“No puede haber un Derek Chauvin de rodillas sobre la nuca de George Floyd sin esclavitud. Esa es la historia y la herencia de Estados Unidos.” Una entrevista con Dread Scott

Abstract

American performance artist Dread Scott has dedicated his artistic practice to depicting the ghosts of slavery and violence that haunt the American story, subvert its institutions, and undermine social relations between peoples. His work interrogates history by seeking to engage the audience in considering their own beliefs about the past as well as the present, and provokes a political response. The artist desecrates the symbols of American myth and takes its founding heroes apart, recalling Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s statement, “The white heroes, their hands dripping with blood, are dead.” (Eldridge Cleaver, A Soul on Ice, Menlo Park, Ramparts, 1968) In this interview, Dread Scott looks back on his entire career, from the adoption of his professional name to his most recent works. While he emphasizes the importance of the history of slavery for understanding the power relations that govern the world, he invites us to reread these relations from an economic point of view in order to question the impact of capitalism on the origins of this violence.