Black to The Future (I know, I know…) — “Space Invaders” opening @ Dissident Display last friday

September 16, 2008 by Sexy Fitsum  Send to a Friend

Upstarty H Street gallerists Dissident Display held an opening reception for Space Invaders last friday night with a collection of interesting guesses at how the future, maybe futureness, would be packaged for the popular imagination if Africans and African-American culture dominated The Big Discourse. Works ranged from straight up to kinda-sorta oblique. The arrangement of freeze-dried spaceman food containing oxtail and yams installed on one section of wall space is an obvious reply to crew-cut pointdexter-ass Tang™. Although I got the humor in co-curator and performance artist Holly Bass’ ass-and-titties menacle, I wasn’t so sure how it fit in with the show’s theme. This guy’s easy-to-read retro techness was present in more than one painting and at least one video piece. There was music through out with Dissident co-founder and gallery manager Adrian Loving’s dj sets bookending artist Yoko K’s live music performance. About a half hour before closing shop, Adrian, co-founder/co-curator Ayo and new (to me) bwoi Eric Brewer thanked the crowd for coming, and talked about their plans for a busy fall and winter season before letting us get back to the free reds and whites and meeting meetables.

As a people watcher and personality junkie with zero shame, I admit to being more interested in the Dissident Display phenomenon than the show itself. I’m blameless and not alone. Last sunday the group was featured in The Washington Post’s fall art preview. Just last spring, The Post dot com published a look see piece on the elements of Eric’s habberdashery. WPGC lists them as one of the 25 all-time coolest brothers in the DMV. And the coincidence of being both DSL users and tech-based budding art-starlets got Adrian and Ayo’s faces all over a city-wide Verizon campaign a couple of years of ago. To me this doesn’t surprise, as they’ve been on one type of audience-friendly creative tip or another since the early ’00s when I first met each of them separately (and probably before they met eachother), with Adrian doing Cinemusic — a weekly dj night at the ol’ Visions theater where each session was based on a genre of film — and Ayo, who was producing a web based video mag called Smack TV that covered the local art culture. A few years and a gang of attention has got them on an interesting, positive career trajectory. Their raw talent for making scenes that are relevant to both old media deathstars like the Post and the next gen of youngs alike is making me wonder why there’s a reality show being shot in DC right now about someone else ….

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