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“Instead, he is expropriating [the space’s]10 capacity to encapsulate the black subject’s position in the development of the nation, a process in which, he reminds us, we are all implicated.”






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“The hypertextual subject lies in the zone of transformation where the text as well as the subject take shape. … Thus, he argues that "work in hypertext will involve a constant alternation between nomos and logos. We will create structures which we will then deterritorialize and which we will replace with new structures, passing again from smooth to striated space and starting the process anew" (316). The Indian oral tradition that informs her texts does not regard place in isolation with the experience of the place-the place is not out there existing in itself to be conquered or controlled, but place is intricately interwoven with the spatial practices of the people.” Read full text here

Thus the hypermedia/hypertext transforms once removed from the screen or the page and into space. An inherently digital medium in conception, I argue that the hypertextual space is indeed the most optimal manifestation of a hypertextual project. The hypertextual space is an inherently post-colonial construct, leaning into radical traditions of Indigeneity to define what it means to hold and be affected by land and space (there is an inherent mutuality that centrally defines the affect of a hypertextual space). By creating an installation that relies on both abstraction in form and audience participation, Pendleton rejects linear cartographies of navigation. Ironically that sentiment reminds me of how I often think about traditional curation - organizing objects within space to promote a specific map, mode of viewing, or historical narrative. Thus, the white-box gallery construct was born.

Yet 
it’s inescapable, it’s claustrophobic
it’s visual, it’s involved
it’s succumbing to the way it wants you to act
an act of force
it’s craning your neck high
turning around in circles
again and again and again
trying to read a prescribed language
squinting, short circuiting, begging
it’s madness - _____ ____
an act of ritual refusal*


The curation of Who is Queen? forces you to contort your body, but it is not necessarily in control. You in the audience! You inherently impact the space simply by being in it, moving in it, responding to it, engaging in it, laughing in it, speaking in it, staring in it. You are constantly at the border of affecting and being affected. And that is the hypermedia at work! It resists statisicity and in doing so, you change its conditions and expand its possibilities. It is a brief liberation from the policing of space, of sound. It is mayhaps eternal bliss.

*Drawn from my observations of both my own and external reactions and responses to the space on October 9, 2021


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