Los Angeles, April 11, 2025
A truck parked outside my Highland Park sublet. An assemblage on wheels.
Today I went to see David Hammons’ “Concerto in Black and Blue.” I can’t speak to what it “is” or means, only to how I experienced it.
Push through heavy black velvet curtains, corporeal in their heft. Encounter silent dark rooms. You’ve swathed your phone in a wetsuit-like sheaf, per the rules, no photos allowed. You’ve picked up a blue clickable LED light that must be squeezed to illuminate. The device is the size of a nickel. To orient yourself, you press this device tightly between forefinger and thumb, and a blue light shines, casting a jubilant circle.
The walls are painted a kind of cobalt blue. The cool concrete floors are textured, scarred. The circle of light flicks on and off (is the battery dying from use?) as you move it around, searching, like an explorer in an “undiscovered” land. Depending on where you cast this impersonal light, the circle is bisected by the seam where wall and floor meet. Or wall meets wall. The light finds shadows—the people ahead of you who are speeding through other rooms, looking for something—then goes dark beneath your thumb.
What to make of all of this. What if you take it slow. Look into the light for a moment, shine it toward your eyes, and let the light go. “Look” around, eyes stymied. See nothing. And everything. Sit against a wall, and listen. Look. It’s darkness but it’s not nothing.
Is all of this—this experience—a thing because the artist said it is? Who sets the terms for our experiences? Or, more pointedly, whom do we allow to set the terms? These are exciting questions…
A truck parked outside my Highland Park sublet. An assemblage on wheels.
Today I went to see David Hammons’ “Concerto in Black and Blue.” I can’t speak to what it “is” or means, only to how I experienced it.
Push through heavy black velvet curtains, corporeal in their heft. Encounter silent dark rooms. You’ve swathed your phone in a wetsuit-like sheaf, per the rules, no photos allowed. You’ve picked up a blue clickable LED light that must be squeezed to illuminate. The device is the size of a nickel. To orient yourself, you press this device tightly between forefinger and thumb, and a blue light shines, casting a jubilant circle.
The walls are painted a kind of cobalt blue. The cool concrete floors are textured, scarred. The circle of light flicks on and off (is the battery dying from use?) as you move it around, searching, like an explorer in an “undiscovered” land. Depending on where you cast this impersonal light, the circle is bisected by the seam where wall and floor meet. Or wall meets wall. The light finds shadows—the people ahead of you who are speeding through other rooms, looking for something—then goes dark beneath your thumb.
What to make of all of this. What if you take it slow. Look into the light for a moment, shine it toward your eyes, and let the light go. “Look” around, eyes stymied. See nothing. And everything. Sit against a wall, and listen. Look. It’s darkness but it’s not nothing.
Is all of this—this experience—a thing because the artist said it is? Who sets the terms for our experiences? Or, more pointedly, whom do we allow to set the terms? These are exciting questions…