BLIXEL: The (Re)Stock Image Project
Henry shakes his head. “I thought you couldn’t leave a mark.”
“I can’t,” she says, looking up. “I can’t hold a pen. I can’t tell a story. I can’t wield a weapon, or make someone remember. But art,” she says with a quieter smile, “art is about ideas. And ideas are wilder than memories. They’re like weeds, always finding their way up.”
“But no photographs, No film.”
Her expression falters, just a fraction. “No,” she says, the word a shape on her lips. And he feels bad for asking, for drawing her back to the bars of her curse, instead of the gaps she’s found between them. But then Addie straightens, lifts her chin, smiles with an almost defiant kind of joy.
“But isn’t it wonderful”, she says, “to be an idea?”
(Excerpt from THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE by V.E. Schwab )
So, I have this idea. These ideas. About in/visibility. About the universality of human experience, and reflection, and relationships. About the stories we tell -- it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere. And I started making these books. Well, not books exactly. But book covers, in the style of the urban fiction you might find sold from a table, circa 125th Street or Fulton Mall. I gathered them up like trinkets, and arranged them as literate tchotchkes. Candy paint novels. But mostly, I was drawn to the images. The all-kinds-of-beauty glossed up and shining, back when Black folks were only occasionally on the cover of mainstream magazines.
My ideas for these “books” is a growing cadre of super-sleuthing cosmetologists, baby daddies on the road to redemption, zombie slaying skrippers, and hackable white male cyborgs. Crafting each of these hood tales has been a deep dive into stock image libraries. I often came up short. Apparently, only white people kickbox, or get kidnapped, or use prosthetics, or operate computers past the age of 65, or stand in front of a ‘SOLD’ sign. Etcetera. So, to make this work, I am forced into the material of celebrity. Sometimes it is a perfect fit, a clever set up for a joke. But many times, I am simply looking for the elevation of the mundane. Proof that identified blackness doesn’t deny an American life.
Originally, I thought this was an Art project, a sanctioned exploration vetted by an institution. But I found myself invisible, replicating the deficiency that I discovered in my stock image search. Poorly lit, bound by stereotype, and underfunded. But with this disappointment, an opportunity was revealed. An idea that could thrive in the marketplace and the museum - a network of partnerships including individuals, organization, and an array of locales. BLIXEL exists as a platform to expand stock image options and normalize inclusion. A space to see texture, hue, shape, volume, and the various actions of culture.
I am working with artists Jillian Marie Browning and Lajuné Mcmillan on a proof of concept to further develop BLIXEL’s production model. Still photography, motion capture frameworks. Illustration and video will each be represented in the offerings.
Every step of my creative journey has been marked by a significant challenge, a drawing back, to be released to the next level. In this case, it is the need for support. I am asking everyone in my orbit to share this idea. To spread it like a weed, to contribute to its growth, to inspire it beyond novelty into ubiquity.