Ulysses Jenkins
2021
Remnants of the Watts Festival
Ulysses Jenkins
The Watts Summer Festival is one of the oldest African American cultural festivals in the United States. The Watts community founded the event in 1966, one year after the Watts uprising. Ulysses Jenkins's film captures moments from the festival, including footage from a performance by the band War. This California funk band—famous for songs such as "Low Rider," "The Cisco Kid," and "Why Can't We Be Friends?"—was also well known for its multiethnic membership. The 1972 Watts Festival was one of the first events that Jenkins filmed, and he captured the underlying issues of community and commemoration that defined the annual event. At the time the local news media would, in Jenkins's opinion, misrepresent the festival by issuing warnings about it, and the artist's own footage served to counteract the media's negative view.
Remnants of the Watts Festival
Dream City
Ulysses Jenkins
George Abe, Maren Hassinger
Ulysses Jenkins composed "Dream City" from documentation of a twenty-four-hour performance he organized in collaboration with David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, and Senga Nengudi. A discordant, absurdist, and poetic montage, the video weaves together jazz and punk shows, recitations by Jenkins, and shots of the Los Angeles skyline and oil wells to comment on power and nation in the early years of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
Dream City
Mass of Images
Ulysses Jenkins
Ulysses Jenkins
Mass of Images, a recorded performance that does indeed engage black stereotypes perpetuated by the American media. In the work, Jenkins appears on a set accompanied by a stack of televisions, his face obscured by a plastic mask and sunglasses, neck wrapped in American-flag-print scarf, and sporting an Adidas t-shirt underneath a bathrobe, arranged such that only the “ID” of Adidas is visible. The video cuts between this scene and examples of blackface and racist stereotyping from American films and TV. Jenkins repeats a mantra as he settles into a wheelchair and wheels himself toward center stage: “You’re just a mass of images you’ve gotten to know / from years and years of TV shows. / The hurting thing; the hidden pain / was written and bitten into your veins / I don’t and I won’t relate / and I think for some it’s too late!”
Mass of Images
