This work is an inspiration derived from the Guggenheim exhibition of the same name, “Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility.” Presenting more than 100 works by a selection of 28 artists, more than half of whom are women, and a majority of whom are Black. The exhibition had a strong impression on me, especially the title, “Going Dark.” Viewing the work itself, what I saw, experiencing the viewing made me feel distant and self searching into my own lived experience where you are simply not seen when you are black — unless you’re dressed in some catchy way. That is one of the only times people will look at you, and even in that, it’s as if you’re on display, but they’re not really looking at you. They are not looking at a person, they are looking at an object. Otherwise, you are completely ignored.
Some people even look right through you, as if you’re not there. They behave plainly that they can see you’re there, they have simply chosen not to acknowledge you. They simply ignore you. They ignore you and your presence, which in many ways robs you of your witness, which we are all endowed to have. This is why incarceration is so effective as a human punishment, because it deprives you of your being witnessed because we are fundamentally creatures who are made to be seen. We become unhinged and practically feeling invisible when we feel as if no one can see us. And prison is designed to create that, which is why it is so effective as punishment for humans. Prison puts you in the dark. It makes you invisible as if covered up in darkness. As if you were born dark.
I wanted to bring something of my own sense of the experience of Going Dark to share something I can safely say all Black people specifically, and most people broadly, have experienced — the notion of going dark. We’ve all had moments of going dark, wanting to disappear, not to be known, or being disappeared by outside forces preventing you from being known.
Going dark is an element that is always behind us, always gaining on us. To be blunt, it is a terrifying force that wears the face of death itself. The very idea and the very essence of it is attached to everything that we do. It is at the back of every thought and every deed. For every day of our lives, no matter what we are about, no matter what we are doing, our days are constantly going dark, passing into memory, and then fading into nonrecognition and then finally practically disappearing all together.
Our lives before we came here were in a state of going dark, and so they will be after we leave here. This we call existence. Therefore the theme of Going Dark, is a potent one. Not just potent for Black people in particular, which the exhibition was geared towards, but it is potent for all humans in general. One way or another, we are all going dark. One way or another, we are all experiencing the process of going dark, and most of us in this process are gripped with the terror of the prospect.
It is the reason why Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” has taken hold in the psyche of the world. Everyone wants to be seen. Everyone wants to be famous, everyone wants to have their 15 minutes of being noticed. Everyone craves their 15 minutes in the eyes of their beloved. Everyone in one form or another is seeking not to go dark because it evokes disappearance, not being seen — even though you could be there, you are not being seen. This sense of being there but not being seen, not having the witness even from ourselves (as in the loss of memory), holds us in check and in taught tension with the Real. The Real is the body of Reality, who can graphically be described as: spewing us out from the state of going dark and pulling us in, back again, into the state of going dark. In fact, our entire world including our solar system, and our milky way into the entire universe is suspended on this thread of going dark. In fact, the new ideas in physics are telling us that we are actually inside of a black hole. If that is the case, it clearly demonstrates that our entire existence is bookended in darkness and disappearance, and invisibility as if we never were at all. In other words, we are always Going Dark.