kopf

Renty

 J.T. Zealy, “Renty, Congo. Plantation of B.F. Taylor, Esq.,” (frontal) March 1850.

Joseph T. Zealy took a series of daguerreotype portraits of African-American slaves in Columbia, S.C., in 1850. The photographs followed the frontal mug shot and profile conventions established for the identification of criminals. Pictured here is Renty, Congo plantation of B.F Taylor, Esq. This and other daguerreotypes will be on display at the Lakefront and Theater galleries.

J.T. Zealy, “Jack (driver), Guinea. Plantation of B.F. Taylor, Esq., Columbia, S.C.,” (frontal) March 1850.
J.T. Zealy, “Delia, country born of African parents, daughter of Renty, Congo. Plantation of B.F. Taylor, Esq.,” (frontal) March 1850


Black bodies, white science, Daguerreotypes by J.W. Zealy. Faces of Slavery

Consider the often illustrated example of the Zealy daguerreotypes, photographs of partially nude South Carolina plantation slaves that were commissioned in 1850 by the eminent Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz (and that ended up in the anthropology museum there). Ironically Agassiz wanted these photographs to be read as evidence—specifically as scientific evidence for polygenesis, the idea that human races had separate origins and were thus inescapably and irrevocably different. The chosen slaves, according to the captions found with the images, were either born in Africa or born of African parents. Somehow these images were supposed to convince presumably white viewers that the black African body was so alien that the African “race” must be, in effect, a separate species.

    “A negroid type, you became a scientific profile, an anthropological debate & a photographic subject”


All of the quoted text below is taken from Chapter 1 of the book, Reading American Photographs: Images as History; Matthew Brady to Walker Evans, by Alan Trachtenberg (1989):

    In March 1850, Louis Agassiz, celebrated Harvard natural scientist and widely admired Cambridge intellectual, arranged through the good offices of Dr. Robert W. Gibbes for a local daguerreotypist in Columbia, South Carolina, J.T. Zealy, to take a series of pictures of African-born slaves at nearby plantations. Zealy made the pictures in his studio, turned them over to Gibbes, who shipped them to Agassiz at Harvard, where in 1976, at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, they were found in storage cabinet.

kotomisi non-essential mix vol1

performance: kotomisi / as not / MacGhillie
voices: MacGhillie, Zulile, Radio Stanvaste/Helen Mijnals
Remix: aito

//video low quality (ask for hd)


part x: MacGhillie, 4:16 min

part y: metamorphosis, 6:44 min

part xy: kotomisi, 6:07 min

full version, 17:30 min

new_patterns

kotomisi werden

shedhalle installation

Bilkiss näht

Adjayi Barikissou, Berlin, näht den Kotomisi

keti koti Amsterdam

keti koti 2

anleitung_bilkiss

ornament_generator

kotomisi, speak up, down, right, left

Macghillie, Zulile

kotomisi_infected from knowbotiq on Vimeo.

radio_mix

Zulile speaking kotomisi as not macghillie, Rotterdam 2011

I am that kotomisi that comes and goes

Rauw handel, dat ben ik doch, dat ben ik doch. (Mieser Handel, das bin ich doch, das bin ich doch)

kotomisi, camouflage for run away tracks,

raw handel

terug, stuitend, terug in mijn cultuur (zurück, empörend, zurück in meiner kultur)

nu, ik will het nu, (ich will es jetzt)

je hebt mijn kleur losgemaakt, (du hast meine farbe entfesselt)

nu ben ik kleurrijk (nun bin ich knallbunt)

mijn naam is kotomisi

kot, kot, kot, kot

kot, kot,

faya stong to no bron mi so, no bron mi so – (Hot stone (i.e. penis of slave master), please don't burn me, don't burn me)

I down

kot, kot, kotomisi

koto, koto-misi, talking

hmmmm

tan, tan tiri a non, Tan tiri a non don (reden ist silber, schweigen ist gold)

Tan tiri a non don

kotomisi talking, from far lands

faya stong to no bron mi so, no bron mi so

the free, the free and I

this, this, this mental abondance called slavery

slavernij

still you ask me where what and how comes

encase you, throw down my way of thinking


so what you ask me, hmmm?

you really want to know?

so wha-, so wha-, so wha-, so what?

you re just asking to to see, to find the kotomisi dread lines?

a lonti kon dansi (lasst uns im kreis tanzen)

I am still tracked, tracked, tracked

at the bottom of communities backs

I am bigger than men, bigger than men

that woman that is camouflaged

when we run away in the forest landscape

you cant see I am

I am that kotomisi that comes and goes

Rauw handel, dat ben ik toch, dat ben ik toch. (Mieser Handel, das bin ich doch,

das bin ich doch)

faya stong to no bron mi so, no bron mi so

kotomisi, camouflage for run away tracks,

raw handel

terug, stuitend, terug in mijn cultuur (zurück, empörend, zurück in meiner kultur)

nu, ik will het nu, (ich will es jetzt)

je hebt mijn kleur losgemaakt, (du hast meine farbe entfesselt)

nu ben ik kleurrijk (nun bin ich knallbunt)

ik ben terug, ik ben terug (ich bin zurück)

mijn naam, mijn naam is

kotomisi

check mi no? (Siehst du mich nicht?)

Me na prodo sma? (Bin ich nicht hübsch gemacht?)

Me dat de weri African print (I am dressed in African clothes)

Pret

Mi dat de foe Westcoast Africa, Ghana (I am from the Westcoast of Africa, Ghana)

you wanned me to be de, de, defeminized

you want to defeminize me

I am feminin now

and I wear you proud with colour, colour, colour

my idenity is back, back, back

chip, chop

you want kot, kot, kot, kot, kot, me down

a lonti kon dansi

koto, koto, koto, kotomisi

i am that kotomisi that walks up and down

a lonti kon dansi

a prodo mi da de, prodo lek chamaeleon (ich schmücke mich wie das chamaeleon)

when I want a green, when I want a blue, when I want a yellow, it`s, it`s coded

and the coded, the coded language is just for you, me, I

no, no, not you, you are excluded in this

but that is alright, because I was exluded long, long, long time ago

en nu ben ik terug

mijn naam is

kotomisi

Zulile speaking kotomisi as not macghillie, Rotterdam 2011

fake ornament

Helen über Kotomisi

Surinamer Sein

Verlichten van Kleur

helen - übers heiraten