White Lessons, by Jean-Ulrick DésertOriginally presented as part of the Re/Positionierung Weißsein conference series at the NGBK (Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunt) Berlin January–June 2009.It is Posted here as a reference for the Humboldt University "WEB Debois Lecture Series" and the class entitled "Constellations of Race"(Prof.Dr.D.Löbbermann)
This presentation/lecture “WHITE LESSONS/ The Lagom Project and the Works of Jean-Ulrick Désert” is intended, with levity, as a set of strategies towards Whiteness.
White “Lessons” refers to Adrian Pipers “Funk Lessons” where the preconceptions on race are performed in the structure of (dance) classes/lessons. My perspective is that of a man who has had his formative years growing up within the American model (of whiteness) with the distinct advantage of having emigrated, from the small Caribbean nation of Haiti. The presentation presents exemplary works from my art-practice as commentary on Whiteness and a set of media-clips from popular-culture. They are intended as significantly loaded footnotes, which orbit the thorny discourse of race and in particular Whiteness. Though they are culled from youtube they offer examples spanning many years of social structures and cultural production.
(1)Youtube media selection “Funk Lessons” by Adrian Piper Step 1. The Appearance of whiteness
Begin with the superficial, the surface and easily accessible of what is considered to be White-like.
(2)Youtube media selection “The Brady Bunch–theme song”/ An American television sitcom (1969–1974) of a middle-class WASP family. In West Germany it was re-titled “Drei Mädchen und drei Jungen”on ZDF.
Lyrics: “Here's the story of a lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls, all of them had hair of gold, like their mother. The youngest one in curls. Here's the story of a man named Brady, Who was busy with three boys of his own. They were four men living all together, yet they were all alone, till the one day when the lady met this fellow, and they knew that it was much more than a hunch, that this group must somehow form a family. That's the way we all became the Brady bunch. The Brady bunch, the Brady bunch. That's the way we became the Brady bunch” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Bunch
Purchase the clichés of normalcy even if it is, in part a fantasy , through the acquisition of apparel most identified with whiteness (WASPs in the USA or non-Latin Europeans such as the Germanic tribes)
Youtube media selection number: “TV liebt Günther” or “MTV Günther is German” or “MTV loves Guenther”www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW0IwzFDkj0
My work entitled “Negerhosen2000” recreates a culturally specific “Tracht” associated as a Germanic cliché using leather with the appearance of Caucasian skin and blond hair.
(3)In America two apparel companies are LLBean www.llbean.com/ and Brooks Brothers (the oldest surviving men's clothier in the United States)brooksbrothers.com/ among others.
(4)A malapropism pun from the German “Lederhosen” meaning Leather-pants whereas Neger means negro or "nigger" depending on the context. The new word combination is purposefully absurd, yet biting, with its conflicting tenor.Step 2. Change your skin Explore White beauty as presented in the media, films, and magazines. Emulate the tropes of this dominant image through the use of make-up, wigs or chemicals
In my work “The Hip Decadence of Reductive Glamour”, created in 2000, I have used a Caucasian flesh toned skin-foundation, fashionably “hip” clothing and a blonde wig for a photo-booth shooting in the subways/metros of Paris.
Step 3. Change/replace your Body – use a surrogate body
(7)Youtube.com media selection “Kustom Kar Kommandos”, 1965 - 3 min Kenneth Anger, Director/producer with audio-song “ Dream Lover” by Bobby Darin “ …Every night I hope and pray, A dream lover will come my way… I want a dream lover so I don't have to dream alone, Dream lover, where are you, With a love, oh, so true?, And a hand that I can hold, To feel you near as I grow old? 'cause I want you… ”
“…The title is deliberately misspelled, replacing the three C’s with K’s. KKK stands for Klu Klux Klan; another group of associated with white male togetherness and the word Kommando is derived from Commando, which means members of a trained military unit. In both ways the title suggests togetherness and violence, and also implies a relationship between togetherness of two men with sadomasochism as does the film ‘Fireworks’ (1947, Kenneth Anger)…”Let others caress your whiteness by replacing your body either with a human or an object .
With “The White Man Project” in Rotterdam (2004) a white actor was hired to be the artist “Jean-Ulrick Désert” and scheduled to stage art-lessons to the public within the environment of the gallery.
(8)BRUCE Rotterdam directors Hester Chen and Sebastiaan Bokhorst proposed a one month residency in their gallery with stipend to create a project and exhibition with the title ‘The White man is Scared”. This request was in the context of the recent rise and fall (by assassination) of the right leaning founder of the populist LPF (Lijst Pim Fortuyn) politician Pim Fortuyn (1948-2002. “In the Netherlands, Rotterdam has the highest percentage of foreigners from non-industrialised nations. Nearly 50% of the population are not native to the Netherlands or have at least one parent born outside the country.”en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RotterdamStep 4. Develop a Skill
Develop a skill associated with Whiteness and communicate with Pride and teach others. Traditions such as Yodeling (Jodeln in German) are perceived in such a light.
Similarly visual traditions perpetuated by world-renowned tales such as Hänsel and Gretel are associated with whiteness, thus the art-project “Voices from the Heart” was created by transferring street graffiti onto Lebkuchenherzen (and redeploying them as urban subway billboards. Some arresting texts profess a nuanced sense of empowered identity such as “White Niggaz 4 Ever!”
Step 5. Seeing White -
See yourself as White and embracing what you want to see regardless of circumstance. In this regard when asked by the Aeroplastics Contemporary of Brussels to participate in an exhibition entitled “Surrender” a piece using the same title was created. “Surrender, a project for Belgium”
(2001) presents a child’s hand cast in (white) chocolate in a red velvet-lined box-vitrine. The work either eludes to the severed hands during the atrocities of the Belgian king Leopold(Youtube video excerpt) or the recent plague of Marc Detroux pedophile scandals (Youtube video) gripping the small European country during the creation of this work.
Step 6.White Interiors -
Create White environments with White objects and subjects . A well known and often used cliché of the European (or more precisely Eurocentric) bourgeois interior is the motif of the “Toile de Jouy”
-in a work of the same name images researched from the trafficking of (white) mail-order-brides, of Eastern-European origins were used in the vignettes. The second series of “les Toiles de Jouy” rendered the extended trade of the sex-tourism economy of Thailand and their European clientele (heterosexual and homosexual).
Step 7. Be more than White
Create controversy, become the White-exotic as implied by my earlier work “The Hip Decadence of Reductive Glamour” there can be something entrancing in the articulating an unclear line.
(17)Youtube media selection “Blonde Venus” by Josef von Sternberg 1932 USA/ ‘Hot Voodoo’ sequence starring (German born) American actress Marlene Dietrich
“Did you ever happen to hear of voodoo?-Hear it and you won't give a damn what you do-Tom-tom's put me under a sort of voodoo-And the whole night long I don’t know the right from wrong-Hot voodoo, black as mud-Hot voodoo, in my blood-That African tempo, has made a slave-Hot voodoo, dance of sin-Hot voodoo, worse than gin-I'd follow a cave man, right into his cave-That beat gives me a wicked sensation-My conscious wants to take a vacation-Got voodoo, head to toes-Hot voodoo, burn my clothes-I want to start dancing, just wearing a smile-Hot voodoo, I’m a flame-I'm really not to blame-That African tempo, is meaner than mean-Hot voodoo, make me brave-I want to misbehave-I’m beginning to feel like, an African queen-Those drums bring up the heaven inside me-I need some great big angel to guide me-Hot voodoo, makes me wild-Oh fireman, save this child-I going to blazes-I want to be bad!”
en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Blonde_Venus 05.2009
Articulating a precise and inconclusive clarity is fully intended in the work “ The Burqa Project: On The Borders of My Dreams I Encountered My Double’s Ghost”
where the emblems of nation states (specifically France, Great Britain, Germany and the United States) are conflated with the symbols of the most restrictive of Islamic veils known as the Burqa. This conflation is seen to be in possible to the extent that it creates deep provocation and controversy .
(18)The “American Taliban” is a case in point where calls for treason were called against a young white American Muslim-covert “…his interest in Islam may have been sparked by the autobiography of Malcolm X…” NEWS.bbc.co.uk “John Walker Lindh spent his formative years in an affluent Northern California community known for its tolerance and open-mindedness…Most Americans didn't believe Walker Lindh's father when the public first was introduced to Walker Lindh, or the "Taliban American" as he became known” (CNN)Step 8.White Super Heroes
(19)Selected media This is one of the early videos placed on youtube that went “viral” spawning many reactions with and against the combination of the white man and the techno music (shot in Berlin as a reaction to the then called “Love Parade” Techno.TVDisplay strength, power and virility with your whiteness. Reject the clichés normally associated with the endowment of others.
As proof I present a project “Die Hosen ‘runter lassen”
created in parity to Robert Mapplethorpe’s infamous 1980 photograph “Man in a Polyester Suit” . The large-scale color photographs (various models) display the white phallus as the central figure in a drama between white flesh, Germanic Tracht and the colors of the Black-power movements.(20)“Die Hose'n runter lassen”, as i have come to understand it as a foreigner, is a German-language expression meaning to ‘drop one's pants’ meaning to ‘come clean’ and to be transparent, open and honest (nearly similar to the English 'Let your 'hair' down')".
(21)“Man in a Polyester Suit” (1980 by Robert Mapplethorpe)
“Who can forget his masterpiece, Man in Polyester Suit (1980), for example, with its image of a semi-tumescent member sprouting, like desire itself, from sartorial banality? (Carnality seems to have been, for him, a perpetual affront to quotidian reality.) This was a photographer who could mine the latent sexual content of an orchid or even an eggplant…”
(22)Black power and the Pan-African movements shared the use of a red-black-green flag . These colors remain as a signifier of these movements and can be seen in works such as artist David Hammon’s “African American Flag” as well as afro-centric kitsch with same ubiquity one sees the rainbow colors used in the commodified gay-liberation mainstream culture.
Step 9. Create gods
Create gods in your own white image with images of blond Jesus or the Scandinavian canon. Create white rituals celebrating these gods. Ritual to oblige each participant to partake in group-unity where choice is that of the group and not of the individual whose truthfulness is secured through inebriation . In the missionary spirit of ritual a second project entitled “Surrender” was created using licorice candy commonly found in Belgium or France today. These candies were strung together to create rosaries for prayer resembling figures strung together in bondage.
Step 10. White Morality
Practice white morality and control but follow ‘lagom’ and the Jante Laws .
Internalize these 10 rules
1. Don't think that you are special or as good as us.
2. Don't think that you are of the same standing or as good as us.
3. Don't think that you are smarter than us.
4. Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
5. Don't think that you know more than us.
6. Don't think that you are more important/greater than us.
7. Don't think that you are good at anything.
8. Don't laugh at us.
9. Don't think that anyone cares about you.
10. Don't think that you can teach us anything.
The lagom project is a performance project [in development/work-in-progress] in which the body no longer exists. It is an audio sound piece bearing no traces of the body but rather a robotic meditation of chapters from Askel Sandemoses “En flyktning krysser sitt spor” .
AFTERWARDS
Additional references on the topic of whiteness/Weißsein:
Maurice Berger is a scholar and art curator in NYC and author of "White Lies:Race and the Myths of Whiteness"- Listen to a short audio of his exhibition project HERE.
Richard Dyer is also well known within the discourse on Whiteness and adds a particularly interesting Queer slant to the subjecta dn a deep interest in film and its signifiers.
Tim Wise gives very spirited seminars such as "the Chickens come home to roost" through out the united states. Youtube video (58minutes)LECTURE HERE
A short youtube documentary entitled Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible pt. 1
White Lessons, by Jean-Ulrick Désert
Originally presented as part of the Re/Positionierung Weißsein conference series at the NGBK (Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunt) Berlin January–June 2009.
It is Posted here as a reference for the Humboldt University "WEB Debois Lecture Series" and the class entitled "Constellations of Race"(Prof.Dr.D.Löbbermann)
This presentation/lecture “WHITE LESSONS/ The Lagom Project and the Works of Jean-Ulrick Désert” is intended, with levity, as a set of strategies towards Whiteness.
White “Lessons” refers to Adrian Pipers “Funk Lessons” where the preconceptions on race are performed in the structure of (dance) classes/lessons. My perspective is that of a man who has had his formative years growing up within the American model (of whiteness) with the distinct advantage of having emigrated, from the small Caribbean nation of Haiti. The presentation presents exemplary works from my art-practice as commentary on Whiteness and a set of media-clips from popular-culture. They are intended as significantly loaded footnotes, which orbit the thorny discourse of race and in particular Whiteness. Though they are culled from youtube they offer examples spanning many years of social structures and cultural production.
(1)Youtube media selection “Funk Lessons” by Adrian Piper 
My work entitled “Negerhosen2000” recreates a culturally specific “Tracht” associated as a Germanic cliché using leather with the appearance of Caucasian skin and blond hair.
(3)In America two apparel companies are LLBean www.llbean.com/ and Brooks Brothers (the oldest surviving men's clothier in the United States)brooksbrothers.com/ among others.
(4)A malapropism pun from the German “Lederhosen” meaning Leather-pants whereas Neger means negro or "nigger" depending on the context. The new word combination is purposefully absurd, yet biting, with its conflicting tenor.
Step 2. Change your skin
Step 5. Seeing White -
See yourself as White and embracing what you want to see regardless of circumstance. In this regard when asked by the Aeroplastics Contemporary of Brussels to participate in an exhibition entitled “Surrender” a piece using the same title was created. “Surrender, a project for Belgium”
