There is a push toward a condition of deindividualization and anonymity that comes by way of allowing yourself to be absorbed into a larger more abstract configuration; this is totally antagonistic to this kind of obsessive move towards transparency that we are seeing infest global politics. We are seeing a turn towards not only Fascism but a complete and shameless intolerance for the complex or illegible.
Nikita Gale, 2018

As far as I’m concerned, a person has the right to be opaque.
Edouard Glissant, 2009

The idea of transparency in the geo-political and technological arenas has become a contested talking point in 21st century thought. Striving for transparency has become synonymous with openness and authenticity. But, for many the notion of transparency is loaded—for undocumented workers or those with a history of incarceration—the idea that one would speak openly about one’s private life could jeopardize the opportunities for work, travel and safety. Transparency is used as a cultural device by the Global North, using openness to shape the contours of society in order to maintain their elite power.

Visual artist Nikita Gale troubles the notion of transparency with her use of the sonic and touch in her machinic installations. Her work is often in conversation with Edouard Glissant’s philosophies and his refusal of, what was then, Western conception of globalization, knowledge and identities. Gale is re-thinking modern ideas of transparency through her deft enactment of opacity in her work. We recently spoke about her involvement in the global Cultural Capital Cooperative, the subsequent video work produced called Cultural Capital Cooperative Object #2 and how opacity has played a central role in how she thinks and approaches her materials.

TSI: Can you tell me more about your ideas of anonymity?

Different characteristics of anonymity are thrown into relief depending on the context, I guess. For example, there’s the kind of anonymity that is intentionally applied to protect or conceal identity; then there’s the form of anonymity that is perceived by authority as antagonistic and threatening because it evades systems and is difficult to trace, document, record, or manage.

I also find it interesting to think about anonymity in relation to something like blockchain technology which really promotes transparency and traceability as it’s foremost selling point. Every action is so thoroughly documented that it produces a field of infinitely unique transactions. It’s about documentability and individualizing which is how power and authority are maintained – through a kind of incessant separation and individualizing. It’s one type of organization that makes the other kind of organizing – the political organizing of communities and groups – more difficult if not impossible.

Anonymity is a refusal to identify or to take a name or be named. In a sense it is a return to a state of abstraction, and that’s what I’m more interested in: anonymity, the refusal of inheriting language or names, and abstraction.

“Anonymity is a refusal to identify or to take a name or be named. In a sense it is a return to a state of abstraction, and that’s what I’m more interested in: anonymity, the refusal of inheriting language or names, and abstraction.”

TSI: In the past you’ve mentioned “technology eclipsing human interaction” – could you speak more about this, especially in relation to your exhibition last year, “DESCENT.”

NG: That was a funny way for me to word that! I think when I mentioned that, I must have been working through ideas around mediation and the ways in which tools and the resulting cyborgian arrangements between humans and technologies continue to determine how identities are formed and how identities subsequently relate to their environment.

To relate this idea back to “DESCENT”, I’d say the most succinct way of explaining this relationship between technology and identity would be to look at language. And to not only look at language but to also think about it as a technology – truly one of the oldest technologies in use by mankind. If language can be thought of as a technology, then the system of naming — specifically as it applies to genealogy, patriarchy and colonialism – can be implicated in this argument that I’m forming in “DESCENT”. It’s an argument which broadly considers the ways in which materials and technologies (like language and barricades) can literally and figuratively determine how a person is authorized or prohibited to move through the world.

TSI: In Glissant’s notion of opacity how do you feel the black subject can deal with the idea of ridding oneself of the burden of transparency?

NG: I’m at a point in my practice where I’m circulating between two different manifestations of opacity: I’m invoking opacity by responding to the demand for transparency with a line of questioning, and I’m also invoking opacity by not responding to the demand at all, or at least not in any way that legitimizes the request. Of course, these strategies carry with them certain risks – as antagonism towards systems of authority typically culminates in some form of punishment or retaliation.

“I’m at a point in my practice where I’m circulating between two different manifestations of opacity: I’m invoking opacity by responding to the demand for transparency with a line of questioning, and I’m also invoking opacity by not responding to the demand at all…”

Your decision to refer to ridding oneself of the burden of transparency as an “idea” is useful here, because I don’t believe that I can be optimistic enough to believe that one can ever really rid oneself of the burden of transparency. However, I do believe that there are strategies available that can assist in how one might be able to navigate and produce a response to the calls for transparency that are typically demanded of those of us with precarious relationships to authority. This response is something that can produce variations of opacity – which in my interpretation of the term also functions as a form of refusal.

To answer your question more directly, I would refer to a quote that I encountered by way of my friend and writer Dayo Olopade from the Belgian philosopher Raoul Vanegeim: “People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”

This burden of transparency is one that works both internally and externally. The compulsion to name and to identify is inflicted externally by systems of authority (think about the number of websites and forms that still only offer “Male” or “Female” as gender choices… and refusing to disclose this information is rarely ever an option), but it is also enacted by individuals through conditioning. Think of the ways in which – to borrow the phrase from de Certeau – we can analyze our “practice of everyday life” to find the moments in which we voluntarily engage in transparency and authorize and allow other systems to name us.

TSI: I’m interested in how you think this idea of cooperative contracts can lead to a more transparent negotiation of power in the art world and how does this relate to your ideas/practice of opacity?

The cooperative was formed in the fall of 2016 and was initiated by Sidsel Hansen Meineche, an artist based in London. In 2016, we produced a video work, Cultural Capital Cooperative Object #2, at LAXART in Los Angeles upon an invitation from Eric Golo Stone who, at the time, was the Director of Public Programming at LAXART. Two years later, we created a legal license agreement with the guidance of attorney Daniel McLean for a cooperatively produced video work which allows us as the cooperative to retain legal ownership of the artwork as it circulates and is licensed to institutions and collections for exhibition.

While I can only speak for myself as a member of CCC, I believe that engaging with the legal framework of art ownership is a way in which we as artists can find space to assert some level of authority in determining how our artwork (titled “Cultural Capital Cooperative Object #2” or “CCCO #2”) circulates within the art market. It’s also important to note that the contract is not an artwork; it’s a legal document that has and will be used as such. It’s also available to be used and altered by anyone who has access to it; it’s a shareable document.

My ideas around opacity actually developed a few years after the cooperative formed. As I think about these ideas of transparency and opacity in relation to the CCCO License Agreement, these concepts and their meanings are relational, meaning an artist asking for transparency in a legal arrangement with an institution is not the same if the roles are reversed. Arguably, the former sets up a framework in which authority can be observed more thoroughly while the latter might further exaggerate an already disproportionate power relationship.

TSI: How do you think this experience of the cooperative will impact your future work or relationship to work?

It’s definitely piqued my interest in working collaboratively with other artists.

TSI: To me, the haptic is such an important aspect of how you build agency in your work-how do you manage to create a space where the viewer has their sense of touch engaged?

NG: Sound is haptic. It’s an intimate medium that engages our sense of touch in minute and incremental ways. To experience sound is to experience touch; this is why things get really interesting to me when we start to talk about sound and touch and how these subjects relate to agency. Sound infiltrates; it penetrates; it doesn’t ask for permission; it radiates and reflects.

“Sound infiltrates; it penetrates; it doesn’t ask for permission; it radiates and reflects.”

The way that I work with sound (and also language) in my video works involves an engagement with how an individual can assert agency in how and when they shift between hearing and listening (this does not explicitly refer to auditory phenomena since there are many ways that one can “hear” or experience sound) and between seeing and reading. There are instances in video works (like the video DESCENT in “DESCENT” that showed in Commonwealth & Council in 2018 or in WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE TOUCH) when text (either written or spoken) repeats or is distorted to a point where it begins to function more as a texture or an ambient background element. I guess you could even say this is a matter of looking at the pivot between experience and interpretation.

TSI: Tell me what else you‘re working on?

I have a few exhibitions coming up. A group show opening April 4th at CUE Foundation, NY; a residency and solo exhibition at the Visual Art Center of UT Austin in September; a solo exhibition with Reyes/Finn in Detroit; a group exhibition at the New School. I’m also co-organizing a project with Triple Canopy at the Hammer Museum here in LA called “Omniaudience” which began in 2018 and will continue throughout 2019 with a series of listening sessions and programs related to the practice of listening.