MUTINY AND BOUNTY: Engaging Colonialism & Hegemonies
There was once a ship called The Bounty. Some people see a film called Mutiny on the Bounty, which is a HollyBaloney version of "adventure piracy" and other lies.
Basically, the history surrounds a group of Brits, who went in search of a cheap source of food for the stolen humans called African slaves. So they sailed from a place called Spithead (seriously) to Tahiti, where they began to rape and pillage.
Baneful circumstances came upon the members of the crew, so there was mutiny. Big deal. It's not a story of "adventure": these men broke into two groups, one part of which went off to rape and pillage the peoples of yet another island.
Here's the most irony-rich element, though—and it's typically not in historical accounts focused on the sailing colonizers: when breadfruit was finally given to the stolen African humans, the enslaved peoples refused to eat it.
There is, I continue to insist, no such thing as a cheap source of food for slaves. Free lunches, despite the popular idiom, do exist. Slavery, however, is and always will be a venture amounting to nothing less than lives, unspeakable cruelty, and death.
There are all forms of mutiny. As many forms of enslavement exist, throughout the worlds we encounter—and those we only distantly recognize.
And there are, now as ever, delicious sighs of freedom in rebellion—no less for those who remain uncelebrated, unrecognized, reviled or ridiculed.
This series includes works completed in 2009-2010, and speaks to various institutions of hegemony.
Where we seek refuge from injustice, no one goes unaffected. How we react, respond, evolve, and create against these injustices bears insight to our beings, no?
These photos feature Altaira, Dre, Gia, Ilysse, Mo, PJ Whitt, Rebecca, and some self-portraits.
I thank each participant for their contributions to these works.
The photo title "Holding Light for Brother Defeat" is a reference to the magnificent poem cycle, "Crow Gospel Coming Down From the Mountain," by Brian Barker.
The self-portrait "Inauguration of These Lands" is dedicated to Chrystos, for her poem, "I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the U.S. Government." For all you've given, Chrystos, thank you.
