'is this white enough for you?' by Jules de Bouverie
This piece was composed in reaction to when my zine protest score 'Violent accumulation' got banned at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. 'Violent accumulation' called for the interruption of all-white and or all-male composer concerts. Participants are to interrupt a concert at the quietest moment with readings from James Baldwin's 'Nobody Knows My Name', 'In Search of a Majority', or readings from other Black and brown liberationists. I instruct people to read until the whiteness has been obliterated.
Since 'Violent accumulation' was banned and I was discouraged from exploring how philosophies of protest and resistance can inform my creative practice, I decided to write 'is this white enough for you?'. The piece is for speaking pianist and works within the white supremacist frameworks that most white-led institutions submit to. I don't interrupt anything other than perhaps white sensibilities. I shame the audience for its complicity in supporting all-white and or all-male concerts and ask them to work through that shame and to listen to the shame. The audience also has a call-and-response occasionally yelling to me, 'YOU WILL SUBMIT'. My hope is that audiences will understand how they are implicated in supporting epistemic ignorance and that they will use their power to change this and make room for more BIPOC artists.
This is also the debut of my drag alter ego, Jules de Bouverie. The zine can be viewed here: https://archive.org/details/violent-a...