Kyra Rice on-line: "Another Black man killed"

Kyra Rice on-line

"Another Black man killed"
by Kyra Rice in collaboration with Layli Phillips
August - 2006

About the artists:
Kyra Rice
Most of Kyra Rice's work has been located in high-exposure public urban areas. She is in direct dialogue with the history or current uses, past or present occupants of the sites she works in. Her installations have aimed to inspire or uplift those who inhabit the spaces in proximity to them. Her process of researching sites has revealed many truths untold and hidden histories and as a result Kyra Rice's work has made an inevitable leap to focusing on issues of social justice. She received her BFA from California College of the Arts and Crafts (now CCA) and is an art teacher in the San Francisco Unified School district.

Layli Philips
Another Black man killed represents Layli Phillips' first foray into public political art. She recently completed The Womanist Reader, an anthology of the first quarter century of womanist thought (forthcoming from Routledge, September 2006). Womanism is centrally concerned with the elimination of all forms of oppression for all people, with an emphasis on women and men struggling together as equal partners to build a global society based on principles of commonweal, social and environmental justice, and the well-being of body, mind, and spirit. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Associate Faculty of African American Studies at Georgia State University.

Many special thanks to the following people for their tireless support, insight, hustle and know-how:
Layli Philips for her insight, endless references, comradery and spiritual collaboration; Baruti KMT on his technical brilliance; Baruti, Layli, Derrick Lanois, Yasmin Reppe, Taliba Sikudhani Olugbala, Chris Myles, Rawle Fraser, for their perfect voices; and Mesha, mother of SFPD murder victim, Idriss Stelley for asking me to do a spot on EnemyCombatantRadio about this work.

This work is a visual under-representation* of the people of color who have been murdered directly by police or indirrectly by the state. It is intended to address the fact that we hear the phrase "another Black man killed" in the news and in our communities so often that as a society we have become numb to its meaning.

The deeper issue is that accepting the truth that poor Black and brown people are under siege while turning a blind eye to this fact serves privilege, yet it is difficult for many to understand how.

In the sound track when the woman asks "or are YOU the line of fire" it points to how seemingly harmless preconceived notions of others, accidental stereotypes, fear of differences, and/or simply turning a blind eye to how these behaviors manifest in society is the status quo.

The job of the police is to maintain this status quo; one that allows for excessive force by "peace officers", countless homicides of people of color gone uninvestigated, a warehousing of people of color in the prison industrial complex, and is the systematic ways this slow genocide is condoned in our society.

Another Black man killed is not intended to be an in-your-face statement but a strategic approach at finding what developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, called "the moderately discrepant," a concept he used to describe the optimal learning situation. Where is the moderately discrepant place for the target audience of the complacent upper and middle classes to grasp the genocide of any people? How can it be communicated to mainstream America that a genocide has taken place and in its wake is the unwarranted criminalization-without-redemption of Black people and poor people of color which results in continued brutal violations to the basic human right to life?

The end objective of this work is to engage and aligning MORE people--from all social, ethnic and economic backgrounds--to stop this slow genocide and begin considering the above "deeper issue" so that we may take responsibility for the legacy we have inherrited and move as a race toward recognizing and honoring each other's humanity.

Below is a partial list of links to the resources that informed Another Black Man Killed.

Police and Law enforcement Brutality:

*Media Awareness Project - US: Killings By Police Under-Reported

Idriss Stelley Foundation

The SFPD Execution of Gus Ruglev

The Brown Watch - Police Brutality Watch

God save us all from SF Bay View "Peace Officers"...

The Myth of the (Black) Teen Suicide Epidemic

Political:

New American Media - Racism Spares The Killers Of Blacks

ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Pattern of SFPD cover ups runs deep

The History of Jim Crow