[ISEA96] Roshini Kempadoo – Beyond the Digital Diaspora: Anxious Repetition

 

Long Paper

Summary

 

This contribution touches on the issue of stereotyping and replication of ‘real’ situations and structures to that of media space/cyberspace and network communications. It is to note and examine the replication of economic/political/ social structures in digital development and the use of stereotypical icons we see increasingly being used.

 
Intro

 

Like other contemporary practitioners – I come from a particular specrfrc art form practice – In this Instance – Photography. For the last four years I have intermittently explored and developed different ways of working using digital technology, and computer networks to produce, exhibit and more recently drstnbute my work. My work until now has been concerned with digital outputs, getting the work off the monitor to stand as photographic images. Like many photographers, this has been a vital step to make – since photography (like graphic design with the advent of desktop publishing systems) is undergoing a fundamental change through the development of the digital image and electronic equipment. Like many practitioners of colour, the shift to using this method and process was logical to the development of my practice and approach. Fundamentally, my work is and has always been about the Individual and collective status of people of colour – about the reworking of notions of Identity, race and the mapping of histories culturally, physical and spiritually By Its nature the work is about the black Diaspora. It IS a visual experience reflecting the sense of migration, movement, connectivity and displacement in its appearance, format and content.