We đź–¤ #BlackDH | Legacy Russell's BLACK MEME
We love amplifying #BlackDH work! In 2022, AADHum completed a double issue of Reviews in DH, guest-edited by Marisa Parham, Aleia Brown, and Trevor Muñoz.
At AADHum we are always thinking about what it means to tell a story about the diversity of Black work across digital modalities. Here's an excerpt from the process statement for Legacy Russell's video essay BLACK MEME, reviewed by Kola Heyward-Rotimi:
Memes are not neutral. The labor enacted through black meme culture raises questions about subjectivity, personhood, and the ever-complicated fault lines of race, class, and gender performed both on- and offline. I want to talk about the economy and engine of this and perhaps push further a discussion about how we can hold ourselves accountable to how this material is produced and circulated.
– Legacy Russell
The emphasis on Internet aesthetics as intertwined with Black expression is one of the strongest parts of BLACK MEME. By embracing the sudden shifts of glitch art to fuel contrast, BLACK MEME creates a rendition of Black digitality that revives its own past as a living concept—as a performative space under constant flux and reinvention.
— Kola Heyward-Rotimi
Review: BLACK MEME
A review of BLACK MEME, an interactive video essay on Black visual culture since 1900, directed by Legacy Russell
Kola Heyward-Rotimi