HAPTIC HAPPENINGS: AN EXPLORATION OF SOUND, QUIET AND BLACKNESS

Abstract

This research analyzes the lives and works of Black visual artists and filmmakers as visual representations of haptic events. This thesis examines how the lives of the artists and specific works of art are entangled with sound and quiet and directly reflect and shape the complexities black interiority. The possibilities of the black interior expand when the senses are combined and how the utilization of that synthesis centers the interior lives, ideas and art of black people. Centering the interior life creates space for the humanity of black people to be fully realized and explored without disruption both individually and collectively. Artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hammons, Nick Cave and filmmakers Arthur Jafa and Kahlil Joseph’s work is used to illustrate how a haptic event is formed, how the haptic event effects both the artist and the audience and how the outcome of the haptic informs the present moment and often surpass the confines of language. This project extends the concept of Hapticality and the futurity of black interior life as a site of reflection, expression and resistance.