Considering Monoculture | Jyoti Mistry

(c)Jyoti Mistry - Foto: M HKA / Bram Goots, 2020
27 February - 27 February 2020
deBuren, Brussel

Title: Negotiating the proposition of monoculture by exploring identity politics and subjectivity

Black writers are continually expected to draw from immediate lived-experiences or political positions which express racial identity politics with an assumed singularity; often expressed as an essentialised black experience. What then is considered relevant or “appropriate” subject matter for black writers or artists? What identity politics presumes positions from which subjectivities can be explored and expressed? Moreover, how does the idea of monoculture in identity politics feature inside the subjective, when geography and migration displace these assumed or essentialised meanings of race and/ or cultural access? How do “observed lived-experiences” feature alongside the imagination of (black) artists? This reading-screening explores the subject relationships between the experiences of characters in Paris in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and the experiences of characters in Jyoti Mistry’s film B.E.D (1997) set in New York City. The reading-screening is a play on the veracity of experiences from different subject positions and draws from mobilities between Paris, New York and Johannesburg to challenge the assumptions of race identity politics. The interplay of written-spoken text with the film serves to implicitly invite reflections on how culture and cultural access makes certain opportunities for the expression of subjectivity possible.

Bio: Jyoti Mistry is a filmmaker who has made critically acclaimed films in multiple genres. Recent film works: Cause of Death (2020), When I grow up I want to be a black man (2017), Impunity (2014), 09:21:25 (2011), Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (2010). Her work has screened at numerous festivals including the Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival, Kurzfilmtage in Winterthur, Rotterdam International Film Festival and Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. Mistry has been an artist in residence in New York City, at California College of Arts (San Francisco), Sacatar (Brazil), at Netherlands Film Academy (Amsterdam) and a DAAD Researcher at Babelsberg Konrad Wolf Film University (Berlin). She is Professor of Film at HDK-Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg.