Dread Scott Visit

Visual Artist - Dread Scott "Imagine a World Without America"
Tuesday, March 01, 2022, 5—6 pm Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Loew Auditorium, Black Family Visual Arts Center

The Art History department has invited the artist Dread Scott to Dartmouth College to give a public lecture with a Q and A. Dread Scott describes himself as a "revolutionary artist" who seeks to propel history forward by exploring the political structure, economic foundation, social relations and governing ideas of America. He came to fame and controversy in 1989 when his artwork What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag? garnered national attention and congressional denunciation for desecrating the flag. He works in the genres of performance and participatory art, installation, video, photography, printmaking, and painting.

Most recently his Slave Rebellion Reenactment involved more than 300 Black and Indigenous community members in a full dress reenactment of the German Coast Uprising in 1811. Participants marched over 24 miles for two days through the River Parishes outside New Orleans culminating in the heart of the city. The juxtaposition of 19th century dress and flags with the late industrial landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans brought the sugar plantations of the past into conversation with the gated communities, mobile homes, and oil refineries of the present forging new questions about the long struggle for freedom that were transmitted virally through social media posts from participants and viewers.

Other recent works include his re-activation of the NAACP's "A Man Was Lynched Today" signage as a flag, hung in protest against the 2015 police shooting of Walter Scott. And this year, his White Male For Sale brought much needed critical attention to the hidden racial implications of the term "fungibility" in the Non-Fungible Tokens market, part of the artworld fascination with and attempts to capitalize off of crypto-currency. In this work he auctioned a typical middle-class white male professional at Christie's, asking for 2 million dollars, or the average projected earnings of white men over the course of their lifetimes. The specter of the slave auction and the commodification of life and labor that it entailed haunted the project prompting questions about the role of slavery in the history of capitalism and how that history subtends the supposedly egalitarian and dematerialized metaverse in which NFTs are bought and sold.

Please see his website for more information about his work and career: dreadscott.net/artwork/

Sponsored by The Art History Department
Co-sponsored by The Film & Media Studies Department, English Department, Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies Program (LALACS), Anthropology Department, Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, History Department, African and African-American Studies Program, Theater Department, Geography Department

Live Stream: https://youtu.be/vAdMUCilcfc