THE AFRICAN DESPERATE

Martine Syms is a Los Angeles-born American artist. At the intersection of conceptual art and social com-mentary, Syms’ work interrogates representations of race and gender through her distinctively gritty, critical lens. Syms has held solo exhibitions across the world, including at MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago and ICA London, with recent shows at Bridget Donahue (New York) and Sadie Coles (London). Her debut film, The African Desperate, was released in January 2022.

Text by Martine Syms

Theafricandesperate 2022 Courtesyofdominicainc 7 CMYK

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I recently finished making a feature film called The African Desperate. It follows a character called Palace Bryant on one very long day in 2017 that starts with her MFA graduation in upstate New York and ends at a Chicago Blue Line Station. The film features several of my favourite books. Easter eggs for theory lovers abound! Below is Palace Bryant’s reading list, in order of appearance in the film. ◉

Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola EstésRandom House, 1992

My burner account used to be called wolfrunna; it’s a fucking vibe. Dr Estés is a poet, psychoanalyst and storyteller devoted to oral histories of the wild, divine feminine. In the book she writes, “There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.” My soul asked for this one and it changed my life. I keep it on top of the loo so my guests know what’s up.

Essential Essays by Stuart HallDuke University Press, 2019

A mondo, two-volume set of bangers from Stuart Hall, the Jamaican-born scholar and founding pillar of cultural studies in the UK. Hall’s notion of identity as a fluid set of ever-changing circumstances, always becoming and never being, has had a profound influence on my art and life.

Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis edited by Katherine McKittrickDuke University Press, 2015

Have you heard of Sylvia Wynter? She has been writing about the relationship between subjectivity, settler colonialism and climate change since before I incarnated. She uses radical imagination to decentre Man. In this collection of essays, she elegantly continues to debunk the nightmare of European humanism and asks the reader to dream a new vision of being human.

Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle by Katherine McKittrickUniversity of Minnesota Press, 2006

McKittrick edited Wynter’s On Being Human and she’s also a brilliant theorist in her own right. This book was central to my first film Incense Sweaters & Ice in 2017 in which I used the narratives of Black femmes to map time and space. Their descriptions and lived experiences directly influenced the locations I shot. In some cases I would follow a route exactly with my camera. Demonic Grounds looks at practices of cartographies in the writing, diaries and histories of Black women.

“Have you heard of Sylvia Wynter?”“No.”“S-Y-L-V-I-A space W-Y-N-T-E-R. Check her out.”

“Hey, Palace!”“Hey, what’s up?”“Not too much.”“What you reading?” “Eh, Fred Moten, Undercommons; you read this?”“Yeah, I read it like last year, I read it last year – you liking it so far?”“Yeah, it’s good, it’s good…”

Poetics of Relation by Édouard GlissantUniversity of Michigan Press, 1997

This book was first recommended to me – I mean, Palace – by artist Fia Backström. It features a concept called “opacity”, which is about making room for the unknown, for refusal, and therefore transcendence. Glissant offers a way to sit with difference and discomfort that doesn’t require one to understand.

The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Fred Moten & Stefano HarneyMinor Compositions, 2013

What can I say about The Undercommons? Let me back up. Fred Moten’s In The Break scrambled my brain and rewired my neurons. I carried that book around for at least a year. The opening paragraph about Aunt Hester’s scream still rattles me. I didn’t know I could think like that, let alone write like that. FRED TAUGHT ME. The Undercommons came out and rocked the (art) world. I got fed up with white people quoting it to me, but it’s canon for a reason. I used to teach my first-year students that part in the interview at the end where Moten describes studying as the part of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” when the talking becomes the song. How being a teacher is like that moment of letting the commons, the chatter, the goings-on seamlessly blend into a single teaching. My other favourite part of the book is a reminder to forget about my debts and remember love instead.

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THE AFRICAN DESPERATE