First thanks to the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Ms. Beverly Broyles, Mr. Bruce Brown and Mr. Oliver Wilder for inviting me to give this talk. In addition, thank you dear audience for attending. I decided when Beverly first asked me to do this that I was going to have a good time. Also, kudos to Ben and Sean for driving me up here all the way from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Sean wanted me to call them comrades. Thank you Comrades. Ben wanted me to call them my posse. Thank you posse.

            Tonight's talk deals primarily with a project I'm currently working on called The Black Factory. The project has received major funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital, Bates College, Franklin Furnace and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art.

            The talk is divided into four sections. First a description of the what, how and why of The Black Factory. Then I'll show part of a DVD of the inaugural tour of the project which took place this past spring '04, after that they'll be a Question and Answer, then an opportunity to sample some home grown black factory merchandise.

So — let's begin —

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The Black Factory began when I was born. It arose out of the contradictions that naturally come up when one's expectations about the world are put into sharp relief with reality.

Let me start again. The Black Factory began 5 years ago. I'd been thinking a long time about how people tend to think about blackness as something always polarized between good and bad, right and wrong or white and black, etc. I wanted to explore blackness as something other than or either. I wanted to make something more of a both/and. But how to do this? Hmmm.

Let me start one more time. I began to imagine a mobile art installation performance work that would travel not only geographically but also conceptually. The art installation would be housed in an iceberg. No, a shipping container. No. Finally, I settled on a panel truck. A truck renovated to function like a cross between a lending library, an old timey medicine show and a field research laboratory.

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Now – a pause. To get a little acquainted with the past before we enjoy the main event. Here are some slides from a show I did entitled 'Hole Theory.' It took place at my gallery The Project in Harlem, NYC, 2001.

(Black and white drawings, Ireland, Broken Column, Map of the World (Deluxe) and Race Becomes You, all pieces are 2001)

Some of the same concerns you see in this work is cousin to The Black Factory Project. For example, use of everyday materials; interest in race and color caste codings, the articulation of space horizontally, rather than vertically, the use of a lot of pink — only kidding.

I'm going to begin one more time —

The Black Factory, or the BF as we at The Black Factory like to call it, began with a 22 foot long 6 ton Grumman Olsen panel truck that had seen better days. Lots of them. The previous owner, a Mainer, had used the vehicle for occasional fishing trips.

Today, the BF, when fully operational is 54 foot long.

The truck's renovation was designed by the architectural collective known as spurse in collaboration with the BF's CEO, yours truly. The renovation itself was carried out by Richard Criddle and his crew at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The BF is currently in exhibition at Mass MoCA until April 2005, after which it will embark on a national tour. Those interested in supporting the tour in anyway, please see me after the lecture. At that time you can even ask me about our new innovative talent contest entitled Looking For Miss Black Factory.

About the physical make-up of the BF

The truck contains 3 main components: a gift shop, a pulverization workshop and an archive. The gift shop is housed in the cab of the truck. A door in the cab communicates with the rear storage area. A series of tubes also connects these spaces. Products can be sent through these tubes from the rear storage area to the gift shop at the press of a button — or a hardy yell through the plywood wall that separates the two compartments.

The gift shop is not just a selling place, it is also a place where connection is made. The BF staff is well trained to understand that dialogue is the real sell. Not that we turn-up our noses at commerce, oh no, at the BF we believe selling and buying is also a way of connecting. To buy even the smallest trinket is to link oneself to a critical slightly nutty adventure. The BF has a graduated pricing scheme and we love to give discounts, for almost any reason at all. Our prices begin at $5 for a rubber duckie emblazoned with the stark but nifty BF logo and ranges all the way to our limited edition good used soap which sells for $1,400. And dear audience, don't feel left out because at the end of tonight's lecture you too will have the opportunity to sample this merchandise.

Lastly, the gift shop also houses a laptop on which visitors may browse the virtual BF archive of donated black objects.

The rear of the BF is also a work area but it mainly functions as storage for products, tools, props, a sound system, a hiding place for goof-off employees and the other two major components of the BF: the pulverization workshop and the inflatable igloo archive.

The pulverization workshop is a set of 3 heavy duty plywood and steel tables whose tops, when properly assembled, resemble a contorted USA and Cuba.

The tables are off-loaded at the vehicle's rear and set-up on the side of the truck along with a hefty array of tools and workshop gadgetry.

The pulverization table is usually the first place people come when they visit the Factory. This is also the place where folks can drop off their black object donations. In addition, the pulverization table is where black objects are dismantled and broken down to create raw material for new products, some of which are sold in the gift shop, as well as the ultimate BF product: conversation which is free to all visitors who wish to engage. It is not by accident that the first place visitors stop is also the place where things are taken apart and re-built into new configurations.

The third component of The Black Factory truck is the inflatable igloo archive. This is a small museum in which a select group of donated black objects are displayed. Anyone may donate a black object. A black object is anything a person deems black or feels references blackness for them. The specific days for submitting black objects are called check days. During the tour, every day was check day.

And now — two other aspects of the Factory that make it unique. The first is called 'the black object of the day.' Basically, this is a black object secured inside a box built into the side of the truck. You can only access this box by putting your hands into holes cut into the side of the truck and feeling around for knowledge.

The second aspect is a product line called Twice Sold. These are products that are sold twice, sort of a perverse reverse capitalism.

Perverse capitalism because the products cost less than a dollar to make but are sold at a 250% mark up. Reverse capitalism because the factory loses money on the product each time one is sold. Reason being the money goes to food pantries who then buy things to be given away to even more folks.

Like the project itself, the three people who crew the BF truck are a very special lot. They aren't pretty people but they are pretty fascinating. They are witty, sociable and energetic. They also have strong backs (in order to load and unload the necessary equipment) and they have a strong commitment to people and social issues.

All crew members do the same tasks so that everyone is acquainted with all aspects of the BF's operation. Each crew member has specialties according to their individual talents, however, each member regardless of talents, must develop a node. A node is like a skit. It is a series of scripted actions, developed during rehearsal in collaboration with the CEO, yours truly and which the crew member performs improvisationally at the pulverization table. For example, the action could be the melting of a vinyl record or the grinding up of a metal chain, even the dissecting of a woman's shoe. The goal of these nodes is to illicit conversation from visitors. Sometimes conversation ignites because of the seeming absurdity of the actions; sometimes because a crew member makes claims about a thing or action that seems contradictory and sometimes conversation happens because the claims made about the action fit squarely with the action being performed. However the conversation begins, the job of the crew member is to take the dialog on a journey of questions from what can be known to what is hidden or left out or obfuscated.

Building the nodes with the performers during rehearsal was a learning experience. At first we began with blackness and stereotype. Then we explored how the inequalities of race mirrored those in gender or class. Most of them could talk about race or class but it was difficult for them to connect it to their own lives. The final step of the rehearsal process took place on tour. At the end of each day we'd talk on the phone. The crew would describe their successes and challenges and I'd offer perspectives and direction. There were two main challenges: 1) could or should they, as a primarily white crew, really engage people in a discussion about blackness? And 2) was blackness the end goal?

I answered their queries in this way: 1) you have to own the challenge. Whatever it is. Maybe you are black and you don't know it? Or are not willing to admit it? Perhaps being black is a matter of commitment like being honest or being true or being free. I answered #2 like so: blackness is a conduit to speak about differences.

By difference I meant what separates us as humans yet unites us in categories of inequality. Whenever you create a category, say man and woman, you create a division between things. The division provides benefits for some and lacks for others. A separate set of rules are put into place to obscure or hide this division while keeping it in place. People try to explain away these sorts of divisions by saying things like: it's natural. That whites are superior to Native Americans, look at them, they live in houses made of skin while we live in houses of wood, etc. etc.

To make a division requires a choice. To unmake a division requires another set of choices. The path to unmasking and un-making a choice is not a direct, clear path. Division is seductive and convenient. It lets us know our place. For example, I live in a house on the hill in the sunlight. She lives in the valley in shadow, therefore I am of the sun and human. She is of the dirt and an animal and so on.

The BF was created to function between polarities. It's a purposeful rickety fit. For example, the BF lives between those who believe that race is finished, old hat and already decided and those who still believe there's work to be done; between those who believe they know what blackness is and those who believe it's much more porous and open-ended than we allow ourselves to believe.

The Black Factory was built to explore the space between what we think we know and what we can imagine. At first it began with blackness but now its modus operandi is possibility itself.

First delivered August 4, 2004