All Images © 2012
Justin Randolph Thompson
The Crisis of Black Intellect is a sound based installation and performance that examines the shortcomings of intellectuality in the context of blackness through a metaphoric examination of fatherhood. Drawing upon Derek Walcott’s re-interpretation of the Anchises and Aeneas and the classic text by Harold Cruz ‘The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual’ from 1967, the work is a dilution of intellectual discourse and a gripping call for resistance. The series of sound based painterly sculptures engage the viewer in a rhythmic soundscape that problematizes the international packaging of Black thought. The performance was done in collaboration with Andre Halyard and Leon Jones.