Wu Tsang with Fred Moten: Miss Communication and Mr:Re, 2014, 2 channel HD color video with stereo sound, TRT: 17 min; Courtesy the artist and Clifton Benevento, New York. Photo Andres Ramirez.
The most significant theoretical turn of the last few years is the resurging interest in identity. With this development, Fred Moten, a black studies scholar and poet known for analyses like his dense, rhythmic 2003 book In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, has become an important name on the lecture circuit. The centerpiece of Wu Tsang’s show at Clifton Benevento is a moving two-channel video made in collaboration with Moten, Miss Communication and Mr:Re, based on voicemail messages they left for one another—obsolescent vocal missed communications in our increasingly text-based world. On separate screens, the artist and writer speak about life, love, nature and art, creating a cascade of overlapping words. Like an operatic duet, themes and sounds—like “drag” and “doom”—ring out in harmony. Joining this work is a slow-motion video of Moten dancing in robes and jewels to a rendition of the jazz song “Girl Talk,” and two sculptures comprised of draped flesh-toned mesh fabric and crystals.
Pictured: Wu Tsang with Fred Moten: Miss Communication and Mr:Re, 2014, two-channel HD video, 17 minutes. Courtesy the artist and Clifton Benevento, New York. Photo Andres Ramirez.