Adrian Piper
Black Box/White Box
San Francisco, USA: New Langton Arts, 1993
[20] pp., 20 x 19 cm., staple-bound
Edition Size unknown
An artist’s book based on Piper’s audio-video-photo installation of the same name, which combines the video of Rodney King being beaten by LAPD officers in March 1991, Marvin Gaye's song "What's Going On" and the voice of President Bush after sending troops into LA in 1992. The work was included in Piper's recent MoMA retrospective, Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions 1965-2016.
"Moving chronologically through the galleries, one is able to observe the artist’s shifts between various visual strategies throughout the years. Form is never primary here, but rather a means to an end. Piper picks and chooses the vehicles best suited to the particular needs of the works themselves. One particularly arresting example is Black Box/White Box (1992), a dual set of immersive interiors. Made in the aftermath of the infamous observer-filmed police battery of Los Angeles cab driver Rodney King and the riots that followed the acquittal of the officers involved, these two enclosed structures provide intimate viewing stations in which to confront archival video and audio from the incident and its subsequent political fallout (including, in the ‘white box’, a chilling clip of President George H.W. Bush decrying the “brutality of the [rioting] mob”.) Meanwhile, in the ‘black box’, an audio recording of King’s statement to the press following the acquittal plays alongside a lightbox featuring his brutalised face, which abruptly shuts off to present the viewer with his or her own reflection."
- Cat Kron, Art Review
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