Hey.
We're now in a windy and cold New Orleans in the Upper Ninth
Ward to meet with Tameka Norris.
She actually started out wanting to be a rapper,
but now she makes art in a variety of media,
including performance, video, film, painting,
and installation.
She often uses her own body in her work.
And previous performances and videos
have seen her reenact works like Michelangelo Pistoletto's
sculpture, Venus of the Rags, and Marina Abramovic's,
Art Must be Beautiful, Artist Must be Beautiful.
Most recently, Tameka has produced
a film, an installation, that's a part
of the Prospect.3 citywide art exhibition.
It's titled, Meka Jean- How She Got Good.
And in it, we see Tameka play the protagonist
as she struggles to understand herself
and how she relates to this city.
Tameka thinks a lot about how we construct
our own identity in relation to where we live
and how we present ourselves to that world.
So let's go talk to her and see what she's got for us.
Hi.
I'm Tameka Norris.
And this is your art assignment.
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I mean, even as a kid, I think I thought I was an artist,
but that meant like singing in my brush.
I don't know.
It just meant-- just dressing up in clothes.
But I think I've redefined who I am as an artist over time.
Meka Jean is a combination of Tameka Jeanine
for my first and middle name.
And my baby sitter, you know, would, Meka Jean,
like where are you.
Or my family calls me Meka, Meka Jean.
She is basically that three-year-old girl,
that four-year-old girl singing in the brush--
sort of no limits.
Not yet self aware about gender, race,
identity, just sort of open.
Having Meka Jean, which is not someone from the future
or someone who I'm making up the rules for-- I'm actually
going back and looking at my life, looking at my childhood,
and really just wanting to honor that playfulness.
Your assignment is to become someone else.
So first before you do anything, take a selfie,
then get one transitional items like a mustache, lipstick, tie,
whatever it is, a wig.
Then go out into the world, check your mail,
go get a coffee, go take a ride in your car.
In the process, take another selfie.
And that's it.
There was another thing Tameka wanted to emphasize,
and that's to be sure you aren't becoming someone you know.
Yeah.
That's really important, because I
think it's OK be inspired by someone
you know for this assignment.
But it's more interesting if you're
becoming a different version of yourself
than if you're imitating a friend or a celebrity.
And there are so many great precedences
for this assignment.
I can think of a ton of artists who've taken on alter egos.
There's Marcel Duchamp's Rose Selavy or Andy Warhol.
But the animation, I'm guessing,
is going to be about the great Cindy Sherman.
I mean, Cindy Sherman is fantastic.
And she's great for this assignment,
because she's become loads of other people in her work.
Yeah.
That's true.
But what Cindy Sherman does is really
direct it toward the camera.
And I think the part of this assignment
that I find the most interesting is
that you have to go out into the world as somebody else.
And that makes me think of a different artist.
So I'm wrong?
You're wrong.
Gah.
In 1973, Adrian Piper was studying philosophy at Harvard
and began a series of performances in response
to the political climate at the time.
Donning sunglasses, a wig, and a mustache,
Piper transformed herself into a male alter ego
she called The Mythic Being.
The Mythic Being first appeared in ads
placed in the Village Voice, in which she combined
a photo of the character with text cold
from her own journals.
The Being also did a variety of private and public
performances-- hanging around the house,
doing yoga, and venturing out on the street
to explore her own reaction and those of others
to her acts of aggression and stereotypical masculinity.
She documented these performances
and made drawings based on the photos,
creating works that sprang from her belief
that you could be transformed by the immediate experience
of becoming or encountering The Mythic Being.
Mythic, because it's gender, race, and status
were unstable and unclear.
Tameka's assignment asks you to become your own mythic being
informed by your own time and place, influences, stereotypes,
fears, and ambitions.
One of the easiest sort of symbolic ways of transitioning
is in physical appearance.
And that small gesture, I think, can always
incite some sort of an internal shift.
When I put on red lipstick, which
I'm very uncomfortable doing, I feel like, ooh, I've
become something.
Or the expectation, because I have on now red lipstick,
does something.
Or what if the guy puts on a tie and he rarely wears a tie?
You know, who do you become?
How do you perform this symbol?
I was visiting some friends, and they're transgender.
And they just thought it would be fun and funny to go out
in the world.
And I think we were going grocery shopping.
So simple transition-- they bound my chest.
And they took a little snippet of my hair,
and we glued it along my mouth and made a mustache.
And really I had on the same clothes
that I was wearing-- jeans and a flannel top.
And that was it.
I was very aware of, well shoot, do I walk differently.
Like do I talk differently?
Do I use my own voice?
What do I do?
And I tried it all, while I was out.
How do you perform be your new self that you're becoming?
And I found that to be really interesting.
What parts do you keep?
What parts do you push away?
And we just with that idea.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I think I'm quite an attractive man, actually.
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