent-a-negro.com,
to her friends and family.)
What
do YOU think about rent-a-negro.com? Talk about it here!
rent-a-negro.com is a conceptual art work in the form of a web
site. it's part of a "diy reparations" approach to life.
in december of last year, after some very difficult realizations
about my exhaustion, due to enormous overwork and exhausting out-put
of education to white people, and taking large amounts of racism
and racial ignorance into my system on a daily basis, i called—who
else—my mom.
she and i talked for a long while about the exhaustion and how
i wasn't getting payback from the interactions i was having, yet
i felt obligated to attend certain events, clubs, belong to situations
(anything from my alumni group to the theatre community, to art
events). yet i wasn't getting the networking (or even the entertainment)
out of these experiences. her response: well, sure, you can't do
that, you can't just be everyone's rent-a-negro."
this made me relax. i decided that i could stick it out with the
several white people in my life and continue to assist them on their
paths of learning about race and racism, but that everyone else
would be put on a fee-for-services basis…if i wasn't getting
"paid" i wasn't participating. for me this was a mindset.
but as the concept sat in my mind for a while, it naturally evolved
into art.
the project started out as a performance designed to go into a
gallery but, due to my love of web design, turned into a web site.
before i knew it, i had purchased the domain, built the site, and
launched. it went on-line april 20, 2003. http://rent-a-negro.com
on may 6, 2003 rent-a-negro.com got 3678 visitors. by june 1 it
was up to 17,000 visitors a day and a swarm of media coverage.
the site has been reviewed and written by several publications.
one site, www.netartreview.net, wrote: "conceptual artist damali
ayo recently launched the web project rent-a-negro, an art piece
critiquing the exoticization of black culture. the net project presents
the 'negro' available for diverse social occasions. based on ayo's
project, one could say that racism has now become part of capitalism
as yet another efficient form of production."
the net-art community has taken a really thoughtful interest in
the work, understanding what the goals of the work are, and offering
some insightful discussion. at least two people have compared the
site to the work of a very smart team of artists who tried to sell
"blackness" on ebay in 2001. and of course comparisons
are being made to "blackpeopleloveus.com" i'm flattered
to be mentioned in such good company.
the site has popped up on several web-discussion boards. it's sparked
some great discussions, which is the whole point of my work in general…dialogue.
a few people are sending in (seemingly) actual rental requests and
at the moment, i don't know what to do with those. this is a work
in development and i wonder what will be the next phase of the "performance"
which is what i consider the site…a performance work.
and i wonder what in the world will my mother say?
…about 10% of the people who go to rent-a-negro.com spend
enough time with it to discover my name at the bottom of the page
and click to see where the work came from.
let me know if/what you hear anything about rent-a-negro.com. it's
having a quick expansion, so i imagine it will go off the radar
as quickly as it's arrived…so i'd like to keep up.
so, that's the news from cyber-art. i figured i'd better let you
all know what trouble i've been causing now…
all the best to each of you.
damali
ps: if you tell people about the site… just send them the
link http://rent-a-negro.com tell them to check it out…have
fun reading their feedback…it's really more effective if people
have to question if it's art or reality, or both.
Related Web Sites:
-- June 4, 2003
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2001-05 Seeing Black, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
