{"id":3241,"date":"2018-06-02T16:16:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-02T16:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=3241"},"modified":"2018-06-02T16:19:40","modified_gmt":"2018-06-02T16:19:40","slug":"review-kara-walker-the-katastwof-karavan-2018-prospect-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=3241","title":{"rendered":"Review – Kara Walker: The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan 2018 Prospect 4:"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kara Walker<\/b><\/h1>\n

The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan<\/i><\/b>, 2018<\/b><\/h1>\n

February 23\u201325, 2018 at Algiers Point, New Orleans, LA on the occasion of <\/span><\/p>\n

Prospect 4: The Lotus In Spite of the Swamp by Dan Munn<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kara Walker\u2019s stunning contribution to Prospect 4 was a calliope (<\/span>steam-whistle organ) housed in a <\/span>carnival caravan <\/span>adorned with <\/span>the artist\u2019s signature cutouts. Due to financial and logistical issues encountered in bringing this highly anticipated work to New Orleans, <\/span>The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan\u2019s<\/span><\/i> performances did not take place until closing weekend, bringing the curtain down on the triennial\u2019s fourth edition. Responding to the dark histories of its site at Algiers Point, on which slave pens operated during the 18th century, and also the daily performances of the Steamboat Natchez directly across the river, <\/span>The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan<\/span><\/i> explores the ways in which the catastrophe of slavery (\u201ckatastw\u00f3f\u201d in Haitian Creole) is memorialized in the Crescent City.<\/span><\/p>\n

The calliope is an extension of the whistle used at cotton gins and mills to signal work shifts and fire alarms. Patented in 1855 by Joshua C. Stoddard, the instrument was originally intended for evangelistic use in the church. But due to its deafening volume and incapacity to produce notes in tune, it instead became a mainstay of showboat entertaining, supplementing the performances of brass bands and outperforming those of competing vessels. Later, the tinny sound of the calliope would become synonymous with the circus, employed in elaborately ornamented carriages in circus parades. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan <\/span><\/i>replaces the classical ornamentation traditionally found on such carriages with silhouettes of sugar plants, Spanish moss, and tropical foliage in water-jet cut steel. On one panel, a man in a wide-brimmed hat sits piggyback atop two other men, whipping a line of yoked figures. Each vignette expands on the artist\u2019s stylized yet exacting inventories of the material history of slavery and of racist physiognomies of the enslaved.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton <\/span><\/p>\n

Old times there are not forgotten<\/span><\/p>\n

Look away, look away<\/span><\/p>\n

Look away, Dixie Land<\/span><\/p>\n

Dixie\u2019s Land (1859) by Daniel Decatur Emmett<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In an interview with <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i>, Walker describes the steamboat\u2019s saccharine tootle as \u201ca way of keeping a certain level of peace, placating everyone.\u201d <\/span>The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan\u2019s <\/span><\/i>performances were scheduled to follow directly after those of the Steamboat Natchez,<\/span><\/p>\n

the ninth steamer to bear that name, its calliope played since 1989 by Debbie Fagnano (aka \u2018Ms. Calliope\u2019) who keeps mostly to a set playlist.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Limited edition plate by Kerry James Marshall. Buy art online at www.shopbaia.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Walker does acknowledge in her text that the Birthplace of Jazz “celebrates its Africanisms\u201d as home to creatives of color \u201cdefying, resisting and messing with dominant culture.” As a response, however, <\/span>The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan <\/span><\/i>largely side-steps the incremental\u2013and undoubtedly hard-won\u2013successes of black performers in New Orleans in The Age of Steam. Instead it directly addresses a present day where, laden some of NOLA\u2019s over 10 million annual visitors, the Natchez devotedly recreates the melodies of a very different era on the century-old technology of a 32-note steam organ.<\/span><\/p>\n

While<\/span> the patriotic<\/span> fervour of Natchez tunes such as <\/span>America the Beautiful<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Take Me Out to the Ball Game<\/span><\/i> came almost a century later, <\/span>the nostalgic cheeriness of <\/span>Dixie\u2019s Land<\/span><\/i> and Stephen Foster\u2019s <\/span>Camptown Races and Oh! Susanna <\/span><\/i>originated in the blackface <\/span>minstrelsy of the 1850<\/span>s. New Orleans played a key role in breaking down the “uniformly heinous”<\/span> and dehumanizing racial depictions present in minstrelsy, a form of clowning arising in early American circus performances. In the early 1900\u2019s the city was a major port of call for a number of the immortals of black vaudeville who, at institutions like Philip Foto’s Folly Theatre in Algiers Point or the Lyric Theatre\u2013America’s largest African American playhouse\u2013appropriated, sabotaged, and repurposed these racial stereotypes.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast to the Natchez, <\/span>The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan<\/span><\/i> played \u201cblack protest (and celebration) music from many eras,\u201d structured into three programs and featuring songs such as civil rights anthem <\/span>We Shall Overcome <\/span><\/i>and compositions inspired by mid 20th century police brutality and segregation such as<\/span> What’s Going On <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Change is Gonna Come.<\/span><\/i> These programs also included both live and recorded music by jazz pianist, composer, and educator Jason Moran. Bringing complexity and improvisation to the instrument, Moran\u2019s live performances to the bucolic riverside audience employed a broad dynamic range, from single note melodies to shrill cries releasing plumes of steam.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Kara Walker, The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan, 2018<\/p><\/div>\n

Compared to the Natchez\u2019 twice-daily, seven-day-a-week drama etched into the soundscape of The Big Easy, the nearby historic marker commemorating 1700s slave pens that Walker calls a \u201ccheap bronze plaque\u201d feels less tangible. Titled \u201cEnslaved Africans,\u201d it indicates the site at which men and women from the Senegal-Gambia region were rested and cleaned up before being ferried across the river to the French Quarter to be sold into a lifetime of slavery. In <\/span>The Katastw\u00f3f Karavan,<\/span><\/i> Walker synthesizes racist caricatures and musical genres to reimagine this nominal marker as an itinerant stage on which the story of slavery in New Orleans is told anew. While the work harks back to the turn of the century, some of the harsher realities of modern day Louisiana\u2013having the highest rate of mass incarceration in the country, or lacking affordable housing on high ground<\/span> for instance\u2013remain firmly within its scope. Breathing life into the calliope\u2019s obsolete musical apparatus, the artist\u2019s weekend of performances foregrounded the enduring weight of local histories, sweeping away a little of their sentimentality.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Dan Munn<\/b> is an independent writer and curator whose reviews, artist profiles, and features have appeared in <\/span>Kaleidoscope, Randian, C Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, Art New Zealand<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>This is Tomorrow, <\/span><\/i>and<\/span> Le Roy<\/span><\/i> and in publishing by David Roberts Art Foundation, The Moving Museum, Union Pacific, Kunstraum, Minerva, and Bowerbank Ninow. He received his MA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, London and is currently Director of Development & Communications at Alabama Contemporary Art Center.<\/span><\/p>\n

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